I’m not nostalgic. It’s no better or worse than it was. Different whores, different johns. Some people get off on fucking, some get off on fast food. People can ruin themselves however they want, it’s not my business.
But it is Chubby’s.
He spreads his arms.
– Adult film was for the aficionados in those days. Men who made an effort to seek it out. Or it was a right of passage. Boys with their collars turned up, trying to find out what their teachers were talking about in sex ed class. Looking to glimpse some tittie. Ass. A beaver shot. And getting so much more than they had imagined.
He lowers his arms.
– Now, entirely amateur. Not only do they all know what a rim job is by the time they’re eleven, but they’re considered uptight if they’ve not webcammed themselves giving and receiving one and posted it to their Facebook page.
I’m sifting gravel through my fingers, thinking about buried things, against my will.
– You were talking about your girl, Chubby. And how you found me.
He pats Dallas’s shoulder and moves away from him.
– I was, I was. Just illustrating a point about her mother. That, while she postdated the era of celluloid, she was nonetheless of a more civilized generation. And she raised our daughter well. My little girl is not one to be involved in sordid matters. Her predicament is an affair of the heart.
A cracked jewel of green bottle glass lies in my palm. Same color green as a bottle of Cutty Sark. I think about a drink.
– You want to tell me your girl’s no slut, just say so. You’re getting wordy in your old age, Chubby.
He raises his eyebrows.
– Joe, the way your boot bends when you squat, I’d say you’ve lost a toe. Your knee sounds like broken crockery when you walk. You have one eye.
– Your point?
He lowers his eyebrows.
– You ain’t the motherfucker to be talkin’ as to how a man is or isn’t agin’ his best.
I smile.
– Ah, there’s the Chubby Freeze I know.
He snorts and adjusts the knot of his tie.
– Well, bid him farewell. That is the only appearance he will be making in this concern.
I drop the bit of glass.
– How you found me. That’s my concern.
– Yes.
He reaches inside his jacket and takes out a leather humidor.
– While not of loose morals, my girl is adventurous. Romantic. Overly so. Not weepy about it, but a touch light-headed in her desire for something…poetic. And a child of her generation, she is also wired. She met a boy online; having chatted with him at length, she was not the type to balk at meeting him in person. In a public place, of course. She is no fool. And while that may not be the prologue one would expect for even the most modern interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, she did fall in love with him. The courtship, I gather, was brief. As is typical these days.
He slips the top from the humidor, pulling it loose with a slight pop.
– The boy.
He takes the end of one of the cigars between his fingers and draws it free.
– Was not.
He studies the length of the cigar, inspecting it for tears.
– He was not.
Satisfied with the quality of the cigar, he offers the business end to Dallas, who bares his perfect teeth and nips away a tapered quarter inch.
Chubby grunts, thumbs a bit of leaf from the end of the cigar.
– The boy was not…typical.
He offers me the humidor.
– I don’t suppose?
I shake my head and roll another cigarette.
– Not my thing.
He nods, caps the humidor and puts it back inside his jacket, his hand coming out with a silver lighter roughly the size and shape of a.12 gauge shell.
– You’re missing out on a fine smoke.
I light my own.
– You were telling me the boy was infected.
He ignites the lighter, holds the end of the intense blue flame just below the end of the cigar and gives a few puffs, rotating the cigar to bring it evenly to life.
– Yes. That was the point I was driving at.
– And she found out.
He releases the button on the side of the lighter with a snap, the flame dies, and he wraps it in a fist.
– Yes, she did.
– And she dug it.
He takes the cigar from between his lips and lets loose a cloud.
– Against all better judgment, yes she did.
I stand up, brushing dirt from my backside, not that it makes me look any cleaner.
– A girl would have to be pretty adaptable to take something like that at point-blank and roll with it. I mean, tell a girl you’re a Vampyre, out of the blue, that’s generally an invitation to be considered a nut job. Most girls, they exit laughing or screaming. Depending on the type.
He doesn’t say anything.
I do.
– Unless she had some idea that things like that are real. She have some idea that things like that are real, Chubby?
He’s studying the cigar again.
– It is possible, that in an effort to entertain and impress her, that I may have told her one story too many. With too great a level of credibility.
He looks up from the cigar.
– Fathers, whether they admit it or not, do so want to be thought cool by their children. And vampires have quite the pop culture caché. Forbidden fruit of every shape and hue. I was able to suggest, without telling her more than the basics, that there might be more to the myth than capes and fangs or dewy teenage boys.
I start poking in some corners of the shanty, looking for odds and ends I’ve tucked here and there.
– Out of curiosity, you happen to know what kind of site they met on?
He makes a gesture with the cigar, sketching a vague notion in smoke.
– Something to do with damned or insatiable thirst or eternal languor or something. Dot com.
I find one of the things I’m looking for. Two small steel rings attached to each other by twenty-eight inches of braided steel wire. This I got from a tunnel camper. Urban explorer type. What he expected to use a wire saw for down here I can’t say. Maybe it was part of his normal camping kit. Maybe he thought he’d use it to saw his own leg off if it got pinned under something. Anyway, he made out OK. Never knew what knocked him on the head. Most likely never missed the pint I took from his veins. He was too well equipped and carried too much ID for me to empty him. Probably had a whole crew who knew he was going spelunking in the tunnels. Missing a day too long, search parties would have started. But the saw looked useful, so I pocketed it. Figured he be happy he woke up without having fallen and broken his neck. Wouldn’t notice one item gone.
I haven’t had occasion to use it yet, but the strangest things come in handy in my line.
I put the wire saw in my pocket.
– Damnedinsatiablethirsteternallanguor. Dot com. So fair to say she was looking for something specific.
He looks at the floor.
– Fair to say, yes, fair to say.
– And the boy. One of those infecteds likes to cruise Goth and vampire sites looking for a Lucy? He out trolling for someone he could tap for easy pints?
Chubby looks up.
– No. No. I don’t think so at all. I think, forgive me the sentimentality, I think the boy was looking for someone to talk to. He struck me as, if anything, annoyingly earnest. I think, perish the thought, that he was lonely. With, perhaps, some tendency to overplay the roll of doomed and undead, he was certainly feeling genuinely isolated. Confused. Desperate, I would say, for something resembling normalcy. I am not at all unacquainted with the type. My business draws them like flies. Young men and women, out of their depths, looking for something they can cling to. It has long been one of the hallmarks of my professionalism that I aggressively vet my applicants and accept only those who I trust to be most willing, able, and adaptive to the rigors of a life in porno.