most subtle hint of self-effacing irony. As dinner went on, Pete regarded me less as a child and more as a person, less as a curious invader and more as an interesting, even welcome, intervention into his musty routine. That was what led Pete to ask more interesting questions, because he believed I could handle it, because he believed the answers would be illuminating. He wasn’t a parent passing judgment on the peculiarities of the younger generation. He wanted to know. “I’m interested in your, I guess, style, Mason.”
“Pete!” Roberta objected.
“I don’t think I’m being rude,” said Pete. “Mason knows that she dresses in a particular way, and she knows it is going to attract attention. It’s not offensive to ask you about it, is it?”
“Of course not.” I smiled at both of them. “If you dress in a way that makes people stare, you should be prepared to discuss it.”
“Is it some sort of a music thing?” Pete asked. “Are you dressing like a singer? Like, I don’t know, Marilyn Manson?”
“Who?” I asked. “Oh, yeah. My mom used to listen to him, I think. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I like oldies, but my look isn’t about music.”
“Is it about
“I’m not a vampire, Pete,” I said.
“I’d never suggest you were,” he said, feeling a little chastised, and feeling it was deserved. He realized he had veered into the condescending, and wished to correct course. “Of course not.”
“Some people are,” I told him as I picked at a piece of chicken. “Some people like to pretend they are, and some people actually are. But I’m not.”
“We know you’re not, honey,” said Roberta.
“I’m a ghoul,” I said.
This kind of pronouncement can bring a conversation to a halt, but I had confidence I could get things moving again. Neil chewed on obliviously. Roberta looked at Pete, as though begging for some kind of lifeline. Pete grabbed for the goblet of wine he wished were by his placemat.
“Oh,” said Roberta at last. “That’s so interesting.”
Pete sucked in his breath, came to terms with the lack of wine, and chose to valiantly march into the battle. “Is there a difference?” He met my gaze for the first time, holding on to it, and he smiled. I smiled in return, and he knew he was having fun now. He wasn’t teasing me. He wasn’t interested in humiliating me or showing me up. He told himself he was treating me like any guest. In fact, he was flirting with me. “Isn’t ghoul just a kind of generic term, and maybe vampire is, I don’t know, a subset of ghoul? All vampires are ghouls but only some ghouls are vampires. Like squares and rectangles.”
“It’s a common mistake,” I told him, careful to sound amused as well. I was also flirting. “Really, there’s no reason to be embarrassed. But no vampires are ghouls. Different things. Vampires suck the blood of the living. Ghouls survive off the flesh of the dead. And, to a lesser extent, disillusionment.”
“Is this appropriate dinner conversation?” Roberta asked.
“Don’t we all eat the flesh of the dead?’ asked Pete, holding up a piece of chicken on his fork.
Across the table, Neil sawed a piece of enchilada in half with his knife and fork.
I met Pete’s gaze, firm and steady, and showed him my best, full-toothed, red-lipped smile. “Indeed we do. But,” I added, “a ghoul prefers to eat uncooked human flesh.”
“I really don’t think we should be talking about this,” said Roberta, “but what a wonderful imagination you have.”
They made up the guest room for me. “We’re not comfortable with the two of you sharing a room together,” Roberta said. “You understand, don’t you, Neil?”
He shrugged. “I guess. Whatever.”
Pete stared at his son in undisguised disappointment. A charming, sexy, unconventional girl was sleeping over at his house. Surely this was the time to rouse himself from his torpor. Surely this was something worth fighting for, but Neil glanced at his cuticles and jabbed at the carpet with the tip of his sneaker.
They let us stay up playing video games until eleven, and then it was lights out. The guest room had its own bathroom, so I disappeared inside but did not get undressed. I turned out my light, and by midnight the rest of the house was dark. I waited, not certain what Pete would do, but I knew a thing or two about desire and longing, and I’d placed my bets. A little after one in the morning, I saw a light go on in the kitchen. I heard the shuffle of feet, the low murmur of the TV, and the distinctive popping of a cork. Pete decided he would have that wine after all. I waited until I thought he’d have had time for a glass and then went out, still fully dressed, still fully made up, looking fresh, rested, impossibly unrumpled. He was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing a white T-shirt and cotton shorts, watching a black-and-white movie on the TV, with a bottle of wine and a glass in front of him. And he was glad to see me. Maybe even relieved. He didn’t know himself.
“Where do you keep the wineglasses?” I asked.
He paused for a moment, and somewhere in his reptile brain a thousand possibilities played out, a thousand choices presented themselves, but there were really only two, and he chose between them without taking a moment to seriously consider the alternative. He looked at my lips, red as blood and glistening from a fresh application of lipstick, and gestured toward one of the cabinets. I took a glass, sat down across from him, and poured. I swirled my glass, took a sip, and then looked at the label.
“So, what?” he asked. “You’re some kind of bad girl?”
“I like wine,” I said. “I prefer old-world reds. You know, big Italian wines, especially anything from Piedmont, but this is pretty good for a California cab.” I took another sip and met his gaze, enjoying astonishment and pleasure, enjoying the distant thrum of gears turning in his mind. “Define ‘bad girl.’ ”
“Come on,” he said. “What are you doing with Neil? You are a beautiful young girl and Neil is … You know.”
I leaned forward, letting my top sag just enough to improve his view. “Tell me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Pete said, staring into my face because he dared not look down my top. “He’s just a loner. He doesn’t have a lot of friends. You must know that. Before you, he didn’t seem to have any friends, and he didn’t seem to mind. As near as I can tell, the other kids don’t pick on him. They hardly even notice him. When we have conferences at school, his teachers need a minute to go through his file, as if they’re trying to remember who he is. Christ, sometimes I come home and see him and remember that I have a son.”
“And you’re telling this to his only friend?”
“It’s crazy,” admitted Pete. “I guess I wonder if maybe you know him, really know him, in some way that Roberta and I don’t. Maybe you can tell me something.” He finished off his glass and poured himself another one. After a moment’s thought, he refilled mine. “I’m sorry. You must be uncomfortable.”
“No,” I said. “I appreciate that you talk to me like I’m a peer. You don’t talk down to me. You expect me to get things. And I do. I get a lot of things.”
“You seem very mature. For a ghoul.”
“Gotta respect the ghoul,” I said.
“Human flesh,” he said.
I smiled. “And disillusionment.”
“Tasty,” he said.
“You’d be surprised.” I met his gaze and held it until he looked away. Then I said, “So, we can be friends, right? We can hang out?”
“Come on.” He leaned away from the table, creating more space between us, not because that’s what he wanted to do, but because it was what he thought he ought to do. He liked the idea of being my friend. He liked the idea of hanging out with me. He hated that he liked the idea, but he liked it all the same.
“No,” I said. “You come on.”
“How exactly is that going to work? You’re in middle school, and you think we can just hang out? I’m forty- five years old,” he said, wanting, more than anything else, to hear that it didn’t matter.
“Forty-five,” I said. “Now
I let the better part of a week go by, but on Thursday I called him on his cell phone, right after school, a good couple of hours before Roberta would be home. “Engineer any good software today?”
“How did you get this number?” he asked.
