Workin' For The Man

[tiny_dancer81]

The Dive never really got crowded until the weekends, but they had s steady stream of people coming in on weeknights as well. As the club's promoter, Theresa dealt with the reviewer from the local entertainment rag in addition to trying to book new acts. All in all, things were looking promising. With summer nearly here, the college crowd would have more time and money to spend in places like this.

The vampire was nursing a beer on the patio. She had thought of suggesting they start serving something stronger, but she hadn't gotten around to it yet. It sounded like the latest set was wrapping up. She checked her upper lip for beer foam, hauled her slight weight off of the bench where she'd been sitting.

Summer in Las Vegas might man the days were long, but the nights usually made up for it.

Comments

[maddy_ricks]

As the final chords faded from the amplifiers, Maddy burst through the door onto the patio. Her band wasn’t playing tonight; she just needed to get out and stretch her legs, and the Dive was a second home to her. The newly-platinum bassist cupped a hand around her cigarette and lit up as she wandered blindly toward a table and chairs. Her false eyelashes fluttered and she saw the vampire. “Hey,” she mumbled around the bummed cigarette. She tucked the lighter in her shorts. “You working?”

[tiny_dancer81]

"Not really. I was planning to check that the last band hadn't slopped beer all over the place again. The singer in the next set slipped in the mess and almost broke his ass falling off the stage."

Theresa was always a little torn when it came to interacting with Maddy. Especially since bumping into Melody at the coffee shop. It wasn't that she was capable of being truly uncomfortable, but she would like to avoid throwing a wrench into the gears if it was possible. To go on hiding in plain sight.

"I like your hair. When did you get it done?"

[maddy_ricks]

“Last week,” she blew a cloud of silvery smoke into the air. “I ran into my ex. You know how that goes. But! I gotta say,” she hefted herself onto a tabletop, “I’m still rockin’ hot. Him? Not so much.”

Okay, that wasn’t strictly true. Gus – or Whistler these days – looked much the same as ever, save for a few gray hairs near his temples. He even dressed the same. But time and perspective had changed Maddy’s feelings on the subject and she kept asking herself what she’d seen in the half-demon. She also asked herself why she could still hear her roommate’s over-wrought orgasm half a century later.

[tiny_dancer81]

"Old boyfriend? Must not have been a happy blast from the past."

The diminutive brunette drank some more of her beer, and she idly wondered about this random guy. Not that it was any of her business, and she had never really done the relationship thing, anyway. Not before she died and certainly not after.

"He must be a moron if he broke up with you."

[maddy_ricks]

“Aw, you’re sweet.” Maddy reached across and patted Theresa’s shoulder. “He was. Is. A moron. Goes around calling himself Whistler, like being immortal means he doesn’t need a real name. You have a real name. Even I have a real name. What’s his problem?” She snorted and shook her head.

The cigarette burned bright between her fingers as Maddy sucked on the filter.

[tiny_dancer81]

Record scratch!

Theresa paused for a second, looking down into the dregs of her beer. She could hear Maddy's heartbeat. In the main area of the bar, drums and guitars crashed into life. Something unfamiliar skated across her consciousness, and she grabbed at it before it could disappear.

"Either you talked to Melody or you already knew."

[maddy_ricks]

“Talked to Melody? About what, you being a vampire?” Maddy shook her head as she flicked her cigarette ash into the wind. “Please. Like I needed someone to tell me. I only see you at night, you’re paler than me, you have no reflection. Why do you think I told you there was something in your teeth that night at the club? I was fucking with you! Ow!” She looked at her hand, which had picked up a minor splinter from the wooden table. Maddy scratched it out of the top layer of skin and continued about her business.

[tiny_dancer81]

Theresa's eyebrows went up, and something like amusement touched the corners of her mouth. When The Weird was everywhere you looked, it was difficult to decide where it began and where it ended. Maddy didn't seem bothered by it. The vampire did wonder if she knew about the potential for being bitten.

And maybe-possibly she wondered if she'd be into it.

"So if you're a daywalker, how'd you manage the live forever thing?"

[maddy_ricks]

Maddy flicked the minuscule piece of wood out of her palm. “I guess you could say I have a job. Other than coffee bitch… One that guarantees I’ll be around until I quit, anyway.” Rubbing her lips together, she decided to level with Theresa, hearkening back to a time Whistler had referenced when Maddy wasn’t so passive, didn’t just warm up the bench. When she was a supernatural somebody.

