Mary A. Turzillo.
"When Gretchen Was Human" is a story about love, but that doesn"t mean-as you will see-it is romantic.
Mary Turzillo"s Nebula-winning story, "Mars Is No Place for Children," and her novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl, have been selected as recreational reading on the International s.p.a.ce Station. Her poetry and fiction appears in Asimov"s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Weird Tales, Crafty Cat Crimes, Electric Velocipede, Lady Churchill"s Rosebud Wristlet, The Ultimate Witch, Dark Terrors, Oceans of the Mind, and anthologies and magazines in the U.S., Great Britain, j.a.pan, Italy, Germany, and the Czech Republic. Her poetry collection, Your Cat & Other s.p.a.ce Aliens, was a Pushcart nominee. Her most recent book is The Dragon Dictionary, with Marge Simon (Sam"s Dot, 2010), and she has a vampirish tale coming out in Ladies of Trade Town from Harp Haven. She lives in Ohio with her mad scientist-writer husband, Geoff Landis and four cats with surprisingly long canines.
"You"re only human," said Nick Scuroforno, fanning the pages of a tattered first edition of Image of the Beast. The conversation had degenerated from halfhearted sales pitch, Gretchen trying to sell Nick Scuroforno an early Pangborn imprint. Now they sat cross-legged on the scarred wooden floor of Miss Trilby"s Tomes, watching dust motes dance in August four o"clock sun. Gretchen was wallowing in self disclosure and voluptuous self-pity.
"Sometimes I don"t even feel human," Gretchen settled her back against the soft, dusty-smelling spines of a leather-bound 1910 imprint Book of Knowledge.
"I can identify."
"And given the choice, who"d really want to be?" asked Gretchen, tracing the grain of the wooden floor with chapped fingers.
"You have a choice?" asked Scuroforno.
"See, after Ashley was diagnosed, my ex got custody of her. Just as well." She rummaged her smock for a tissue. "I didn"t have hospitalization after we split. And his would cover her, but only if she goes to a hospital way off in Seattle." Unbidden, a memory rose: Ashley"s warm little body, wriggly as a puppy"s, settling in her lap, opening Where the Wild Things Are, striking the page with her tiny pink index finger. Mommy, read!
Scuroforno nodded. "But can"t they cure leukemia now?"
"Sometimes. She"s in remission at the moment. But how long will that last?" Gretchen kept sneaking looks at Scuroforno. Amazingly, she found him attractive. She thought depression had killed the s.e.xual impulse in her. He was a big man, chunky but not actually fat, with evasive amber eyes and s.h.a.ggy hair. Not bad looking, but not handsome either, in gray sweat pants, a brown T-shirt, and beach sandals. He had a habit of twisting the band of his watch, revealing a strip of pale skin from which the fine hairs of his wrist had been worn.
"And yet cancer itself is immortal," he mused. "Why can"t it make its host immortal too?"
"Cancer is immortal?" But of course cancer would be immortal. It was the ultimate predator. Why shouldn"t it hold all the high cards?
"The cells are. There"s some pancreatic cancer cells that have been growing in a lab fifty years since the man with the cancer died. And yet, cancer cells are not even as intelligent as a virus. A virus knows not to kill its host."
"But viruses do kill!"
He smiled. "That"s true, lots do kill. Bacteria, too. But there are bacteria that millennia ago decided to infect every cell in our bodies. Turned into-let me think of the word. Organelles? Like the mitochondrion."
"What"s a mitochondrion?"
He shrugged, slyly basking in his superior knowledge. "It"s an energy-converting organ in animal cells. Different DNA from the host. You"d think you could design a mitochondrion that would make the host live forever."
She stared at him. "No. I certainly wouldn"t think that. "
"Why not?"
"It would be horrible. A zombie. A vampire."
He was silent, a smile playing around his eyes.
She shuddered. "You get these ideas from Miss Trilby"s Tomes?"
"The wisdom of the ages." He gestured at the high shelves, then stood. "And of course the World Wide Web. Here comes Madame Trilby herself. Does she like you lounging on the floor with customers?"
Gretchen flushed. "Oh, she never minds anything. My grandpa was friends with her father, and I"ve worked here off and on since I was little." She took Scuroforno"s proffered hand and pulled herself to her feet.
