Annie of the Undead (25 page)

“Well, you put out everything I like,” she
replied, dangling an hors de vour sausage in front of my face.

“You English cur,” I snarled under my
breath.

“Black Shuck,” Yoki replied with a grin.

“Is that your friend’s name?” Rathstein laughed,
wrapping his arm familiarly around Yoki’s little shoulders. Though
he was no taller than me, his girth made her seem Lilliputian by
comparison, “What’s her party? Who’s she voting for?”

He seemed to inspect me, as though to ascertain
whether or not “demon dog” lay somewhere beneath my surface. His
hangers-on certainly seemed to think so.

“She’s Annie,” said Yoki through a mouthful.
“She fought for my honor and spanked a fellow twice her size. She’s
brilliant at the fisticuffs.”

“We made her an honorary Gay Hippie,” Jeanne
said proudly, putting her arm on my shoulder to match Rathstein’s
move. She was, I decided in that moment, one of the few people I
would allow to do that without uncorking the nasty.

“Oh, an honorary Gay Hippie,” Rathstein said,
sounding hurt. “You never made me an honorary Gay Hippie.”

“Watch yourself, Barty,” said the Brit in the
bolo tie, his accent more elegant than Yoki’s gutter English. “Your
eyes will start to turn green.”

“You haven’t run a Grand Prix,” said Jeanne to
Rathstein.

“End to end,” said Yoki through a mouthful of
bread pudding.

“End to end,” said Rathstein. “Wow, and you
didn’t even get arrested.”

“Almost,” said Yoki. “But that was the night
they found that woman dead on the statue of Joan of Arc. The bulls
had something more significant to do than take us off to the
pokey.”

“Oh, please don’t bring that up at my party.
You’ll give everyone –except maybe yourself,” Rathstein laughed at
his own joke, “indigestion.”

He aimed a fried mushroom at Yoki’s mouth. She
gobbled it, obtaining the desired effect.

“So, Annie. Where are you from? You look like
you’re old enough to be in a master’s program. What are you
majoring in?”

“Law.” I replied.

“Law?” He repeated quizzically.

Jeanne heaved a histrionic sigh.

“Come on,” she said to me, “There’s a Wii in the
den. Let’s go play some Mario.”

She directed me toward the den.

“Hoho!” exclaimed the British professor,
clapping Rathstein on the shoulder and looming over him. “The
youthful generation is bored with you, old Barty. Your worst
nightmare has come to pass. Time to retire. Be careful,” he said to
the rest of us, “when he gets backed into a corner he tends to go
off on a political jihad.”

He took a swig of the wine in his goblet and,
thence finding it suddenly, offensively empty, turned about and
wandered off in search of replenishment. I wished I was going with
him, the smell of food not had (and professor too much had) was
killing me.

“Annie has the best major of all, Dr.
Rathstein,” Yoki said. “She’s getting her master’s in Cool.”

“Please,” Rathstein detained Jeanne and I,
“Annie, call me Bartholomew.”

He offered me his hand, which I had neither
elicited nor wanted. I looked at it. So did all of the irritated
students who wondered why I, the unknown usurper of the attention
that so rightly belonged to them had been invited to bypass the
professor’s doctorate and call their beloved idol by his first
name.

Their envy drove me to take it.

His grip was stronger than I had expected, and
it seemed it was his intention to surprise me. I let my hand go
dead in his, and he released it. We shared a look of I’m not sure
what. I ingratiated myself with a moment of thinking,
my
boyfriend could beat the tar out of you
.

A crescendo of laughter erupted from the
kitchen. The tall professor stood at the bar, attempting to build a
pillar of wine goblets, balanced atop one another in an alternating
right-side-up, upside-down sequence. A gaggle of students egged him
on, including the drunken blonde, who flounced perilously near to
his already unsteady shoulder.

“You’re an interesting young woman,” Rathstein
said.

“Not that interesting,” I said back.

“Oh, she’s tremendously interesting,” said Yoki
conspiratorially. “Would you believe she’s dating a
vampire
?”

I shot her the filthiest look I could muster in
under two milliseconds.

“A vampire!” Rathstein laughed. “I’ll have to be
careful not to accidentally offend you, then. Your boyfriend might
suck my blood.”