She withdrew the key from her shirt and it dangled between them on its silver chain. “Think of me as a locksmith. I inherited this key and someday I’ll give it to another person. I’ll shrivel up like a raisin and die. Until that day, here I am. It’s as simple as that. Otherwise, I am perfectly human.”

[tiny_dancer81]

The vampire almost touched the key, then drew her hand away quickly. It might be blessed or something. She didn't like the idea of of her hand getting burned off because something shiny caught her attention.

"So it just, like, opens things?"

That weird whatever it was was still hovering in her mind. She looked at the mortal's dyed hair, then back at the key. "Do you get to decide, or is it random?"

[maddy_ricks]

“It’s only random when I screw up,” Maddy said. “Or like if I’m just… not paying attention.” The corner of her mouth puckered, a kind of ‘oops’ expression that wasn’t 100% sincere. She shook it off with a bobble of her head. “Anyway, I’m immortal, you’re immortal, let’s be friends. Forever…”

She gave a lopsided grin. “I’m not scared of you, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She smashed her cigarette into the sole of her shoe.

[tiny_dancer81]

Theresa snorted out a laugh. She was aware that she wasn't the most physically imposing specimen of vampire-kind around, and her lack of interest in gratuitous bloodshed set her apart further. So it wasn't that she wanted Maddy to be scared of her.

"I'm not mean enough to be scary."

She watched the glowing ember of the human's cigarette go out, dropped her nearly empty cup into a plastic trash barrel. "You really should come over to my place sometime," she said. "I know we had that whole thing where you called and then I never called back, but I've gotten past what was bugging me. I think."

[maddy_ricks]

“Sure.” Maddy picked at the paper on her dead cigarette. “I’ve got some openings in my schedule.” She tossed the butt and stretched out her legs in front of her to examine her shoes. “It might do me some good to hang out with a chick. Other than Mel, it’s strictly dickly in my social circle.”

As an afterthought, she asked, "What was bugging you?"

[tiny_dancer81]

"The part where I wanted to bite you."

She might as well say it now, get it over with. It wasn't like she had a filter anyway. Maddy might not even be offended. Theresa looked at the key around the other girl's neck again, wondered if she'd ever been to any of the places she could reach with it.

"In a nice way," she added casually, as if that made it less weird. "Some people are into it."

[maddy_ricks]

Maddy affected a blasé attitude. “Ehh, you’re a vampire. It's par for the course, isn't it? If you didn’t want to bite me, I’d be offended. That being said,” she jabbed a finger in the air, “If you ever bare your teeth at me without my permission, I’ll open a swirling vortex to a land of perpetual sunshine and shove you into it. We clear?”

[tiny_dancer81]

"Crystal."

That really was kind of adorable. Or maybe she was just really susceptible to a pretty face.Theresa idly considered getting something new done to her hair. Maybe white streaks this time. Like the Bride of Frankenstein.

She held out her small hand in Maddy's direction, put n her best 'Aren't I harmless?' expression. "Let's shake on the hanging out thing, that way it'll stick. Also, I think Brian knows about me, but he hasn't said anything yet."

[maddy_ricks]

“He does.” Maddy leaned forward and shook Theresa’s hand, knees going akimbo. “He’s got his own shit going on, so he’s not completely freaked, just cautious because, hey, vampire. He told me he got in a physical altercation with one on the street, right out in the open. Some chick with red hair said hey, screw the onlookers, let’s rumble. They had a comic book style battle. I think there was property damage.”

She scratched her knee through a hole in her jeans.

“He didn’t tell me until way later.”

[tiny_dancer81]

"Huh. Yeah, most of us are pretty confrontational. Some of the girls are worse than the guys."

The slightest twinge of something that might have been guilt tried to open one eye, but Theresa refused to examine it. If twas Deanna, they had hung out once and she hadn't seen her in ages. Sometimes, the world was too small.

"I'm glad he made it out okay," she said in a neutral voice. "I like Brian all right, he's just a little spacy sometimes."