Miss Trilby, frail and spry, wafting a fragrance of face powder and moldy paper, lugged in a milk crate of pamphlets. She frowned at Gretchen. Strange, thought Gretchen. Yesterday she said I should find a new man, but now she"s glaring at me. For sitting on the floor? I sit on the floor to do paperwork all the time. There"s no room for chairs. It has to be for schmoozing with a male customer.
Miss Trilby dumped the mail on the counter and swept into the back room.
"Cheerful today, hmm?" said Scuroforno.
"Really, she"s so good to me. She lends me money to go to Seattle and see my daughter. She"s just nervous today."
"Ah. By the way, before I leave, do you have a cold, or were you crying?"
Gretchen reddened. "I have a chronic sinus infection." She suddenly saw herself objectively: stringy hair, bad posture, skinny. How could she be flirting with this man?
He touched her wrist. "Take care." And strode through the door into the street.
"Him you don"t need," said Miss Trilby, bustling back in and firing up the shop"s ancient Kaypro computer.
"Did I say I did?"
"Your face says you think you do. Did he buy anything?"
"I"m sorry. I can never predict what he"ll be interested in."
"I"ll die in the poorhouse. Sell him antique medical texts. Or detective novels. He stands reading historical novels right off the shelf and laughs. Pretends to be an expert, finds all the mistakes."
"What have you got against him, besides reading and not buying?"
"Oh, he buys. But Gretchen, lambkin, a man like that you don"t need. Loner. Crazy."
"But he listens. He"s so understanding."
"Like the butcher with the calf. What"s this immortal cancer stuff he"s feeding you?"
"Nothing. We were talking about Ashley."
"Sorry, lambkin. Life hasn"t been kind to you. But be a little wise. This man has delusions he"s a vampire."
Gretchen smoothed the dust jacket of Euryanthe and Oberon at Covent Garden. "Maybe he is."
Miss Trilby rounded her lips in mock horror. "Perhaps! Doesn"t look much like Frank Langella, though, does he?"
No, he didn"t, thought Gretchen, as she sorted orders for reprints of Kadensho"s Book of the Flowery Tradition and de Honnecourt"s Fervor of Buenos Aires.
But there was something appealing about Nick Scuroforno, something besides his empathy for a homely divorcee with a terminally ill child. His spare, dark humor, maybe that was it. Miss Trilby did not understand everything.
Why not make a play for him?
Even to herself, her efforts seemed pathetic. She got Keesha, the single mother across the hall in her apartment, to help her frost her hair. She bought a cheap cardigan trimmed with Angora and dug out an old padded bra.
"Lambkin," said Miss Trilby dryly one afternoon when Gretchen came in dolled up in her desperate finery, "The man is not exactly a fashion plate himself."
But Scuroforno seemed flattered, if not impressed, by Gretchen"s efforts, and took her out for coffee, then a late dinner. Mostly, however, he came into the bookstore an hour before closing and let her pretend to sell him some white elephant like the Reverend Wood"s Trespa.s.sers: How Inhabitants of Earth, Air, and Water Are Enabled to Trespa.s.s on Domains Not Their Own. She would fiddle with the silver chain on her neck, and they would slide to the floor where she would pour out her troubles to him. Other customers seldom came in so late.
"You trust him with private details of your life," said Miss Trilby, "but what do you know of his?"
He did talk. He did. Philosophy, history, details of Gretchen"s daughter"s illness. One day, she asked, "What do you do?"
"I steal souls. Photographer."
Oh.
"Can"t make much money on that artsy stuff," Miss Trilby commented when she heard this. "Rumor says he"s got a private source of income."
"Illegal, you mean?"
"What a romantic you are, Gretchen. Ask him."
Gambling luck and investments, he told her.
One day, leaving for the shop, Gretchen opened her mail and found a letter-not even a phone call-that Ashley"s remission was over. Her little girl was in the hospital again.
The grief was surreal, physical. She was afraid to go back into her apartment. She had bought a copy of Jan Piekowski"s Haunted House, full of diabolically funny pop-ups, for Ashley"s birthday. She couldn"t bear to look at it now, waiting like a poisoned bait on the counter.
She went straight to the shop, began alphabetizing the new stock. Nothing made sense, she couldn"t remember if O came after N. Miss Trilby had to drag her away, make her stop.
"What"s wrong? Is it Ashley?"
Gretchen handed her the letter.
