SEVEN
Text messages between Mr. Frederick J. Fitzwilliam and Mr. Reginald R. Cleaves
Hey Freddie
You okay?
No. I am the opposite of okay.
The woman who I had hoped would teach me how to live in the modern world has fled from me because of you.
What were you thinking, behaving that way in front of my roommate?
She deserved to know the truth about you.
I was still working my way up to telling her.
She’s human
Not telling her ur a vampire right off the bat was a dick move
I do not know what “a dick move” is.
Im insulting u
Well I suppose, in this case, I rather deserve it.
Why hadnt u told her
It’s complicated.
Complicated?
Yes.
lol
Cassie says “lol” in some of our notes to each other, but I do not know what it means.
Wait
You and Cassie leave notes for each other?
Also since when do you call her Cassie instead of Miss Greenberg?
I call her Cassie because she asked me to. And yes, we leave notes for each other.
We are roommates, after all.
Or we were roommates, rather.
Do you text each other too?
Sometimes.
But you HATE texting
That is true.
You never text me back unless ur having a crisis
Yes. But you are an asshole.
How often do you and Cassie text?
I do not keep track of such things.
Our typical method of communication is to leave notes for each other on the kitchen table. That way I do not need to use this infernal device to communicate with her.
Sometimes she draws me pictures on the notes.
They are lovely.
She’s quite a talented artist.
In fact, she’s quite good at a lot of things.
I dont believe this
What don’t you believe?
You’re into her
You REPROBATE! How dare you?!
What?????
Oh. No, lol
“You’re into her” is just a modern figure of speech, bud
It just means you have romantic feelings for her.
Oh.
I see.
You’re still wrong, though.
Right, lol
Listen. How long have I known you?
I shudder to think.
Have you EVER talked with a woman more than once a month before
No. But I’ve also never lived with a woman before, either.
When you think about Cassie not living with you anymore how does that make you feel
When I think about Cassie never returning to me it makes me sad.
Waking up in the evening isn’t exciting anymore now that I know I won’t be seeing her face.
So you’re into her, is what I’m hearing
Absolutely not. I am NOT “into her.”
I just like her drawings.
And her everything.
Oh this is gonna be good
Sam lived in a part of town that was popular among young professionals who had tiny little purebred dogs and worked sixty hours a week at their jobs in the Loop.
Visiting Sam and Scott in their second-floor brownstone apartment usually reminded me of what a colossal failure I was in most areas of my life. And staying with them after fleeing Frederick’s apartment was supremely awkward.
For one thing, sharing one small bathroom with two guys—even guys as neat and tidy as Sam and Scott—was not ideal. I didn’t have quite enough time to myself in there in the mornings, and because they were a lot hairier than I was, the bathtub drain was twenty-five percent grosser than strictly necessary. For another, their cats Sophie and Moony, while adorable, liked to walk on me in the night as I tried to sleep on the living room couch.
For yet another, Sam and Scott were newlyweds in every sense of the word. Their walls were regrettably thin. Sam was loud. Bunking in the living room gave me a front-row seat to their nightly sex-having, a punishment no one deserved. Least of all me, Sam’s best friend since the sixth grade.
As bad as living with a vampire who hid being a vampire from me had been, living with newlyweds—even for just two days—might have been worse.
“Good morning,” Sam said, yawning, as he left his bedroom. He was sporting a huge purple hickey on his neck. I was pretty sure I’d heard every second of the hickey-giving process the previous night. God, I wished I hadn’t.
“Morning.” I pushed back the quilt I’d slept under and rubbed my eyes. I was exhausted. Between all the sex happening in the next room, Moony’s penchant for getting soft white fur on my pillow, and Sam’s lumpy couch, sleep had been elusive the past two nights. But I didn’t want Sam to know that. The accommodations might be lacking in several very key respects, but he and Scott were still doing me a huge favor.
And neither of them had asked any probing questions about why I was there when I’d shown up two nights ago. I was grateful for that.
Sam pulled out the box of oatmeal from the pantry and asked, his back still to me, “What are your plans for the day?”
I didn’t know if that was a passive-aggressive comment on my still sleeping on his couch two days after showing up with none of my stuff and no explanations. It felt like one, though. In an hour he’d be leaving in his slacks and button-down shirt, ready for another day as a law firm associate—and I’d still be semi-homeless and as unsure of my next move as ever.
I looked away, fidgeting with the fringe of the quilt still covering my legs.
“I’m going to the recycling center today.”