[maddy_ricks]

"He thinks too much, and he feels twice as much as a normal guy. If I were him, I'd get stoned all the time, too." Maddy always felt the need to defend him like a brother only she was allowed to insult. She looked up as a musician exited the building, a girl who played keyboard and did backing vocals. Though she gave a polite wave of recognition, Maddy mumbled without moving her lips, "I hooked up with her once. Total weirdo. She asked me to pee on her."

[tiny_dancer81]

"Ew, seriously?"

Theresa actually made a face at the idea. Whatever else she was, she wasn't into that. A girl had to have some standards.

"Can I get you a beer?" she asked Maddy, pointing towards the interior of the Dive. "I know you're not on stage tonight, but free beer is never under-rated."

[maddy_ricks]

Maddy nodded. Yeah, she was serious, and she might not have been so judgmental except the girl asked on make-out number two, leaving Maddy to wonder where things would have escalated from there. Best get out before she found out.

“Yeah, sure.” Far be it from her to turn down beer. She’d already had two and was feeling nice and loose. “Ply me with alcohol. I won’t say no.”

While she waited, Maddy climbed onto a large picnic table top and stretched out. Her ankles hung off the end, but it was otherwise a comfortable spot to view the orange-tinted night sky. A disc jockey was playing Blondie over the loud speakers while the bands switched out and she hummed the tune to Rip Her to Shreds

[tiny_dancer81]

One band was leaving the stage while another waited for them to vacate the stage. and Theresa diminutive form worked its way through the sparse crowd and to the bar. Teddy was pulling beers at the tap, his tattooed arms bare to the shoulders because he'd rolled the sleeves of his t shirt up. The vampire yelled his name over the music coming through the speakers, and he drew two drafts and passed them over.

Back outside, she handed one cup to Maddy and said, "So what's your life like in the daytime? I haven't seen the sun in five years. How does the living half...live?"

[maddy_ricks]

She half sat up and attempted to slurp beer without pouring it on her neck. Once setting it aside, she answered. “It’s boring. Especially because in Vegas it’s like the Rapture at 11 a.m. I do a bunch of side jobs to make money. I pour coffee, I waitress for a catering company, sometimes I do dumb stuff on the street to see if tourists will toss me change. I barely get anything from the ‘Nerves once it’s divided between the four of us. Strike that. Five, since Brian brought in that bitchy violinist part time.”

She made a bleh sound.

“Susie. She’s a half-breed, only she thinks I don’t know it.”

[tiny_dancer81]

Theresa frowned down into her cup, picturing antlers or cloven feet, something that wouldn't be immediately noticeable. Maddy must have been around for a long time to pick up on stuff like that. Maybe she should start paying more attention.

"It's weirdly funny, 'cause I kinda used to like the summer," she said. Before, y'know. Once the sun becomes your enemy, long days aren't that great."

She shrugged when she said it, took a pull of her beer. "Did you know when you inherited that key that it was a lifetime gig?"

[maddy_ricks]

“Yep. I was so excited to get out of the dust bowl that I didn’t care.” Maddy rolled onto her side on the tabletop and braced herself on an elbow. “What about you? Did you know you were inheriting those fangs forever?” She gathered the beer closer to herself and wished people drank them out of straws. Reluctance to pick up your beer had to be the laziest quality ever.

[tiny_dancer81]

"I didn't know what had happened at first. I was coming down from being high, crashing hard when I got the bite. Dane thought he was helping."

She rolled her eyes when she said it, but it was like Maddy's relationship with Brian, only she was allowed to criticize the asshole. The other girl, the one the mortal had been talking about, had disappeared back inside. "Why did the last person give yu othe key if they knew it meant the lights would go out?"

[maddy_ricks]

“People talk a lot, but in all actuality, who wants to live forever? For.Ev.Er. Nobody,” she scoffed. “That’s insane.” Maddy sat up at last and picked up her drink. “He was done with it and I was a dope with stars in my eyes, thinking about all the doors I could open, allll the places I would explore. But time itself is exhausting! I learn things to kill my boredom. Tap dancing, bass guitar, French, and that's just the last six years. You don’t think there’ll ever come a time when you’re ready to shuffle off into oblivion?”

[tiny_dancer81]

"Ask me in twenty years and maybe I'll have an answer."

Forever was a long stretch of road, and one the vampire had barely begun to walk, but it was hard to imagine wanting to hang it up. Her human self had wanted to live, but maybe if ennui set in she could put an end to things. In a century or two.

