Lavinia passed the slow-moving truck like it was standing still.
Where Sally had been defeated by the British right-hand drive, Lavinia simply edged the camper into the oncoming lane, called “Anything coming?” and swung out blind.
In Pacifica they stopped to spend $58 on gas and for Sally to grab a big bag of Doritos. One hour to sunset as they headed north to San Francisco and one particular house.
Sally put a hand on Lavinia’s knee, “Love? Sorry if I put this wrong here, but do you have any conflicts about betraying your own kind? Vampires, I mean?”
Without hesitation, Lavinia replied, “You fuckin’ psychotic? What’s in it to be loyal to? I mean, Jeez, would you be loyal to, I don’t know, measles?”
Sally nodded happily. Maybe if there were more like you, she thought. She didn’t know whether to hope for that or not. The GPS continued to guide them.
Sally was not sleepy, despite a nearly sleepless night. A few hours ago, after the shock of revelation about the card and what it almost certainly meant, she’d been exhausted, and sleep had danced on the far side of an electric sea of acid.
Lavinia, stroking the fold-back pinewood paneling which covered the stove, head tilted like she was trying to hear a faint conversation, said shyly, “If you’re pooped, I could, you know, hypnotize you. If you want.” She looked up, endearingly embarrassed.
“I’d love that.” Sally flopped trustingly into Lavinia’s arms, feeling the same dear feeling of being a child as when Lavinia had carried her. Was this what she’d wanted all those times she’d given herself body and soul to a lover?
Lavinia’s eyes dissolved the world into (to use her uncharacteristic words) a warm ocean of sweetness. Sally didn’t dream but was aware of time passing, of arms cradling her and hands stroking her hair, and of being adored by eyes like the wine dark sea of Greek myths. She came out of it refreshed, sighing, “That was wonderful!”
Now she watched the sun fall directly on Lavinia’s face. Lavinia breathed hard, hands tight on the wheel, and muttered “Wow. Just, wow,” but kept driving.
She said to Lavinia, “Whatever you are physically, I feel more kinship with you….”
Than with my own sister. With painful guilt, she remembered all those calls and texts from KerriAnne.
She could no longer avoid it. With sick dread, she fished her phone out of her pocket to learn at last what had happened to her sister.
“What?” Lavinia demanded a moment later. “You just went out like somebody turned a dimmer switch.” The low sun through the windshield on her hand made her finish with a quiet “Whssshhh.”
“My sister,” Sally muttered miserably, feeling Lavinia’s disapproval. “She tried to reach me while my phone’s been off.”
But Lavinia’s voice held none of the lecturing tone Sally hated. “I know you love her, baby. It just kills me to see what she does to you.” Lavinia repeated “kills me,” shaking her head like she couldn’t believe she’d said those words.
Sally’s phone labored through its startup routine. Lavinia did something else she wouldn’t have done before: said nothing. At Alemany Boulevard the massive freeway went under a brown overpass and transitioned on the other side, like in a dream, into a massive city street.
The phone at last was usable. Sally knew she’d learn sooner what KerriAnne wanted by just calling her. With the usual knot in her stomach, she pressed the shortcut.
But the phone rang and rang. Her dread tightened: KerriAnne’s phone, though nothing fancy, would have announced Sally and she never ignored a call from Sally (unless she didn’t need anything, but that was too much to hope for).
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She looked up to see Lavinia darting quick, concerned glances as she navigated into one of three left turn lanes. As they waited at the stoplight, Lavinia stroked Sally’s cheek. Sally seized her hand, kissed the fingertips and settled, trembling, against Lavinia’s side. Months ago, it had been a deliberate statement to lean adoringly. Now she did it without thought, taking deep comfort from Lavinia’s strength.
She thumbed through the texts. They went from impatient to wheedling to accusing to despairing, ending with “I hurt so much. Master of all masters, my only light, I can’t live in a world without you.”
Sally felt squeezed by a vise. Her breath caught.
Lavinia made the big left turn but quickly found a side street and parked. Tenderly she took Sally in her arms and stroked her as she sobbed. Sally had no thought that a vampire was holding her: it was just Lavinia, at once stronger and gentler than before.