That was part of the truth, anyway. Sam didn’t need to hear the rest of it—which was that before heading to the recycling center I planned to watch a few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For research—or so I told myself. The show had to be wildly inaccurate when it came to vampiric details, but after two days of processing what had happened with Frederick the other night, my panic over the situation was fading. And my curiosity was growing.
What was it like to be an immortal who drank human blood? Did Frederick’s heart beat? What were the rules governing how he lived and ate . . . and died? It wasn’t much, but without getting back in touch with Frederick himself, Buffy was about all I had for guidance. It had to be a more accurate representation of vampires than Twilight or those old Anne Rice novels, right? Plus, it was an enjoyable show.
The fact that Buffy also showed romantic human–vampire relationships had absolutely nothing to do with my interest, of course. Neither did the fact that I hadn’t been able to get Frederick’s pleading eyes, or his assurances that he would never hurt me, out of my head since the morning I first woke up on Sam’s sofa.
“The recycling center, huh?” Sam’s back was still to me as he rummaged through the cupboards for a saucepan.
“Yeah,” I said. “I need to get cracking on my art show submission.” Since running out of Frederick’s apartment, my idea of a pastoral scene that incorporated bits of disposable plastic was beginning to take shape in my mind. But I still needed to think through some of the finer details. What colors would work best for the decaying manor house I’d be painting? Should the field in front of the house abut a lake or a stream?
Would soda straws or candy bar wrappers work best for the subversive part of my project—or should I use a combination of both?
I hoped I’d come to some conclusions at the recycling center that afternoon. I always did my best thinking at the dump.
Sam’s smile was warm and encouraging. “I’m so happy you’re putting yourself out there like this, Cassie.”
“Me, too.” It was the truth. “There’s no way to know if the art exhibition will accept my piece, but it feels good to be working towards something big again.”
Sam made his way into the living room as he ate his oatmeal. “By the way,” he said, faking nonchalance, “someone slid a letter addressed to you under our door last night.”
I looked up at him, surprised. “Really?”
“It’s so fancy that at first I thought it might have been a summons to visit the King of England.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “But then I remembered those aren’t usually slid under the door in the middle of the night.”
Sam held up an envelope I hadn’t seen him bring into the living room and tossed it onto the coffee table between us.
My breath caught.
It was Frederick’s stationery—a square, off-white envelope identical to those he used for all his notes to me. Even if he’d used regular notebook paper, though, I would have immediately known this was from him. He’d written Miss Cassie Greenberg on the front in the same fancy handwriting, and with the same blue ink, he used for all our correspondence.
His familiar blood-red wax seal held the envelope closed.
FJF
Before meeting Frederick I hadn’t known wax seals still existed. Everything about that man was an anachronism, I realized. Out of place. From a different time altogether.
Just how many clues about who and what he truly was had I missed?
Sam pretended to turn his attention back to his oatmeal, but I could feel his eyes on me as I slid my finger beneath the seal and broke it. Sam was curious about this letter—but I still hadn’t found the courage to tell him the truth about either Frederick or why I was staying in his apartment. I just didn’t have the energy to get into any of it with him.
Bracing myself, I slid out the single folded sheet of stiff, off-white paper from the envelope and began to read.
Dear Cassie,
I hope this letter finds you well.
I write to let you know that your belongings are right where you left them. When you fled, you said I could dispose of anything you left behind. That said, I suspect that what remains in my home constitutes the bulk of your material possessions. I further suspect that you said what you did only out of fear and in the heat of the moment—and that you do, in fact, wish to have your things returned to you.
If I do not get a response to this letter within a week, I will assume you truly do not wish to have your things back and I will arrange with Gerald to have them donated to charity. (Gerald handles recycling for our building. I spoke with him for the first time yesterday. Do you know he has worked for the city’s sanitation department for twenty-two years, and has two grown children? I did not. But you probably already do, as you took out the recycling several times in the two weeks we lived together and you are so warm and friendly with everyone.)
Please let me know at your earliest convenience if you would like your things returned to you. I can even arrange it so that you can collect them without having to interact with me, if that’s what you want.
Despite how we left things, I want you to know it was truly a pleasure to have made your acquaintance and to have been your roommate for the short time we were together. I am so sorry to have upset and frightened you through my lack of full disclosure and my actions.
Yours,
Frederick
I swallowed the lump in my throat, then read Frederick’s letter a second time.
Yours, Frederick.
He was just so . . . earnest.