"Right now, unlife is pretty good, though" she added. World domination isn't for me, but that'd be too much paperwork anyway."

[maddy_ricks]

“Heh. Yeah. Besides, not being a world leader frees you up to focus on the things in unlife that matter.” Maddy raised her mug in a pert salute. “You can become a connoisseur of human necks.” She arched hers like a vain peacock. “You can develop that thrall thing and have girls dropping their panties for miles. You can learn to identify blood type by taste alone, maybe even smell!”

[tiny_dancer81]

That earned an arched eyebrow, and she just barely refrained from leaning in to take a sniff of that arched neck. She did still think of having a nibble off of Maddy now and then. When eternity was a fact, anything could happen.

"The last girl I fed off of didn't seem to mind," she said with a half-smile. "Sometimes girls really do know better."

[maddy_ricks]

“Oh yeah, and who was that?”

Maddy wished she had another cigarette. She could ask the Urine Queen across the way, but that might invite conversation. Instead, she gathered her legs closer and fiddled with the key on its chain.

[tiny_dancer81]

Could she tell? Should she tell? Considering that the world seemed to shrink exponentially everywhere she went, there was every chance that Maddy knew not only about Slayers but knew Valerie personally. Theresa fiddled with the ends of her hair with her free hand.

"It was this girl at a frat party on campus, a cutie named Valerie."

[maddy_ricks]

Maddy held still. “She have blonde hair?” The key glinted under the lamp post light. “Big eyes, huge rack?”

[tiny_dancer81]

"Uh...yeah."

Theresa was looking at the key instead of at Maddy's face. Se was imagining a world of endless sunlight and how fast she'd burn. Conscience-deprived or not, she was aware that human society had rules, and if you broke the rules and got caught there were usually consequences.

"But she offered, asked me if I was hungry. I figured it was a thing she wanted to try."

[maddy_ricks]

Maddy rolled her eyes and her head lolled back.

“Meeeeerrrrghhh!” Her hands scrubbed roughly over her face, a treacherous activity with those eyelashes glued on her lids. “That’s Brian’s girl. I mean… they’re kind of loose with the boundaries? But god, this is a small city. She was into me for like… an afternoon. I didn’t do anything,” she pointed at her chest, “You know why? Because you don’t shit where you eat. That might be the wrong metaphor, but you get my drift.”

[tiny_dancer81]

"Fuck."

Theresa stopped fooling with her hair and drank some more of her beer. For days after that party, she'd been able to remember the burn of the Slayer's blood on the back of her tongue, and what felt like a dull-orange glow in her belly. Coke had nothing on the high that super-powered blood carried.

The diminutive vampire tried to arrange her features into a suitably contrite - or at least chagrined - expression, lifted her shoulders in a tiny shrug. "It was one time and I haven't seen her since. I didn't even get a whole afternoon."

[maddy_ricks]

Maddy stared for all of three seconds before bursting into laughter.

“If we ever decide to make this even more of a circle jerk, you’ll get the whole afternoon.” She waggled her eyebrows and finished her beer. Wiping the corner of her mouth, she said, “Did I ever say you remind me of Punky Brewster?”

[tiny_dancer81]

Theresa laughed too. For one thing, why not, and for another, she wasn't about to be immolated. At least Maddy didn't have a boyfriend, as far as she was aware, anyway.

"Yeah, Dane used to talk about that stupid show," she said. "One f the drawbacks of looking like this forever is that I'll probably always get carded. Eternal life without booze would be wayover-rated."

[maddy_ricks]

“I get it, too,” Maddy said and shrugged. It was easier just to whip out the (supremely fake) identification card before anyone asked. “I don’t mind looking young. But it’s kind of insulting to be carded by someone thirty years younger than you.” She stretched her arms over head and let them fall. “Listen, I gotta head back inside. I left Joey by himself. He’s probably drowned in a toilet bowl by now.” The blonde got off the picnic table.

[tiny_dancer81]

"Yeah, I gotta get inside too. I figure no one's broken their ass since nobody came out to yell for me, but I need to make sure the singer for that last band isn't sucking up too much free beer."

Theresa stepped aside so Maddy could get past her, then followed after her. Party foul aside, the chances of getting to know the human better were looking good.