8. Holy Wine

Seth agrees with his wife; the blond boy is beautiful.  They’ve watched him for the last five minutes, since he strode into the bar with the purposeful rhythm of a man trying not to appear quite as drunk as he is.

“Don’t you think he looks like Billy Idol?”  Mallory asks.

“A little,” Seth concedes.  “His sneer could do with some work.”  He is already imagining other tasks those soft, pink lips could be subjected to.  His cock begins to stir in his trousers at the thought of a new playmate.  Mallory’s hand moves from where it has been resting on his knee and begins to massage his thigh.

“I think we should do something about that,” she purrs.

“Oh, definitely,” Seth pulls her in for a kiss and then scans the room for the blond boy.  Where did he go?

“Do something,” Mallory says again, but something is wrong.  Why has her voice cracked all of a sudden?  As if she is holding back tears?

“Oh my God, Seth, what do we do?”

They’re not in the bar anymore.  They’re in the bathroom in the flat.  Seth would give anything to not be.  To be anywhere, anywhere in the great wide world but here, seeing what he’s seeing.

“Billy…”  Mallory’s voice is small, faraway, like that of a frightened child.  Seth can’t get a single word out.  He thinks if he tries to speak, he might be sick.  He can’t even begin to prise his dry tongue from the roof of his mouth and manipulate it into forming sounds.

The water in the tub is rose pink.  The pale, blurry form beneath its surface could almost be a foetus in utero.  Except it isn’t.  It’s Billy.

For a moment (a single, tortuous and seemingly endless moment), Seth can’t move.  He is left frozen, unable to reconcile the scene before him with what should be happening tonight.  Then an idea comes to him, and his body finally catches up with his mind; he springs into action, rushing over to the bath and plunging his hands into the now-cold water, looping his arms around Billy’s torso and heaving him towards the surface.

Seth holds Billy up in a sitting position, and without hesitation, he raises Billy’s right arm and clamps his mouth over the deep, ugly cut that vertically bisects his wrist.  He sucks furiously at the wound, but there is hardly any blood left to drink.  Seth tears at his own wrist with his teeth, propping up Billy's head and forcing drops of his own blood through his parted, motionless lips.  There's still time, he thinks, still time to change him, just like we planned, we can still save him – 

Somewhere far behind him, Mallory is crying.  Seth’s instinct is to turn around, to go to her, but he stops himself.  He waits.  He allows more and more blood to seep from his wrist and into Billy's mouth, until it begins to drip and then pour over his pale chin, spooling like a scarlet ink blot on his wet chest.  He has not swallowed a drop.  It is too late; Billy will not be waking as a vampire tonight, or any other night now.  He is gone.

***

Mallory watches the two paramedics intently as they wheel Billy out of the bathroom.   The older of the two has a greying moustache and wears a gold ring in his left ear.  She bets his name is Terry.  He’ll have an ex-wife and a moody kid or two, and on his evenings off he’ll hang around certain parks and public toilets.  The younger one’s uniform strains a little between the buttons, and Mallory can imagine him being the size of a small car by the time he hits forty.

They both give her solemn, achingly respectful looks as they guide the trolley past her in the living room, carefully moving a large cardboard box (an unopened birthday present?) out of the path of the gurney.  Their straight faces unnerve her and she finds herself looking down, at the body bag.  She wants to make a dirty joke about Billy being zipped up from tip to toe in black vinyl, but even she realises what poor taste that would be.  Then the EMTs are closing the front door behind them, and off Billy goes, swept away once again by a pair of strangers. 

Then the police ask their questions, and Mallory answers as best she can without being distracted by the policewoman’s split ends and her partner’s speech impediment.  Then they are on their merry way too, and the silence in the flat is unbearable.  Should she put on some music?  Can she?  It occurs to her she has no idea where her husband is.  Although it doesn’t take too much guesswork, or walking numbly around the flat, to find him in the bathroom.

He is sat cross-legged on the floor, arms and torso stained pink.  The towel that the paramedics draped over his shoulder lies in a crumpled heap next to him, so that he is still wearing only the underwear he pulled on earlier that evening, a lifetime ago now, when they rose from the bed and asked each other where Billy was.  When Seth broke the lock on the bathroom door to get in.