And thoughtful. Beyond the compliment he paid me—you are so warm and friendly with everyone—he’d understood me well enough to know that after my panic had subsided, I’d likely want my stuff back.
Without him hanging around.
The vulnerability Frederick must be feeling all but jumped from the page. Yet I could tell he had taken great pains to try and hide it. I thought back to the evening he’d tried so hard to understand my art. In hindsight, of course my art made no sense to him. The man was hundreds of years old! But he’d tried anyway, listening attentively as I explained it to him—all because it was important to me.
Maybe Frederick was telling the truth when he said he never wanted to hurt me. It was seeming increasingly likely. He might not technically be alive—and yes, he was a vampire—but he was also . . .
Kind.
And thoughtful.
It’s possible he’d been faking all that just to lure me in, but with some distance from the events of the other night, I didn’t think that he’d been pretending.
“You planning to fill me in on what’s going on?” Sam’s sharp voice cut into my musings.
I bit my lip, looking away. “What do you mean?”
Sam set his bowl of oatmeal down on the coffee table and assumed what Scott and I secretly called his Sam the Lawyer posture: leaning forward in his chair, elbows on knees. I’d become so familiar with it over the years I had a feeling I knew what I was in for.
“You showed up at our apartment the other night with none of your stuff, no warning, and no explanation,” he started. “You looked like you’d just seen a ghost. You look that way right now, too, reading and rereading a letter that looks like it was written with a feather and quill.”
I pressed the letter against my chest reflexively. “This is my private mail.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “You’re literally in my living room, Cass. My question stands. What is going on?”
I paused, trying to think through how to answer that question without raising any more red flags in Sam’s mind.
“This letter is from Frederick,” I said, very carefully. “He wants to return my stuff, but I . . .” I trailed off. Took a deep breath. “I think I need to talk with him. I might have been too hasty when I moved out.”
Sam stood up abruptly. “What are you talking about?”
“You heard me.”
“Cassie,” Sam said. “You were so terrified of him the other night you ran here. Now he sends you one letter and you want to go back?” He shook his head. “This feels like a hypothetical they might use to train lawyers on how to file protective orders against abusive partners.”
My heart leapt into my throat. “It’s not like that.”
“No?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Frederick hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s been a great roommate. We just . . .” God. How could I possibly explain this situation to Sam in a way that made sense?
Sam put a hand on my shoulder, warm and reassuring. His face softened. Sam the Lawyer was gone now, replaced with Sam the Life Counselor. I’d seen a lot of him over the years, too.
“Let us help you find another place to live, Cass. Your arrangement with Frederick clearly didn’t work out. And while you’re welcome to stay with us as long as you like, at some point I assume you’d like to not be sleeping on our couch anymore.”
I hesitated. The smart thing for me to do, of course, would be to try and find another place to live. That’s what a rational, level-headed person who just found out their hot roommate was a vampire would do.
But I’d never once been accused of being rational or level-headed.
And now, after having some time to think it over, I believed him when he said he would never hurt me.
I thought back to how I’d basically lied to him, too, when I told him in my first email that I was an art teacher. I’d wanted to make the best impression possible when I applied for the apartment and when I moved in. I wanted him to pick me.
Could I really blame him for also wanting to hide the more unsavory aspects of his history, and his most unpleasant personality traits, from his new roommate? Granted, yes—being a vampire was a much bigger deal in the grand scheme of things than exaggerating my job history. But in that moment, I think I understood his reasoning for doing what he did.
“I need to talk to him before making a decision,” I said to Sam. “When I ran out, he told me he . . . he wanted to explain a few things. I left without giving him a chance to do that.”
The sound of running water floated out to us from the bathroom. Scott was awake now, too. He and Sam would soon be off to their respective offices.
“And now you want to give him that chance?” Sam asked, softly.
I nodded. “There are a few things I need to clear up with him.”
“I don’t feel good about this.” Sam was staring at me now, arms folded tightly across his chest. “I bet if you told me the whole story I’d feel even worse about it.”
He was probably right about that.
I quickly kissed Sam on the cheek to distract him, then grabbed my phone and made my way to the front door. “I’m going to give him a quick call, then run a few errands. I’ll be back later.”
“You’re not going to call him here?”
“Nah,” I said, trying to ignore what sounded like alarm in Sam’s voice. There was no way I’d be able to keep Sam in the dark about what Frederick was if I had this conversation in front of him. I pulled on the trainers I kept by the front door. “I want to go for a walk and stretch my legs while I’m talking.”
“You hate exercise.”