Miss Trilby read it through her thick lorgnette. Then, "Look at yourself. Your cheeks are flushed. Eyes bright. Disaster becomes you. Or is it the nearness of death bids us breed, like romance in a concentration camp?"
Gretchen shuddered. "Maybe my body is tricking me into reproducing again."
"To replace Ashley. Not funny, lambkin. But possibly true. I ask again, why this man? Doesn"t madness frighten you?"
Next day, Gretchen followed him to his car. It seemed natural to get in, uninvited, ride home with him, follow him up two flights of stairs covered with cracked treads.
He let her perch on a stool in his kitchen darkroom while he printed peculiar old architectural photographs. The room smelled of chemicals, vinegary. An old Commodore 64 propped the pantry door open. She had seen a new computer in his living room, running a screen saver of Giger babies holding grenades, and wraiths dancing an agony-dance.
"I never eat here," he said. "As a kitchen, it"s useless."
He emptied trays, washed solutions down the drain, rinsed. Her heart beat hard under the sleazy Angora. His body, sleek as a lion"s, gave off a male scent, faintly predatory.
While his back was turned, she undid her cardigan. The b.u.t.tons too easily slipped out of the cheap fuzzy fabric, conspiring with l.u.s.t.
She slipped it off as he turned around. And felt the draft of the cold kitchen and the surprise of his gaze on her inadequate chest.
He turned away, dried his hands on the kitchen towel. "Don"t fall in love with me."
"Not at all arrogant, are you?" She wouldn"t, wouldn"t fall in love. No. That wasn"t quite it.
"Not arrogance. A warning. I"m territorial; predators have to be. For a while, yes, I"d keep you around. But sooner or later, you"d interfere with my hunting. I"d kill you or drive you away to prevent myself from killing you."
"I won"t fall in love with you." Level. Convincing.
"All right." He threw the towel into the sink, came to her. Covered her mouth with his.
She responded clumsily, overreacting after the long dry spell, clawing his back.
The kiss ended. He stroked her hair. "Don"t worry. I won"t draw blood. I can control the impulse."
She half-pretended to play along with him. Half of her did believe. "It doesn"t matter. I want to be like you." A joke?
He sat on the kitchen chair, pulled her to him and put his cheek against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "It doesn"t work that way. You have to have the right genes to be susceptible."
"It really is an infection?" Still half-pretending to believe, still almost joking.
"A virus that gives you cancer. All I know is that of all the thousands I"ve preyed upon, only a few have gotten the fever and lived to become-like me."
"Vampire?"
"As good a word as any. One who I infected and who lived on was my son. He got the fever and turned. That"s why I think it"s genetic." He pulled her nearer, as if for warmth.
"What happens if the prey doesn"t have the genes?"
"Nothing. Nothing happens. I never take enough to kill. I haven"t killed a human in over a hundred years. You"re safe."
She slid to her knees, wrapping her arms around his waist. He held her head to him, stroking her bare arms and shoulders. "Silk," he said finally, pulling her up, touching her breast. She had nursed Ashley, but it hadn"t stopped her from getting leukemia. Fire and ice sizzled across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, as if her milk were letting down.
"Are you lonely?"
"G.o.d, yes. That"s the only reason I was even tempted to let you do this. You know, I have the instincts of a predator, it does that. But I was born human."
"How did you infect your son?"
"Accident. I was infected soon after I was married. Pietra, my wife, is long dead."
"Pietra. Strange name."
"Not so strange in thirteenth century Florence. I turned shortly after I was married. I was very ill. I knew I needed blood, but no knowledge of why or how to control my thirst. I took blood from a priest who came to give me last rites. My thirst was so voracious, I killed him. Not murder, Gretchen. I was no more guilty that a baby suckling at breast. The first thirst is overpowering. I took too much, and when I saw that he was dead, I put on my clothes and ran away."
"Leaving your wife-"
"Never saw her again. But years later, I encountered this young man at a gambling table. Pretended to befriend him. Overpowered him in a narrow dark street. Drank to slake my thirst. Later I encountered him, changed. As a rival for the blood of the neighborhood. I had infected him, he had gotten the fever, developed into-what I am. Later I put the pieces together; I had left Pietra pregnant, this was our son, you see. He had the right genes. If he hadn"t, he would have never even noticed that modest blood loss." His hand stroked her naked shoulder.
"Where is he now?"