Generation V Read Free Page A

ID card got me access to all sorts of college facilities.
    The apartment had two bedrooms with a kitchen that had been updated in the ’seventies, and a bathroom whose peppermint pink amenities were authentic to the ’sixties. The wallpaper said
visually impaired old lady
, but my daring decorating mix of IKEA and roadkill furniture, plus the piles of DVDs, said
cheap student
.
    I stepped inside, wishing that the memories would stay away. They waited in the back of my mind, and I knew that tonight I’d dream of blood.
    There was nothing I could do about that, so I focused on the now. Specifically, my roommate, Larry, whose clothing was scattered all over the living room. If I could’ve afforded to live alone, I would’ve, but living here meant sharing space. And Larry was a philosophy grad student at Brown who had liked the apartment for all the same reasons I did, and who even seemed like he’d be an okay guy to live with. I’d gone through five roommates in four years, but I always thought that the next one would be different.
    Larry had been different—he’d been the worst one yet. Since signing the lease he’d shown a noticeable tendency to avoid cleaning any of the common spaces, clog the toilet (and leave it for me to fix), have obnoxiously noisy sex with a series of women (culminating recently with my girlfriend, Beth, after which they both found it useful to quote Sartre at me to explain how unreasonable itwas of me to object), and lately a propensity of not paying his half of the rent. As of last count, he was four months behind, a weight that I was now having to pull double shifts down at Busy Beans to offset.
    But worst of all was the meat.
    I’d gone vegetarian when I started dating Beth, who was militantly vegan. At first it had just been a pacifying measure to sustain my likelihood of having sex, but after two weeks I noticed that it helped me keep that vampire part of me pushed down, and I stuck with it. I wasn’t a particularly great vegetarian—I don’t think I could give up cheese or eggs if I tried—and periodically I’d backslide and eat chicken. But I avoided red meat.
    And tonight, just as on many other occasions, Larry had left his leftovers in the fridge.
    Not paying his part of the rent seemed to give Larry a lot more spare change, and he ate out a lot. For an unapologetic carnivore, that meant a lot of steak, ribs, rack of lamb, and burgers came home in doggie bags. Whenever his date didn’t finish her meal, Larry brought the rest of it home so that he could still get his money’s worth. That would’ve been hard enough, except Larry would take the food
out
of the nice foam containers, stick it on a plate, and put that in the fridge without a cover. He said it made it easier to eat at two in the morning when he got hungry.
    I looked in the fridge. It was steak this time, still with a few leaves of parsley clinging to it. And even old and half-eaten, it was rich and red. Rare. There was some juice on the plate, making little red droplets.
    Jill’s blood had made pools. Brian’s blood had made patterns on the walls.
    I realized that I was licking my fingers, and that I’d dipped them in the steak juice. A minute ago I’d felt the warmth of a stuffy and un-air-conditioned apartment on a June evening, but now everything felt cool and comfortable.
    I’m mostly human. But that leaves me a little vampire.
    I pushed it down, all the way down, washing my hand off at the sink and wishing that it wasn’t so hard to watch the last of the juice run down the drain.
    Tonight I’d eat my vegetarian wrap and try to convince myself that it was everything that a nice
human
guy could want for dinner. I’d watch Bogey movies until I fell asleep. I’d nag Larry again about the rent, even if he had a girl with him when he came home. Even if it was Beth again.
    Tomorrow I’d accept my mother’s invitation.

Chapter 2
    Trying to outrun dreams and outflank Larry, I’d watched the movie marathon on