He was right about that, too. This time, the note of concern in Sam’s voice was unmistakable. “I’ll be right back,” I promised again, before leaving.
I decided to call Frederick from the South Side recycling center.
True, the recycling center was noisy. But I needed to make this call from a place of confidence and strength. I was only going to move back in with Frederick if I felt I could handle it, and if it served me. What better way to remind myself that this phone call was me taking active steps towards improving my situation than to have it while working on my art?
But by the time I’d gotten off the El stop by the recycling center, my nerves couldn’t take the anticipation anymore. I stepped into a donut shop with a flashing neon sign over the door that said fresh donuts. It was gloriously warm inside, and I was greeted by the mouthwatering smell of melting sugar.
I made my way to a table near the back, promising myself I could have a chocolate glazed donut if I made it to the other side of this phone call.
I pulled my phone from my bag, reminded myself that I could do hard things, and texted him.
Hi Frederick
It’s Cassie
Can I call you?
Frederick—a man who hated texting, and who by all accounts should have been asleep at that hour—replied immediately. Like he’d been sitting there all this time, phone in hand, waiting for me to reach out.
Yes.
I am available now if you are.
I dialed his number. He picked up on the first ring.
“Cassie?” The note of hopefulness in his warm, rich voice was unmistakable.
I ignored the corresponding twinge in my chest.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s me.”
“This is a surprise. I was worried I wouldn’t hear from you again.”
“I’m kind of surprising myself right now, too,” I admitted. “Until a few minutes ago I also thought you’d never hear from me again.”
A long pause. “What changed your mind?”
Frederick must have been with someone, because I could hear someone saying something I couldn’t quite make out over the line.
“Shut up, you imbecile,” Frederick muttered. And then, in a rush, he added, “Oh, Cassie—I apologize. That . . . wasn’t directed at you.”
I stifled a laugh in my palm. “Who’s with you right now? Reginald?”
“Who else?” He sighed. He sounded exhausted. “Regrettably.”
“I thought you hated him.”
“I do hate him.” More mumbled words from Reginald that I couldn’t quite make out, followed by his raucous laughter and a loud ow! Did Frederick hit him? The idea was so ridiculous I almost laughed again.
“I see,” I said.
“Yes,” he sighed. “Alas, my options for companionship are limited.”
I toed at the floor under my feet as a wave of irrational guilt rose up in me. The bell over the donut shop’s door chimed as a loud group of customers came inside. Their laughter filled the small space as I worked up the courage to say what was on my mind.
“So. About our situation.”
A pause. “Yes?”
I took a deep breath. “The other night, after you . . . before I ran out, you said you could give me an explanation.”
“Yes.”
“Do you still want to give it to me?” My heart was pounding. Was I really doing this?
His voice was quiet, guarded, when he next spoke. “I do.” And then, after another long moment, he added, “But only if you want to hear what I have to say. I will not force myself, or my story, on you.”
I took another deep breath. “I’d like to hear it.”
“Wonderful. But, may I ask what made you change your mind?”
My breath caught at the hopeful note I heard in his voice. How should I answer that? Should I tell him the truth? That I’d been thinking about him more than was probably wise since I’d moved out—enough to start doing my own research into vampires? That the letter he sent was one of the sweetest letters I’d ever received?
No. I wasn’t ready for that.
So I gave him part of the truth. “I feel bad about running out on you without giving you a chance to explain, when it was so obvious you had more to say. And I believe you, now, when you say you won’t hurt me.”
“I will never hurt you,” he said emphatically. “Never.”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat, unsure what to do with the emotion I heard in his voice.
“I believe you,” I said. “But I have a lot of questions.”
“Of course. I understand this is a lot for any human to absorb. I will be at home all evening. Would you care to come by and talk then?”
“No.” We needed a neutral meeting place. I still wasn’t completely sure what my next move would be, and I didn’t want the awesomeness of the apartment or my undeniable attraction to Frederick to sway my decision-making. Besides—if I was totally wrong about him and Frederick was playing a long game with respect to eating me, I wanted to do this in a public place. “How about Gossamer’s?”
“Gossamer’s?”
“It’s the coffee shop where I work. I’ll text you the address.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “When?”
I swallowed. No turning back now. “Tonight at eight?”
“Perfect.” A pause. “I am very much looking forward to seeing you again, Cassie.”
His voice was soft and sincere. I tried to ignore the way that made my stomach flip, but didn’t really succeed.
“Me, too,” I said, meaning it.