1.3 Succubus (part four)
Dusk. Ferdinand’s walking out of the Magic Beans, alone, looking bummed — it seems the commercial break didn’t go too well. He waves a good-bye to Cassie as he goes, and when he leaves the camera stays on Cassie, then pulls back and reveals the Owlbear, lurking in an alley across the street, watching Cassie work. The camera pulls back again, revealing Andrew in front of the 20×20 Room, standing near his Segway, looking at the Owlbear through a pair of night-vision goggles. Infravision.
Andrew sees Ferdinand, and surreptitiously signals to him by twitching his head to one side. Ferdinand, not realizing Andrew wants him to be stealthy, jogs across the street and asks what up.
“The Owlbear,” Andrew hisses. “The Owlbear’s been watching Cassie work.”
Ferdinand follows Andrew’s line of vision and sees the Owlbear.
“Hey, yeah.” Ferdinand waves to the Owlbear. “Yo!”
“Stop that!” Andrew shrieks, and then falls to the ground.
This is not because he’s throwing a fit over Ferdinand’s waving to the Owlbear, but rather because someone wearing an honest-to-god black trench coat and matching fedora has body-checked him and pinned him to the ground.
“Whoa,” says Ferdinand and pulls out his camcorder. The scene shifts to grayscale VHS, Ferdinand’s POV.
“Who sent you?!” demands the trench coat.
“Augh!” says Andrew.
“Who sent you?!” the trench coat shouts again.
“Nobody! Guide to Hunting Druids! Augh!” says Andrew.
“What clan are you?” she — for inside the trench coat is a woman — wants to know.
Andrew stammers, and she turns toward Ferdinand (ie, the camera).
“What about you? What clan are you?”
“Uh, I guess Clan Jack Nelson Ford, at the moment,” Ferdinand says. Ferdinand zooms in on the woman’s face, and it becomes clear she’s the 20×20 Room clerk, “Natural Twenty.” Under the trench coat she’s wearing something black and tight and uncomfortable-looking.
The clerk shoots Ferdinand a look, then turns back to Andrew. “Are you Trujah? Aristophanes? Are you Cam or Bat?”
“I’m not any of those things,” Andrew manages to say.
“You’re not… warm, are you?”
“What?”
“The game!” the clerk breathes. “The Vaempyre LARP! Muncie Sucks!”
“The game?” Ferdinand asks.
The camera briefly breaks away from Ferdinand’s POV and swings around to the 20×20 Room storefront, centering and zooming on a flier taped to the window: Muncie Sucks, an official Vaempyre LARP, Saturday Nights. Below the hand lettering is a slightly disproportionate sketch of a skinny man wearing leather, fishnet, and makeup.
“There’s… another game?” Andrew inhales, his mind all spinning with the possibilities. Two games? For so long he couldn’t find one, and now two?
“Yeah, what clan are you? What kind of vaempyre?” the clerk asks.
“I’m… warm,” Andrew says, resigned.
“Oh, then I turned you,” the clerk says. She’s still on her hands and knees on top of Andrew, who’s still lying on his back on the ground.
“Okay,” says Andrew.
“But it must be a secret! My brother in darkness, Morgan, has forbidden the turning of new get!”
“Okay,” says Andrew.
“You can help me. Together, our powers combined will be enough to vanquish Morgan and seize control of the cabal! Not even Mobius could stand against us then!”
“Okay,” says Andrew.
“If anyone asks, you’re not mine, you’re… the scion of an Elder from Des Moines, newly arrived in the area.”
“Okay,” says Andrew.
“Come to my apartment Saturday at six o’clock,” the clerk says. “I’ll meet you first and get you dressed properly and then introduce you to Morgan and the others.”
“Okay,” says Andrew.
“Oh, wait, the garden party,” Ferdinand reminds Andrew.
“Yeah… I might be late,” Andrew says. It’s not clear whether he’s speaking to Ferdinand or the clerk.
The next day: Ferdinand is wearing different clothes again. He’s in Alvin’s Excrucian, in the passenger seat. Alvin is driving. Oliver is in the back seat, wearing two seatbelts.
“Where do you want to go?” Alvin asks.
“Why not the Magic Beans, get some lattes,” Ferdinand suggests.
“I can’t go there.”
“What?”
“I told Millie I wouldn’t go there until and unless I had her permission.”
“What?”
“Why?” asks Oliver.
Alvin just shakes his head. “There’s a Starbucks inside the security curtain at the airport, let’s go there.”
“No, the Magic Beans is right here. Look. Park,” Ferdinand commands him with such insistence that he does.
Standing outside the Magic Beans. “I said I can’t go in. She’s in there,” Alvin says, and points.
“All right.”
“Nobody likes a stalker, Ferdinand.”
“What’s it going to take to get you inside this coffee shop?”
“I said, Millie’s invitation.”
“Fine. One second while I check with my barista.”
Ferdinand steps into the Magic Beans and emerges quickly with, not Millie, but a reasonable facsimile thereof, wearing a wig and all.
“This is Maureen,” Ferdinand says. “Today is Dress Up Like Your Coworker Day.” Really, it is. A linebacker manning the espresso machine is dressed uncannily like Cassie. Inexplicably, mariachi music plays over the sound system, and there are free corn chips.
“Millie took today off because she refuses to participate,” Maureen says.
“Say it,” Ferdinand tells her.
Maureen rolls her eyes. “I invite you in,” she says theatrically to Alvin, and gestures.
Inside. Oliver, Alvin, and Ferdinand are sipping lattes (if anyone writes and complains, Oliver’s is decaf) and munching on corn chips and salsa.
Alvin describes some of the campaign commercials he’s thinking of putting together: eagles and jackals –
Ferdinand interrupts with a surprisingly harsh assessment of Alvin’s ideas. They’re gimmicky, ironic, meta. They lack the punch of real emotion, they’re all laid-back and hip and ironic. He appears to feel very strongly about this. It’s one of the problems with the modern world, this enshrinement of irony to the point that people don’t know how to express genuine emotion –
Oliver waits for Ferdinand to pause for breath, then asks him if he’s going to marry Datur. Since she’s pregnant.
Ferdinand looks at Oliver as if he swallowed a bug. He stammers something about life choices and joy.
Alvin: “There are a wide variety of child services, adoption, abortion; there’s a support network in place for her regardless of whether she decides to keep the child herself or…”
“I don’t know that that’s…” Ferdinand stammers some more.
“Are you happy, Ferdinand?” Alvin asks him.
After a dice-roll sound effect, in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, a small version of the ten-dot track appears, and goes from seven dots filled to nine.
“You should marry her. Otherwise the baby won’t have a mother and a father,” Oliver tells him.
“But all –” Ferdinand breaks off, stammers, looks back and forth between Alvin and Oliver, takes a ragged breath, and gets up from the table and runs out of the coffee shop.