Vampires Don't Wait Tables

I sit there feeling sorry for myself for a few more minutes before I go downstairs and start cooking.

My aunt comes in. "What was that about?"

"Um, Hong probably can't make it tomorrow, so I'll make your dinner tonight."

"Did you fuck this up, Jemmy?"

"No! Why would you ask that?"

"Because I heard the shouting, you idiot. What did you do?"

"Who says it was my fault?"

My aunt doesn't even dignify that with a reply. "Have you apologized?"

"I'll text her tomorrow, after she's had a chance to cool down."

"That's not how it works. Call her."

"She's probably on the bus."

"Then text her. Now."

I don't know what to say. I stare at my phone while my aunt looms over me. "Could you give me some privacy?"

"Hmph. Probably shouldn't." But she takes a few steps away. "Let me see it before you send it."

"Whose girlfriend is she?"

"If you listen to your elders, or if you don't?"

Grumbling, I show her what I've written. She sniffs. "Apologize more."

"What, am I supposed to grovel?"

She looks at me like I've asked a very stupid question. "Do you want her to come back?"

"Yes." I say it without thinking. Only then do I realize how true it is. "More than anything."

"Then do what it takes to get what you want."

I edit the message and show her again. She lets me send it this time.

Hong is there the next day when I get home from work, helping the kids with their homework.

"Hey," I say hesitantly. "I didn't think you'd come today."

"I like your family, Jemmy," she says coldly. "They're nice."

"Ooh, you're in trouble, dude!" my nephew hoots.

"Yeah, dude!" the other one agrees.

Hong silences them with a look.

Dinner is awkward. Hong ignores me, and my aunt and grandparents seem to take her lead. I almost feel like I'm intruding on her family dinner.

After dinner, my aunt herds the kids out. Grandma says to Hong, "Jemmy will help you clear the table."

"Yes, he'd better," Grandpa agrees. "We'll leave you two to it."

We work in near silence for a few minutes, speaking only to coordinate the work. Then I say, "Hong, I'm sorry. Tell me what I have to do to make this better."

"I thought you wanted a girlfriend, not a teacher."

"Can't I have both?" I ask plaintively.

"I don't know. Can you?"

"I want to try. Can we try?"

She looks at me. "Maybe. If you can convince me you've learned your lesson."

I've had some time to think about it. Most of last night, actually, lying awake in my hammock. "I don't think things through. I don't think about what I want and what it takes to get there. I just kind of do what's expected of me and hope things work out."

She blinks. "All I wanted to hear was that you were sorry and that you've got some condoms and a towel now."

I stop dead, a stack of containers in one hand and the refrigerator door in the other. "Shit."

"Jemmy!"

"You never wrote back! I didn't know if you were ever coming back! I definitely didn't know you were coming back tonight!"

"Fuck's sake, Jemmy!"

Visions of her simply walking out the door turn my blood to ice in my veins. "Wait, wait. There are towels in the closet. And there's a corner store a few blocks away. I can be back in fifteen minutes."

I start to reach for her, then realize I've still got the food in my hand. I open the refrigerator and shove the food in without looking. "Hong, please, I can fix this."

She sighs. "You don't need to fix it. What you said was actually quite a bit more reflective than I expected."

"So I'm not dumped?" The relief is almost physical, a sudden release of my entire body that leaves me sagging against the counter.

Her lips twitch. "Your girlfriends usually come over and cook you dinner after they've decided to dump you?"

"Can't think of one that hasn't, yet." I smile, quite pleased with myself.

"Seriously?"

"I have not had a single girlfriend so far who has dumped me without cooking me dinner the same night." I'm surprised it's taking her so long to figure it out. She knows she's the first girl I've ever asked out.

I watch her work through the possibilities. She lets out a short laugh. "I suppose you'll tell me next that you've not had a single girlfriend who has dumped you."

"It's true!"

"How lucky I am to have caught the eye of such a hot commodity," she purrs. "I'd better hang onto you, then."

That's laying it on a little thick, but goofy, mocking Hong is worlds better than icy, contemptuous Hong. I don't resist when she reaches for me. I let her pull me in close, heedless of her cold, soapy hands. She smiles. Her hand twines through my hair. We kiss.

I start to slip my hands under her shirt, but she catches my wrists. "Not here."

