--IS THIS THING ON?
…I’m a big fan of Vampire
Weekend. Their music is like nothing
else. New album comes out in two
weeks. I can’t wait. It got a whopping four and a half stars in
Rolling Stone. Five stars is tops and is
usually reserved for albums like Sergeant Pepper, Blonde On Blonde, Thriller,
etc.
A while back, when I first
discovered them, I wrote a story using the title of every song of their first
album.
And I wrote this, too:
Vampire
Weekend
What was I doing with these kids? I was ready to kill any one of them.
“Ew!
He’s licking my bloody nose!” Archer said.
“I’m a vampire,” Lewis said, “that’s
why.”
“Let me have my own stupid bloody
nose.”
“I must feast when I can.”
“Knock it off.” I wanted to be the cool dad, but the price
was too high. I smacked Benjy, who was
my own, pushed Lewis against the car window and glared at Archer, all in a millisecond,
from the front seat, hardly taking my eyes from the road.
“He thinks he’s a vampire,” Benjy
said.
“I am.”
“You’re so freaking stupid,” Archer
said.
“Don’t say ‘freaking’,” I said. I saw
their dopey stares. “It’s the same as
the real thing.”
“What’s the real thing?”
“Fucking.”
“Who said that?” I asked.
Archer laughed and that was when I
hit the car in front of me.
Her name was Glenda Henderson from
Everett or Mukilteo and she couldn’t have been nicer. She said she’d been expecting the accident
and when she read my confusion she explained how she’d had her cards read
earlier in the day and that an accident loomed in her future. She was so relieved it was nothing more than
a fender bender.
“The cards don’t lie,” she said.
My wife said I had issues. She knew me well, so I when I had a moment I
gave her input a great deal of thought.
She didn’t come right out and say it, but she implied things, that I was
a lousy dad for one, that I was selfish.
My career came first and she and Benjy were accessories, she pointed
out. Why else hadn’t we had other
children? I didn’t dare call her bluff on
that particular because it had actually been me bluffing all this time.
I hated kids.
I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t right what I was thinking and
feeling about myself. I even doubted
God’s grace if it spanned so wide.
In the morning I woke early because
I was already up, if you know what I mean.
“I’m not good with them,” I told Leanne as soon as her lids lifted. I didn’t even notice how horrible her breath
smelled. “I’m clumsy,” I said, ready to
confess every guilty sin.
“No you’re not.”
“I feel like it’s a sham, like I’m
playing charades, acting. Maybe it’d be
easier if I was gay. It’s ridiculous how
I feel.”
“You just need to do it more.”
“What?”
“Parent.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“For starters, watch the
language. You’re not nineteen anymore.”
The truth was I wished I was, I’d
give anything to be nineteen again, the world wide open, no wife or job or
chubby kid sopping up the last bloody drop of gravy with his porky pig fingers.
“You’re becoming bitter,” she told
me.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Well, think about it. Fathers aren’t bitter.”
“You mean ‘Good Fathers’,” I said,
sinking so low as to add in the air quotes.
“It’s like anything—the more you do it,
the better you get.”
I had a crack about sex ready, but let
it pass.
“Okay, so what?”
I laid down the law then. I told the little shits that none of them
were getting ice cream if their voices got too high, if anyone farted or
punched or swore or gave anyone a wedgy.
They were quiet for a safe passage
when Lewis started to moan.
“What the hell’s going on back
there?” I said into the rearview.
“I’m dying. I need sustenance.”
“How do you know that word,
sustenance? You’re twelve. Anyway, we were just at Burger King.”
“You don’t understand. I need blood.”
I smacked the steering wheel. “That’s it.
Baskin Robbins is nixed.”
I watched Benjy and Archer punch
Lewis, quite hard it appeared.
“Hey, take it easy.”
“I don’t even know why I’m your
friend,” Benjy, my son said to Lewis. But
I knew why. My son had two friends on
the planet and they were both in the backseat.
Lewis did look pale, butter-white as
if jaundiced. His mouth gaped open like
a stroke victim.
“Leave him alone. Lewis, what’s the deal?”
“You don’t believe me,” Lewis said, his
voice low and smoker-coarse.
“You can’t be a vampire,” I said. “They don’t survive in daylight.”
His yellow eyes widened. “So you believe in vampires?”
I was going to say, Of course, what do
you think I am, stupid? I was a boy
once, but instead this is what I said: “You’re really starting to piss me off. If you don’t knock this crap off, I’m tossing
you out of the car.”
Archer jabbed him in the ribs with his
elbow. “You’re ruining everything.”
“The next one that touches Lewis is
grounded.”
“You can’t ground me,” Archer said. “You’re not my Dad.”
“Fuck that.”
“You said ‘fuck’.”
“Indeed I did. Just go ahead and fuck with me and see what
else happens.”
Archer blinked several times and then
closed his eyes, his lip quivering as if he had Parkinson’s.
When I looked back at the road it seemed
I hadn’t traveled more than a few miles.
Where was I even going?
“Where the hell are we going again?” I
said.
“You swear a lot,” Archer said. Benjy smiled.
Lewis might have stopped breathing at that point.
“The party is somewhere on Seattle
Hill. Mom gave you directions.”
“No she didn’t.”
“Yeah, she did.”
“You should have Mapquested it,” Archer
said.
“Shut the fuck up,”
Lewis groaned, clutching his
stomach. His breathing sounded thick and
grassy.
“Stop screwing around,” I told him, but
his eyes were closed.
“Lewis is such a pussy,” Benjy said, all
three chins working on his grin.
“Watch your mouth,” I said. “Where the hell’d you learn to talk like
that?”
The flashing lights pole-struck my heart
as they always did, except this time they were really meant for me. I checked the speedometer and saw that I was
going ninety. “Fuck me.”
“What’s the rush?” Officer Steadman
asked.
“You know, I just lost sight of how fast
I was going.”
“No shit?”
I flinched, then grinned, easing into
his familiarity.
“I’m a real fuckup.”
I realized he had a mustache when he glowered
at me. “Nice mouth you got there. Kids hear you talk like that?”
Stunned, I shrugged and held up my
palms.
He craned his neck into the back
seat. “Hey boys.”
Archer and Benjy looked like a crocodile
had just stuck its jagged jaws through the window.
“Whoa, that one in the middle don’t look
too good.”
“He’s stupid,” Benjy said, his boy
man-boobs jiggling.
“I need blood,” Lewis rasped.
“You feed these kids?” Officer Steadman
asked me.
I was starting to get pissed. Write me the fucking ticket. “Sure.”
“Sure,” he repeated, coating the word
with a lisp. “Hey,” he said, tapping
Lewis on the chest. Lewis opened his
eyes to half-mast, not alarmed whatsoever.
“I’m going to call this one in.”
“Huh?”
“That kid’s three sheets to the wind.”
“He’s not drunk, if that’s what you mean.”
Officer Steadman scowled, his whiskered
upper lip twitching critter-like.
Benjy and Archer got out of the car and
pitched stones toward the out-of-reach river.
I kept thinking about what would happen
if Lewis died. He couldn’t die, could
he?
I got into the back seat with him.
“Are you just fucking with us? Lewis, are you?”
He gasped, and fettered a spasm of air
and skin. “I need, I, I need.”
“What?”
“Blood.”
Officer Steadman was on his phone. The boys were collecting stones. I pulled the neckline of my shirt to the side
and leaned into Lewis, my neck tingling for the first time. “Here,” I said.
