Chapter 7: Poetry and the Vampire

The alarm went off, signaling it was time to move on to the next speed date. But neither Marian nor Harley got up from their seats, and so people skipped past them with barely an annoyed glare.

“Do you think this is the goal of these events?” Harley asked. “I mean, would the people in charge think of it as a success if every table ended up breaking away and just staying together, continuing to talk and get to know each other?”

“If the speed dating turned into dating?” Marian smiled. “I suppose it would mean that everyone found someone to talk to, which is the goal, non? To start, I mean.”

“I think the goal would be more than talking,” Harley said. “Despite what the news may say, I don’t think people come to these just looking for sex.”

“I did not,” Marian said, though her voice suggested that she wouldn’t be opposed to it. “But the young always seem to want to rush into things.”

Harley tapped her fingers on the table. “I’m not really sure how to take that,” she said. “Am I one of the young? How do I know if we don’t talk about ages? And how do I bring up something like that? I can’t say how old we each look; what if I’m wrong?”

“I look twenty-four,” Marian said, knowing she’s been locked in that body for centuries. “And you look…” she paused, giving Harley’s features a more intense moment of study. “Younger than me.”

“I’m older than I look,” Harley said.

“Aren’t we all?” Marian sighed. It felt like something was different, a change in the air. She focused on Harley, wanting to make sure that she hadn’t offended the girl. The young are so flighty, and every human alive counted as young to Marian.

Harley, also feeling the shift in the mood, tried to bring things back by asking another question. “What do you do when you do nothing?” she asked. “I mean, we all say that we will just do nothing, but what does that mean to you? What is nothing?”

“For me, nothing is when I sit on my couch and read,” Marian said. “I shut off my phone, my television, and the world at large. Just get back to what matters, and focus on myself. I can sit for hours in absolute silence, just absorbed in the words of the book in my hand.”

“What do you like to read?”

“I used to love poetry,” Marian said, thinking back to times she and Walter spent with various poets over the years. The parties with Lord Byron and the times Walter had run off with the young man, leaving Marian alone to read and just relax for a bit.

It wasn’t all that long after they escaped from Jacques, and after France had caught the fire of revolution. Marian still wondered sometimes if the two had anything to do with one another. Would he have chased her more ardently if he hadn’t also needed to hide from the guillotine?

“I’ve never really understood poetry,” Harley said, breaking her from her reverie. “Like I understand that it’s pretty and everything. But how can you just sit and read it for a long period of time? I need a story.”

“There are stories in poetry sometimes,” Marian said. “Beowulf is a poem. So is the Illiad. Poetry has many forms.”

“I suppose. I just prefer to read a novel over poetry. I don’t want to work that hard when I’m reading, you know?”

Marian nodded. “It is hard to convince oneself that they are doing nothing when they must stop to interpret the metaphors within a work,” she said. “That is why I say I used to love poetry. These days, I prefer more beach reads.”

“Yes, exactly!” Harley smiled, shifting in her seat like she was getting more involved in the conversation. “People hate on those books all the time, but I love them. I want something that I can just read and enjoy.”

“For the escape,” Marian said. They smiled at each other as if they had been completing each other’s sentences. “I think that’s what doing nothing means. Escaping from the stress of the world.”

“That’s a good version of nothing. Do you have any pets?”

Marian shook her head. She’d never had much luck bonding with animals after her change, and enough time had passed that she didn’t miss them. “I am mildly allergic to dander,” she lied, “so I prefer my cats to be in picture form on the internet.”

Harley nodded at that. “I have two cats,” she said. It wasn’t easy bonding with pets now that she was a vampire, but cats respected her as a hunter and accepted her service in cleaning up after them and giving them attention when they wanted it. It was easier since she’d invested in heated blankets she could put out for them to lay on.

“You said you moved to Minneapolis five years ago. Was it for school?”

Harley bit her lip. She shouldn’t have said that. She didn’t look old enough to have moved here five years ago without something like that. But if she said she went to school, that would bring with it other risks.

“I was running away from home,” she said, surprising herself by coming so close to the truth. “Just wanted to move somewhere no one knew who I was, somewhere I didn’t know anyone. A fresh start.”

“And so you chose Minneapolis?”

“I like the cold,” Harley said.

Marian nodded. “Good excuses to buy and wear more boots,” she said.

Harley laughed at that.

“Have you been in the twin cities for long?”

“We have been here long enough,” Marian said. “My friend and I,” she looked over her shoulder to see that Walter was still participating in the speed dating, “also quite like the cold. Which is good, because there is plenty of it here.”

Harley nodded. “They say it’s cold fourteen months a year here; some months are so cold they count twice or even three times.”

Marian laughed at that. Her laughter sounded to Harley like the kind of poetry she could spend time really trying to understand.