Teeth_ Vampire Tales - Ellen Datlow [109]
“Flower for the lady?”
It’s one of those beggar kids, trying to sell long-stemmed red roses, each one wrapped in cellophane, tied with a ribbon. The kid probably thinks he’s a tourist, because of the glasses.
To her surprise, he stops. He never stops for anyone. He’s looking at the kid. He never does that, either.
“Hey,” he says.
The kid stares back. “Flower?”
Her arm linked in his, she can feel the twitch of him starting to reach for his wallet, then pulling back and letting go. “No, thanks.”
He pulls her along with him, not looking back.
Was it someone he knew before he met her? Too young. His child by his last lover? But he can’t have kids himself; he says he’s sterile. (Good thing!) Suddenly she remembers when she first came here to university, feeling lonely and raw, then one morning on her way to class spotting Sophie from their soccer club back home ahead of her, on the square, waiting for the light to change. And then realizing it couldn’t be, because Sophie had been hit by a car last year. It was just someone with the same shoulders, the same hair, same height. It would be like that for him all the time, the people he’d known, when he remembered. He’d see them everywhere. But it would never really be them.
“No flower for me?” she says, to recapture his attention. Maybe she’ll even learn something this time. He’s shaken. She knows the signs.
“When I buy you flowers, they won’t look like that.” He loosens his grip on her arm. “Have I ever bought you flowers?”
“Sure,” she says airily. “Don’t you remember that huge basket of lilies and white roses?” He looks at her sideways. He doesn’t quite believe her, but he’s trying to remember, just in case. “And the big bunch of hydrangeas you brought when I got the honors in folklore? I had to borrow a vase from Anna downstairs to hold them all. But my favorite was the rosebuds and freesias you gave me on my birthday.”
He is still walking. But slowly. She feels the tension in his arm. “Did I?”
“No.” She walks past him, now, her heels clicking on the pavement. “Of course not.”
He lets her get a little ahead of him, but only a little. By the time he’s caught up with her, she’s a little sorry. But only a little.
“Hey,” he says. He takes off his sunglasses. Hair falls into his eyes. He pushes it back with one hand. “Not everyone gets honors in folklore.”
“You didn’t even know me then.”
“I didn’t know you liked getting flowers,” he says innocently.
“All women like flowers. You’ve had how many centuries of us, and you can’t even remember that one stupid thing?”
He slings a pebble from the embankment into the water. Then he steps back, to watch it fall. The river is running strong. She can’t see it hit the water, but maybe he can.
“In foreign lands,” he announces, “ancient heroes sleep in caves, waiting for a horn to be blown or a bell to be rung, whereupon they spring into action in their country’s hour of greatest need.” Moodily, he slings another pebble. “Lucky bastards. Nothing to do but dream of ancient glory till it’s time for a remix. Our motherland discourages such sloth.”
“Really?”
“Really. No lying around when the land is in peril. Not here. Oh, no. We’ve got a better system in place.”
Finally! She can’t believe he’s telling her this. “And you’re it?”
“I’m it.”
She keeps her voice level, nonchalant. “I’ve always wondered how anyone could decide when the hour of greatest need was, anyway.”
“Me, too. Every year’s got plenty of hours, believe me.”
“That must be a lot of work.”
“All the work, and none of the glory.” Another pebble. “How do you think we kept our borders intact until ’41? When the Russians were boiling shoe leather?”
She shudders with delight. “You ate Nazis?”
“Ate?” He looks down his nose at her. “What do I look like, an ambulating garbage disposal? I just scared the crap out of them.” His head, lifted against the