Another peal of laughter from the bar area
showed the tall professor adding green olives, one at a time, at
the end of a toothpick, to the topmost goblet of his now
nine-goblet high pillar. The female professor rushed to the rescue,
removing her companion from the situation before he could put some
dewy freshman in the emergency room with a piece of glass lodged in
her artery.

“Better to suck than to blow,” I said.

“Annie!” said Yoki.

Fainter-hearted members of the Rathstein cult of
personality began to vanish into the woodwork like termites.

“Come, Annie,” said Rathstein. “I think we got
off on the wrong foot. We’ve got this delightful dynamo in common,
don’t we?” He squeezed Yoki’s shoulder. “What do you say we have a
drink and forget the whole thing?”

Though I didn’t take my eyes of Rathstein, I
didn’t answer his question either.

“Jeanne, how about that Wee, or whatever you
called it?”

“Let’s do it,” said Jeanne, “but you should know
that I suck.”

I turned away.

“It’s true,” Yoki went on to Rathstein. “He’s
tall, dark, and handsome, and he’s picked Annie as his protégé. I’d
bet good old British pounds that he watched her from the shadows
for months before he showed himself to be sure that she could
handle the immortal life.”

“Months, really?” Rathstein encouraged.

“Perhaps years. She’s just too thick between the
ears to realize it. Oh! It’s so romantic! I’d bet even now he’s
fighting against unholy desire, longing for the moment when he can
take her in his arms and –”

“Enough of this vampire talk,” Rathstein
interrupted. “I need a drink. Let’s all go have a drink.”

“Ooh, boxing,” I said, picking one of the Wii
game cartridges.

“Oh, no.” said Jeanne. “That can’t be fair.”

“Well, I’ve never played a video game before.
That can’t be fair.”

“It’s just that I completely suck.”

“What, are you a pussy?”

“No.” said Jeanne indignantly.

“Well, come on, Tomato Queen, man up.”

The others had moved to the furniture behind us.
The game area contained a sunken alcove populated by chestnut
leather furniture, a gorgeous baby grand piano, and a red-tiled
fireplace that probably lay dormant eleven months out of the year.
Yoki sat on the carpet in the absolute center of all people, Jesus
Christ curled up beside her, licking his own ass. The pleasantly
sloshed Brit reclined on the sofa, his woman beside him. She held
his drink while he gestured with very long arms and chatted with
the students gathered around. Rathstein sat in the adjacent easy
chair, recently vacated for him by a student, as though it was the
intellectual throne to which all should pay homage. He worked on a
glass of wine as though he had needed it all evening…or at least
since Yoki’s insubordinate friend had darkened his door.

It wasn’t long before I was standing holding my
stupid Wee “gloves” and failing to get the boxing dude on the
screen to do anything except flail uselessly.

“You just punch, like this,” Jeanne said.

“Oh, do you?” I laughed at her form.

“Okay, I’m not so graceful at this, but you try
riding a twelve-hundred pound, eighteen-hand warmblood in a bad
mood.”

She punched at me. My avatar on the TV screen
grunted as it got hit.

“What’s a warmblood?”

Someone had done away with Yoki’s techno
blabber, and a student of grad-school age had taken up residence on
the piano bench and was tapping a merry tune out of the keys. I
recognized it as the perky theme from the original Mario Brothers
one of the neighbor kids had had where I grew up. Apparently the
laughing cluster of students who had gathered around the piano
recognized it too.

“It’s a horse.”

“Oh, like Warren, the big, black one.”

I tried to punch her back, but my uppercut
magically transformed into a hook on the screen, and I missed. She
punched and missed. It seemed to be a theme.

“You’re not going to draw me into an argument,
Barty,” came the strains of an inebriated professorial rant from
behind us. “You know how Cynthia feels about your party, and I know
how you feel about hers--and you know how I feel about all of them.
So you keep your damnable politics, for once, out of a perfectly
good evening. I, for one, am well on my way toward being
devastatingly drunk –and happily so. And you should be too.”

“You’re already there, Henry,” the woman called
Cynthia said.

Jeanne punched. I tried to block. Instead, my
avatar stood there looking like a tard. Her avatar successfully hit
mine, sending spit flying.

“Jesus fuck!” I exclaimed in frustration.

“What I’m saying,” came Rathstein’s voice, “is
that it is imperative that we put capable men in our seats of
government. Ralph Goodwin is such a man.”