When Sally sat up, nuzzling her cheek like a cat against Lavinia’s face, she understood at last something which she guessed was clear to everyone else: something was deeply wrong in her relationship with KerriAnne.
For a moment, she ached with desire to hold Cinnamon again, to feel him throbbing against her chest. She’d been with Callista six or seven years ago; he’d be an old cat but he could still be alive.
“What are you now smiling about, you crazy person?” Lavinia asked affectionately.
“Thinking about a cat I once knew. Um, I guess my relationship with my sister is pretty fucked up, huh?”
“Thought never even crossed my mind,” Lavinia said solemnly but with such tenderness that there was no sting. Sally tried on the strange thought: my sister is a grownup. She should take care of herself. I don’t have to rescue her. Lavinia thinks so, and she’s a good person.
Lavinia waited, eyes occasionally flicking to the sun as it disappeared behind houses.
Tentatively, Sally spoke words aloud. “I don’t have to jump every time she calls? She really just uses me.” She waited for Lavinia to sneer, “I didn’t know you were thinking that.” But Lavinia carefully nodded.
“You should have seen her as a kid, she was so sweet!” Sally said quickly, repentantly. “I don’t think we ever fought, she was like, I dressed her up and played with her like she was my special doll. Aw, that’s not good, huh?” Lavinia gave a neutral shrug.
“And when we were older, we played together all the time, I was the leader, I was always coming up with new games. And no, I never had sex with her,” she added, responding only now to a question Lavinia had snapped at her during that horrible fight.
Then, with red face and hanging head, nearly passing out from shame, she gasped, “Well, just once. Just, um, I’d, uh, tied her up, you see? And I, well, one thing led to, uh.” She could hardly breathe and she couldn’t look at Lavinia. She still felt the rush in her groin, saw the completeness with which little Carrie Yan had submitted, felt the nausea she’d felt afterwards.
With sharp self-hatred, she saw her little sister kneel before her and beg for them to play that game again. “Please, Master of all Masters,” she had said, using language Sally herself had taught her, “let your humble servant please you again.” She had actually bent her head to kiss Sally’s foot when Sally jerked it away and snapped, “What are you doing? You’re sick.”
At the moment, she’d been proud of herself. Now she looked back and saw the hurt and confusion on Carrie’s 13-year-old pixie face with its frame of straight black hair (not dyed blond yet).
“It was … just that once,” Sally finished voicelessly.
Only when she felt her face being stroked did she realize she had expected Lavinia to shout, “You abomination! You shame your family!” But that was silly; Lavinia wouldn’t talk like that.
She dragged in a ragged breath. It was out, the secret of her life. She had spoken the words.
Lavinia held Sally’s face in one hand. “Babe. You’re not responsible for the way that bitch is. She made a lot of choices.” Sally liked Lavinia holding her face when they had sex; now she hated the flaring desire for Lavinia to punish her.
Lavinia’s eyes flicked toward the setting sun. “Hate to say it, babe, but we’re gonna be right here when the sun sets unless we start driving again. Course, we could do that. One place’s as good as another.” She let go of Sally.
Sally tried to shove her tormented relationship with KerriAnne back into storage. “We should head to that address. If he’s there it’ll be a big help.”
Then, trying on a glorious new thought: “And KerriAnne can take care of herself!”
She looked hungrily for Lavinia’s approval.
♦
Malcolm tossed a hearty “Good night, officers!” to the last of the cops walking away and heard the man mutter “You made your bed, ya fucking faggot.”
“Be the best you ever had,” Malcolm said under his breath, stomping back to the tent. The sun turned the slender Embarcadero Center buildings into a golden red set of encyclopedias. Three or four other stragglers hadn’t run indoors yet. “G’wan, get out of here!” he yelled at them.
They turned and he saw four young men and a woman, all with deadly serious faces, black tee-shirts and wooden stakes like rounds of bullets on their belts. A teenager with messy black hair and haunted eyes walked up and stood in front of him.
“There’s an even better way, sir,” he said.
Their tee-shirts all bore pictures of a boot kicking a comically distressed vampire into space from a house made of continents and oceans.
The caption read, “Think about it. The entire Earth is a home.”