"We need to get you cleaned up," Mallory says, but neither of them can even look at the bathtub.  Instead, she fills the sink with hot water, taking a cloth and cleansing Seth's skin as best she can.  He doesn't speak.  He doesn't move.  A memory surfaces, unbidden, in Mallory's mind.  The copper-haired girl they took home after the VA meeting.  What was her name?  Vanessa.  She died in their arms and it felt like the most natural thing in the world.  It is like a punch in the gut now, how different death feels when the life is not in your hands.  When it never was.

Mallory guides Seth into the bedroom, and he lets her pull down the damp, stained underwear.  Her intention is to dress him again, but at the sight of his cock, impulse takes over.  She wants to make him feel better, or at the very least make him react in some way, if only to break the silence.  She reaches out to stroke it gently, but he pushes her hand away.  He pulls on the jeans and shirt he wore earlier in the day without saying a word.

Mallory leaves him in the bedroom, desperate for a drink.  She has poured a generous measure of vodka into a glass when she senses Seth's presence behind her.  When she turns around, he holds out a piece of paper, folded in half.  It is something she noticed in the bedroom earlier that evening, sometime between Billy walking into the bathroom and then leaving on a gurney.

She unfolds the paper, taking in the brief message.  She has to re-read it twice before it dawns on her that she is holding Billy’s suicide note.

I hope you can forgive me.  The flat is yours.

Enjoy the wine,

B.

Enjoy the wine.  What did he mean?

“I don’t understand,” Mallory says.  It is clear to both of them that she is not just talking about the note.

Then she remembers the box.  The one that the paramedics had to move out of their way.  She’d dismissed it as one of Billy’s birthday presents, but now she can’t recall anyone delivering it.  Did Billy put it there?  When?  Mallory runs into the living room and crouches to tear off the tape on the lid.  She reaches in and pulls out a dark glass bottle, filled with liquid that looks almost black.  Her first thought is Merlot, but then she catches a faint scent through the glass and knows it is not wine.

“Have you seen the marks?”  She’d asked Seth that night in the strip club.  Those tiny bruises in the crook of Billy’s arm; a clear sign he was injecting himself with something.  Except both she and Seth were wrong.  Mallory checks the rest of the box’s contents: there are three bottles in total.  They are, she realises, a parting gift.

She carries the box carefully, reverently even, into the kitchen, and proceeds to open the first bottle.  She finds two large wine glasses and fills each with Billy’s blood.  Seth takes the glass offered to him, and they both sit facing each other at the table.  It is several moments before either is brave enough to lift a glass to their lips.

The moment she tastes that iron tang, an ache forms in the base of Mallory’s throat.  Tremulous, but somehow sharp.  Her jaw begins to shake, and whatever weak toast she had been about to attempt is aborted.  This is something she remembers well.  From before she met Seth, before she was even a vampire. 

Grief.

It has been so long since Mallory has heard Seth say anything, she almost jumps when he finally puts down his glass and begins to speak.  His voice is quiet, measured, and she can tell that the words are not his own.

“Lay your sleeping head, my love, human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away individual beauty from thoughtful children, and the grave proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms ‘til break of day let the living creature lie… Mortal, guilty, but to me, the entirely beautiful.”

His gaze stays on the tabletop, but she knows he can feel her eyes on him.  After a moment, he adds simply:

“Auden.”

Then he clears his throat – loudly, thoroughly, in such a way that he only does when he is stifling tears. 

“Our boy,” he says, raising his glass.  Mallory lifts her glass and lets it clink quietly against his.

“Our boy,” she repeats.

As wakes go, it’s not the worst either of them has ever attended.

***

Some Time Ago

“I think we should do something about that,” Mallory purrs. 

Across the room, the blond boy is dancing with a girl with kohl-rimmed eyes and a skirt that leaves very little to the imagination.

“Couldn’t agree more,” Seth says, taking his wife by the hand and pulling her onto the dancefloor.  She twirls under his arm, then allows herself to be led through the not-quite-a-crowd, until they are dancing next to the young man and his provocatively dressed companion.  Less than two songs later, she has excused herself to go to powder her nose – quite literally, Seth assumes. 

The young man retreats to the bar.  He orders a Brandy Alexander, and before he can reach into his pocket, he hears a voice in his ear:

“Let us get that for you.”

Then, in his other ear:

“We insist.”

He turns to his left, then to his right, taking in the tall, lean and handsome man and his pretty wife, before shrugging.

“How could I resist?”  He asks.

Seth and Mallory each put a hand on the small of his back, allowing their fingers to intertwine.  Their eyes meet, and they both begin to smile.

~