Right, we're in the kitchen. There's no door. "Upstairs?"

She says something, but all that registers is the delicious sensation of her leg between mine. Her hip is in my crotch. It's not comfortable, but I love it.

Then Hong steps back. I'm bereft. I try to follow, but she holds me at bay with one hand. "The dishes will get sticky."

I laugh helplessly. I have no idea what game she's playing, blowing hot and cold like this. All I know, and all I need to know, is that she's playing it with me.

Soon Hong has inserted herself neatly into the void I left when I started working the lunch shift. She picks my nephews up from school and helps them with their homework and cooks dinner for us all. Then she sits with my grandparents and they chat in Shanghainese. I try to tell her she doesn't have to do all that, but she says she enjoys it.

"You really like kids, don't you?" I ask.

"Not only the kids." She gestures vaguely, looking wistful. "All of this. Your whole family. Having a family."

"You never talk about your own family." I don't understand how I haven't noticed until now, but she's never mentioned anyone. No parents, no siblings, no children. Not even friends, really, beyond the passing acquaintances at work.

"Not much to talk about anymore. They're all long dead." She shrugs.

Shit. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"Oh, don't feel bad. It's ancient history." She laughs at her own joke, then becomes serious again. "Thanks for letting me..." She trails off and gestures again.

"Cook and watch the kids and keep my grandparents company?" I ask. "You're welcome."

I feel better after that conversation. It's a question that's been nagging me, ever since our argument. Hong is...well, perfect. Way out of my league. I've been wondering what she sees in me, why she came back, and now I finally understand. It's not about me, although we do kiss and cuddle and she seems to enjoy all of that.

No, it's my whole family. She wants people to come home to. We fill a hole in her life, as much as she fills a hole in ours.

Maybe it has to do with her mysterious skin condition. It must really cut down on her social life, to be essentially housebound until after sunset. In the summer, that might be as late as 8:30, and then she'd be due at work a couple of hours later.

Am I sad to realize that she probably doesn't love me as much as I love her?

Oddly, no. I've always suspected. In a way, I even feel better. It puts us on a more equal footing than I thought we had. I know what I'm bringing to the table now.

It's a few months more before I muster the courage to ask her the logical follow-up question. "Hey, Hong, have you ever thought about having kids yourself?"

She looks at me. Alarm flickers in her eyes. And something else. Pain. "I can't," she says curtly. We're walking in Flushing Meadows, by the big lake, and she looks off across the water.

"Because of your...condition?" I probably shouldn't prod, but I can't help myself. I wasn't expecting this.

She nods once. Her shoulder hunch. "It's okay. I know you do."

"Not...necessarily." I haven't ever thought about it. It was another of my unexamined assumptions, that I would marry and have children. Now I examine it. Would I forgo the children, for the marriage? For the right woman?

Maybe I would.

"What do you mean, not necessarily?" She's looking at me as if I've grown two heads.

I shrug. "I don't know. I'd have to think about it. But, well, what if I marry someone and find out afterward that she's infertile? I wouldn't dump her, would I?"

"You know people do that, right?"

I didn't. I guess it shows on my face.

"Anyway," she says, "that's completely different."

"I'm just saying, there are things I wouldn't do for the sake of having children."

She shakes her head. "Don't be silly. Your grandparents would be heartbroken."

"My grandparents can learn to think of my sister as a real person." I feel bad as soon as I say that, because it's not like they don't. But, it kind of is.

"You don't understand yet. You will when you're older."

It rankles, sometimes, when she talks to me like that. She's maybe ten years older than I am. It makes a big difference now, when ten years is half my life. It won't matter nearly as much when I'm fifty and she's sixty.

If she gets to sixty. I can't believe I forgot: I still have no idea what's wrong with her. I had meant to ask, but then we started to have sex and I forgot.

"Hey, can I ask you a personal question? You don't have to answer."

"Sure."

"I started reading about things that can cause your, um, thing with the sunlight. Some of them are pretty scary. And by scary I mean, well, I mean fatal."

"Oh." Hong laughs but I don't hear any mirth at all. "Don't worry about it. I'm not going to die." She forces a smile. "Vampires live forever, remember?"

"I guess it's none of my business."

Only it kind of is. I don't know when I started thinking about marrying her, but I am thinking about that, now.