Jeanne and I got into a clinch. The virtual ref
pushed us apart. Jeanne hit me with a couple of pitty-pats. Then
she laughed.

“Red-headed cousin hussy!” I exclaimed.

“Compassionate men,” Henry said sharply,
starting up out of the couch at the periphery of my vision, then
falling back, defeated by inebriation, “are equally important, but
I’m not arguing about it.”

“That was supposed to be a straight right! Not
an uppercut! What the hell?”

“Haha!” laughed Jeanne.

“Goodwin’s compassionate too, Dr. Ferguson,”
came a student’s voice at our backs, “He’s raised more money for
restoration last year than any other single person in the
state.”

“But where does that money come from, young
man?” asked the drunken Brit.

“Anonymous donors,” said Rathstein. “There are
many people who want to help, but who don’t want to be in the
public eye. He’s good at reaching them.”

“And he’s in business,” added Yoki. “Businessmen
are always the best at raising money.”

“And Bono,” said a student.

People laughed.

“No! That was good! That was a good hit! Why
can’t I hit you?”

“Annie, be careful. You almost did hit me.”

“There ought to be more transparency,” said
Ferguson, arguing in spite of his declaration not to. “In an
economy and a state in this condition, contributions to the
community by way of his foundation start to look very much like
contributions to a campaign.”

“Oh, come on, Henry. Are we to judge a man by
his actions or his possible intentions? I say a man who
accomplishes this much before he even gets elected deserves a shot
at a position with real power, where he can do the most good.”

The people around the piano were distracting me
from my Wee tournament. A pair of sniggering boys were sitting side
by side at the bench, playing a sort of dueling piano piece,
suffixing each teacher’s statement with a twiddle of notes, the
high end for Ferguson, the low end for Rathstein.

“Would you two quit banging on that thing?” I
snarled at them. They tried to pretend they hadn’t heard me.

Jeanne hit me while I wasn’t looking at the
screen.

“God damn it!”

Ferguson grew wise to the game of the impromptu
pianists, and lurched off the couch. He went over to the piano and
shooed them away. His speech was slurred, but he still managed to
chastise them in fine English style.

“You saucy rogues, you. When’d you forget to
respect your elders? And you can’t play worth a shilling, either of
you! Leave off, or I’ll clobber you both.” He teetered over the
bench, then plunked down, defeated by gravity. “Maybe I’ll just
play a bit –show you lads a thing or…,” Burrrrpp, “perhaps two
things.”

He set his wineglass down atop the piano and
began to play, slowly, a dignified dirge. Jesus Christ immediately
began to howl.

Our little tournament finally came to a close in
the third round, with Jeanne delivering a knockout punch fifteen
seconds in. My avatar toppled to the mat, Jeanne’s put his arms in
the air, and the fake crowd began to howl.

“I won! I won! I finally won!” said Jeanne,
throwing up her own arms.

“It’s rigged!” I protested. “That broke-dick
bastard threw the fight! Did you see all that corn-shit he pulled?
That cunt sucking ass fucker threw the fight! I hit the fuckin’
button, and he’s over there shit-fucking himself in the ass!
Fuckety Jesus!”

The entire room fell silent, except for
Ferguson, with drunken nobility playing his dirge.

A cell phone went off, breaking the tension.
Lots of people checked their phones, but it was Rathstein’s that
had rung. He got up and left the room to answer it.

“Annie,” said Yoki from the carpet. “Do you have
Turret’s Syndrome?”

“I’m hungry,” I said, looking around at the
stung assemblage. I dropped my Wee gloves and headed for the
kitchen.

“Pick me up something while you’re there,” Yoki
called behind me.

The drunk, pink-topped girl stumbled past me,
bumping into me and scowling as she did so, as though I had jumped
maliciously into her path.

I ignored her. I went straight to the fried
chicken.

A single thigh remained in the box, surrounded
by the crumbs of its perished brethren, knowing my need, waiting
specifically for me. I plopped it on a paper plate, tore off a
hunk, and put it into my mouth. Oh, sweet succulent divinity
amongst foods! Golden and crispy, greasy and warm…I instantly
forgot the Wee. I could have died happy right there. I chewed and
swallowed in ultimate mortal bliss.