Certain Dark Things(43)

“Um … you don’t look too hot.”

“It’s my fault,” Atl said. “I’m soft. Pampered. My sister was right. She should be alive. She’d know what to do, how to do it right. I just keep messing up.”

“It’s all right,” he said, resting a hand upon her shoulder.

Atl smirked. He saw the white of her teeth. Normal teeth. Not fangs like in the comic books. But her eyes were odd, red, like she’d been weeping.

“Your eyes,” he said. “They’re—”

“I can feel it,” she said. Atl walked to the bathroom; the dog followed her, quiet as a shadow. She leaned against the sink, opened the faucet, and splashed water on her face with both hands. She placed her lips against the faucet and drank directly from it. When she was done, she looked into the mirror with a sigh. She peeled off her jacket, tossing it to the floor. She followed it with her blouse and stood in her undershirt.

“Are you going to shower? Should I turn around?” Domingo asked, and he immediately wondered if he was a total perv for asking that.

“No.”

“No, I shouldn’t turn around?”

“No, I’m not showering,” Atl replied, stepping out of the bathroom and sitting in the middle of the living room, her hands resting against her knees. “I’m…”

The dog headed toward her, sat next to its mistress, and her hands fell upon its head, an automatic gesture. Her lips moved, but she made no sound. The silence seemed to stretch for minutes and minutes.

“You know, I used to have a swimming pool as big as this apartment,” she said, the words slurred, as though she’d been drinking. “And now here I am. My kingdom for a fan. Or an ice tray. I feel warm and cold at the same time. Damn it.”

“If you really want a fan I can get you one,” he said.

“You don’t need to get me anything. You don’t…” She sighed. Her hands twitched and she clasped them together, as if in prayer. “Talk to me for a bit, will you?”

“What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

“A movie you saw. Your favorite color. Anything,” she said, shrugging.

“I saw Dracula on the TV one time. Black and white,” he said, sitting down in front of her.

Atl rolled her eyes at him. “Good God, it’s always Dracula.”

“I saw Germán Robles one time, for real. Well, I was walking down Florencia and he was having a coffee at a coffee shop, just like everyone else.”

“Who?”

He scooted closer to Atl, infected with the glee of sharing something new with her. “You know, Germán Robles! He was in movies. He didn’t look like he did in the movies, he was old, ancient, but I recognized him. He’s got the same eyes, used to play a vampire. He played Karol de Lavud.”

“You talked to him?”

“No,” Domingo said. “I was pushing my shopping cart and I didn’t think they’d let me in. You know, it wouldn’t look none too good to pull a shopping cart into a coffee shop to tell him hi.”

“I suppose not.”

“I’ve always thought vampires should be like Karol de Lavud,” he said, thinking back to the small TV set, the black-and-white images late at night.

“How’s that?”

“Well … uh…,” Domingo said. “With a cape.”

Atl cocked her head a little, smirking at him. “A cape?”

“It looks cool.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Domingo shrugged. He thought the old vampire images were awesome, with the mist and stars and moonlight and the cape flapping in the wind, but he supposed Atl might have a point. After all, there was no mist in Mexico City, just smog, and you couldn’t see any stars thanks to it. It was a lot less romantic, though Atl still cut an impressive figure. Even in her undershirt and jeans, no cape in sight, there was something almost magical about her. Like she didn’t need no mist and moonlight, her sharp features and the blackness of her hair enough to freeze any mere mortal in his tracks.

He’d moved closer, but she moved closer still, her knee bumping his own.

“You like music?” he asked, glancing down, fearing he was about to blush, pretending to fiddle with his music player.

“What have you got?”

“Oh, everything,” he said. “Concrete Blonde. Bosé. Depeche Mode. It’s mostly old stuff, but, here,” he said, handing her the headphones.

Atl carefully took the headphones, as though she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them, and put them on. Domingo pressed play. She frowned, but her frown soon relaxed and he saw her tap her fingers against her knee, softly, following a rhythm.

“I should go to sleep,” she said after a while, taking off the headphones and returning them to him.

“I’m going to head back to my place,” he said, pointing toward the front door. “You know, to give you your space, like you like.”

“No,” she said, surprising him with the casualness of her tone. “You can stay. If you want. There’s the bed and there might be food. I’m not sure.” Atl headed to the bedroom, opened the closet door, and slipped in. She closed it from the inside and the dog sat outside it, giving Domingo a menacing stare.