I don't know what I want to say, though, so we walk in silence for a few minutes. Then I ask, "Hey, did you hear they found another body off Coney Island?"

She glances at me briefly. "Yeah."

"How did you know?" She doesn't use the internet at all, as far as I can tell.

"I read about it in one of those tabloids."

"Oh, yeah? What'd they say?"

"Russians. Or vampires. Maybe Russian vampires." It sounds like a joke, but she's not laughing. She looks grim. "Anyway, the banquet hall get back to you?"

She's already asked me that tonight, but I let her change the subject. "No, not yet."

A couple of days later, she tells me she has something to do. It might be a few weeks before she can see me again.

"Yeah? What's going on?"

"Remember the bodies on Coney Island? It is a vampire. He's being sloppy. I have to go find him and kill him before he attracts any more attention." She looks at me seriously. "You can't tell anyone, okay?"

I roll my eyes. "Okay, fine, keep your secrets."

She smiles, relieved that I won't push. "Your grandparents will pick your nephews up from school but you'll have to start cooking again."

"Hong, it's fine. It wasn't your job anyway. We can still text, right?"

"Yeah, we can text. I'd like that." She gives me a quick peck on the cheek. "I'll see you later, okay?"

She's gone for a month. We text every night, just casual chatter. I tell her about my days, about stuff at home. She has an endless appetite for stories of the kids. She doesn't say much about where she is or what she's doing, though.

Until one day. She texts me in the morning. "Jemmy, I'm sorry, but I need your help. Can you get some stuff from a storage unit and bring it to me?"

"Sure, when?" I text back.

"Right now. I know you have work. I wouldn't ask if it weren't important."

I look at my phone in surprise. But this is the first time Hong has ever asked for my help, the first time she hasn't had every part of her life perfectly under control. If she says it's important, then it must be important. "It's okay. Where's your storage unit?"

"Thank you so much." She sends me the address, the unit number, the code for the door, and the combination for the lock. It's a self-storage place in a sketchy part of Queens, but I get there all right.

She lives there. It's obvious as soon as I unlock the unit. There's a bed in there, with sheets on it. An empty laundry hamper, a wardrobe with clothes hung neatly in it, a five-gallon bottle of water, an electric kettle. It's plugged into an extension cable that's been cut open and wired into the light fixture.

There are books, lots of books, not in boxes but on a bookshelf. Some of them are from the library. I can't read the Chinese stuff, but the English is a mixture of science fiction and textbooks. Math, philosophy, economics. I open one. It's half equations and half tiny text full of words I don't know.

I turn slowly, taking in the whole room. I'm remembering what she said the first time I invited her home. She has no room-mates, but she can't bring me to her place because it's very, very small.

This is probably illegal. I hurry to close the door. I have to leave the padlock off, though. I can't reach it from inside the unit. Will anyone notice that there's no lock on the door?

I can't help if they do.

I pull out my phone. "Hey, I'm here," I type. I want to add, "Were you ever going to tell me you live in a storage unit?" but settle for, "What do you want me to bring you?"

She sends back a list of clothes. A big sunhat with an opaque veil and a neck flap, like some girls fresh off the boat will wear if they really worry about their complexions. Sunglasses, long-sleeved shirt, pants, gloves, scarf. A big umbrella. I find everything. The scarf and the umbrella are lined with some kind of metallic plastic material, like a space blanket, so they look normal from the outside but are totally opaque.

I can't help myself at this point. This is too weird. I go snooping through her stuff.

To my disappointment, it's all surprisingly ordinary. She has the books. She has a bunch of cold-weather gear and a few more things lined with that space blanket material. She's just a very poor person who abhors cold weather and sunlight, and reads Enumerative Combinatorics volumes one and two for fun.

Then I find the coin jar. It's a beat-up old tin jar with a screw top but it's surprisingly heavy for its size. When I open it, I find it's stuffed full of crumpled gauze. Mixed in with the gauze are coins. Some silver, some that look like brass or copper, but mostly gold.

With shaking hands, I pull out my phone and look up the price of gold. I'm holding at least twenty or thirty thousand dollars in my hand, and that's just by weight. If these coins are as old as they look, they might be worth much more to a collector.

I put everything away at that point. There's no way a waiter living in a storage unit should have tens of thousands of dollars in gold. I don't know what Hong is mixed up in and I don't want to know.

