He retracted his teeth.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The girl, now that he looked at her, really was a girl. No older than sixteen. She was staring at him hard, and then she put her hands to her face.
“Shit,” she said. “My glasses.”
They both looked around, and Miles saw them underneath the bench.
“There,” he said pointing to them. He didn’t want to make any movements that might change her state from strange calm to panic.
She scooted down and got them, and then held them up. They were smashed. Not only were the lenses broken, but the very frame had cracked in two. Irreparable.
“My mom is going to kill me,” she said. “These were my grandmother’s glasses. Vintage.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
She took the cloth bag she carried, fingered a hole in it, and ripped out the bottom. She handed it to Miles.
“Here,” she said. “You should cover yourself.”
He stepped into the bag and covered himself with it. It was as though he were wearing a tiny, snug mini skirt that said WHOLE FOODS on it. He felt ridiculous.
He laughed.
“What’s so funny?” she said.
“It’s not too often that I feel ridiculous,” Miles said. “Usually, I’m threatening.”
“You don’t look too threatening,” she said.
He considered this. It was probably true if you didn’t know what he was. Outwardly, he looked like an 18- year-old kid. He was tall and skinny, and looked a bit like the weakling in the back of the comic books that he had liked so much as a boy.
“What’s your name?” the girl asked.
“Miles,” he said.
“Miles,” she said. “I’m Penny.”
“Penny,” Miles said. “I used to have a girlfriend named Penny. A long time ago. She wore glasses that looked a lot like yours.”
He hadn’t thought about her since 1956. The night he’d been turned was the night of the prom, and Penny was supposed to be his date. He’d never shown up.
“Can you climb?” Penny asked.
“What?”
“Are you a good climber?” Penny asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Exceptional.”
“Could you make sure my pig is secure?”
He stared at her, not really understanding the words that were coming out of her mouth. She pointed upward, toward the lamppost, and his eyes followed her finger. There, precariously attached to the post, was a ceramic pig with wings.
Miles scooted up the lamppost using his special skills; he investigated and secured the pig to the lamppost.
“It’s all good,” he said.
“Can you push it to the right a little bit? I want it to swing,” Penny said.
He did as she asked. When the task was done, he came back down.
“I saw you here last night,” Penny said. “Are you trolling the park for action?”
“What?” Miles said.
“You know, are you a hustler?” Penny said. “In the papers today it said that they found an old dead guy in the park who they think was killed by a hustler.”
“No. I’m not a hustler,” Miles said.
But standing under the light of a lamppost, under a swinging ceramic pig, wearing nothing but a cloth bag, he felt as though he wanted to tell Penny the truth. He had never in his life wanted so badly to tell someone the truth. So he did.
“I’m a vampire,” he said.
Penny laughed.
“I used to be a vampire,” she said. “In
She laughed again.
“My mom was so mad because I would only eat everything
“What are you now?” Miles asked.
“A street artist,” she said. “It’s way cooler.”
Then they both had nothing to say to each other.
“Well,” Penny said. “I would invite you to the 24-hour diner for a coffee, but no shirt, no shoes, no service.”
“Right,” Miles said. “I should get going, anyway.”
“Rain check?” Penny asked.
“Sure,” Miles said.
“How about Thursday?” Penny asked.
“Okay,” Miles said. “I’ll meet you there. What time?”
“Midnight?”
“Okay,” Miles said and then turned to walk away from Penny. He would transform once he had walked far enough away from her. Maybe when he turned the corner at the end of the block.
He was excited that they had made a date. He hadn’t had a date in fifty years.
Then he remembered that boys back in his day would always walk a girl home.
He stopped in his tracks, and turned around and called after Penny who was already halfway down the block.
“Penny,” he called. And then he jumped in the air and landed next to her. “You shouldn’t walk home alone at this time of night. There are dangerous people out.”
He didn’t say that he was one of the dangerous people to be afraid of, but she must have suspected something from the way he had jumped. After being so chatty, they now walked in silence.
Penny led the way, sometimes glancing at him while Miles looked straight ahead and tried not to feel chafed by the cloth bag he was wearing. When they got to her house she spoke.
“I’m not going to invite you on to the property,” she said. “You have to stay on the sidewalk.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
“And I don’t want to ever see you again,” she said.
“Okay,” he said.
“If I do, I’ll stake you in the heart,” she said.
“That doesn’t really work,” he said. “But I get it.”
“If you come near me again, I’ll tell people what you really are.”
He could smell the fear on her as she turned and ran up the pathway to her house. He could hear her struggling with her keys at the front door. Miles stood there for a minute, to be sure that she got into the house all right, and then he released himself from his body and flew home.
The next night, Miles went to feed at a town to the south of his lair. There was an alley in the skid-row part of town that had a lot of homeless people. They weren’t tasty, but they kept him satiated. Once he got to town, he slowed down his extraordinary speed so as not to attract attention. He strolled down Main Street and over to Maple, down Independence and over to Metcalfe where all the shops were. He usually scanned the streets, checking the area for other vampires. He didn’t get along with many of them, and he tried to steer clear. But that night, something caught his eye as he passed by the Goodwill. In the window, on display with the necklaces, pins and scarves, was a pair of cat-eye glasses, just like both Pennys had worn. He stopped and looked at them.
