Wednesday, June 8, 2011
V
by ictorious
Page 74
IN THE PINK HOUSE 33 PERRY STREET, CAPE MAY • 609.898.1113
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Vampire City ? From Page 74 when he woke too early, but he knew the sizzle in his neck would prevent that today, so gingerly he rolled to his side and eyed the alarm clock, which glowed back an angry 5:55am. Now his whole day was screwed. He would never recover from being up so early and knew he’d be dragging ass by 7 o’clock, or about a third of the way through his shift at the restaurant. He was also muddy in a hungover way, though he could recall ingesting no intoxicants the night before. His eyes were heavy and thick, his brain a clouded mess, his throat raw and sore. He blinked slowly and rolled to his left and the beautiful-auburn haired girl lying there. Girl? What girl? Breaking glass. The mysterious figure running across the street. The figure turning into a beautiful woman, tackling him into the dunes. The explosion, the Beach 4 Theater erupting into flames and smoke. The bats. Bats! He bolted upright and shook her. “Come on, we have to go! We have to run!” Now he remembered, in crystalline detail, the cloud of bats attacking his car and chasing them up Beach Drive, then zig-zagging through town to lose them. “Move!” he said. He swung his legs off the bed, knees cracking, and scrambled for his clothes on the floor at his feet. “Easy,” the girl, Hannah, said and put a hand on his shoulder. At her touch he went rigid. Then he also remembered falling deeply in love with her as they criss-crossed Cape May. And while he really loved the show “How I Met Your Mother,” if he married this girl it would be the all-time champ of meeting stories; in an aging Camry, surrounded by swarming bats. “It’s okay, we’re okay,” she said and scratched at his shoulder with her fingernails. BQ’s entire body went flush.
She withdrew her hand. “I don’t remember coming here to my apartment,” he said, shoulders slouching. She smiled and his heart melted. “You were pretty out of it by then.” He thought for a moment. They had driven a circuitous route around Cape May for a half hour or so, hoping to baffle any following bats, before going to his Corgie Street apartment. Corgie Street was as out-of-theway as it got in the small hamlet of Cape May. The apartment was a spartan second-floor walk-up he’d been living in for four years now. It looked as if a single 31-year-old man occupied it but did not spend many hours there; the paneled walls were bare of art but bore a collection of cult movie and pop culture posters – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Shaun of the Dead, Goonies, etc. The coffee table was stacked neatly with Entertainment Weeklys. The kitchen, which was part of the living room, was small but tidy, however the recycling and trash bins were full of take-out boxes of Chinese and empty seltzer bottles. The bedroom they sat in now was the largest room in the apartment, with high windows and a state-of-the-art entertainment center. But the best part about the bedroom, as BQ figured it, was the glowing auburn-haired beauty occupying it with him. “I remember,” he said. “I crashed pretty hard.” “Yeah, well, most people aren’t used to running for their lives from a swarm of bats, so I don’t hold it against you.” She yawned and tousled her hair. “Thanks for letting me stay here.” BQ shrugged. “No problem. I’m always running women in and out of here. I’m a regular Charlie Sheen.” She laughed. “Really?” “No.” In truth, it had been a long time, quite a long time, since his bedroom had known the company of a lady, the scent of a woman. BQ grew depressed.
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