"I found everything. Where should I meet you?"

She texts back immediately. I swallow hard when I see the reply. Things are starting to make a horrible kind of sense.

I lock everything up and get back on the bus. I transfer to the subway and make the long trip into Manhattan and back out to Brooklyn. I ride the D train all the way out to the Coney Island boardwalk.

She's waiting for me underneath the boardwalk, buried in the sand with what remained of her clothes piled up around her for shade. She's been beaten badly. One eye is swollen almost shut and her hair looks matted with blood.

When she sees me, her face lights up.

"You came," she says, as if she can't quite believe it. Her voice is shaky.

I can hardly believe it myself. Why am I here? I should have put everything back into the storage unit and blocked her number. "I snooped around a little in your storage unit. I know I shouldn't have, but I did. I found your coin jar."

She looks at me in confusion. I look back, mute. I can't quite bring myself to ask the question. She gets it, though. As if realizing for the first time, she says, "I guess I have a fair amount of money in there by now, don't I?"

"Tens of thousands of dollars, at least. Maybe more."

"Coins make good souvenirs. Small and light and everyone makes them." She shrugs, as if that's all there is to it. "Do you want them?"

"No! What would I do with gold coins?"

"Well, I guess there's that, too. It's not as if I've got anything I can buy with gold."

"It's all true, isn't it?" I ask her. "You're like twenty-seven hundred years old and you pick guys up in bars so you can suck their blood and...I can't even remember what else you've said, but it's all true, isn't it?"

"Yes." Her voice is soft and sad.

I have so many questions. I should have spent the ride down figuring out what I was going to do, but I couldn't bring myself to believe it until I saw her. Now I'm unprepared again. Every time.

For lack of a better idea, I set up the umbrella and help her into her clothes. I swallow hard as the extent of her injuries become clear. She should be unconscious or dead. Screaming uncontrollably, at least.

"You should see the other guy." Her smile is lopsided. One side of her face is too swollen to move. When I don't smile back, she stops too. "What is it, Jemmy?"

"You said there was a vampire on Coney Island and you had to kill him before he attracted any more attention. That was true too, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"He's the other guy?"

She nods. "They. A couple. I wasn't expecting that."

"Where are they now?"

She gestures out to sea.

"What does that mean?"

"What do you think it means?" she snaps.

I realize how drawn her face is. She must be in more pain than she's letting on. It's making her waspish.

"Hong, I just found out my girlfriend is a vampire. Actually a vampire. I have no idea what anything means."

"It means I broke their arms and legs and wove them like noodles through the ladder on a buoy out there," she snarls.

I blanch. I don't know what I expected, but not that.

"It's a trick I picked up in Bavaria. They called it breaking a man on the wheel. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

I'm kneeling in the sand. I don't remember falling to my knees but I'm on my knees now.

"Well, is it?" she demands. "Say something!"

"So they're dead?" I croak, reeling. "You really did kill them?"

That snaps her out of her rage. She winces and looks away. Her voice is soft. Guilty? "Not yet. We don't die that easily. It might take a couple of days."

It might take a couple of days. I understand the words but I can't make sense of them. Days? It's too horrible to contemplate. I open and close my mouth. Nothing comes out.

I wake up in her lap. "What happened?"

I try to sit up. She holds me down. "You fainted. It's a perfectly normal reaction. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it like that."

"It's fine." It's really, really not fine. She killed---is killing?---two people in the most horrific fashion I have ever heard of. My girlfriend is literally a serial killer. Spree killer? Mass killer? These are not words whose precise meanings I should need to know.

Another part of me can't help but point out that the people she killed were murderers themselves.

Does it matter?

Yes, in a way. Not a good way. "My family," I say. "Is this going to follow you back to them?"

"No, Jemmy. That's not how this works. They're going to die and this is going to end with them."

"They don't have friends and family? This isn't going to start some kind of feud?"

"Do I have friends and family?" she asks bitterly.

I flinch. Yesterday, I would have protested that. Of course she had friends. Of course she had a family. I was her friend. My family was her family.

Today, I'm not so sure any more.

She lets go of me. I sit up slowly, carefully. I'm incredibly thirsty. How long have I been out here? Why didn't I think to bring a bottle of water?

"I need to get some water," I tell her. "Do you want anything?"