Sucking in San Francisco Read Free Page B

. LILITH

    I walk for awhile and get lucky. A cab in the middle of nowhere. It’s an easy ride through the Presidio’s quiet streets to my friends’ home in Pacific Heights. The mansions stand like watchmen against the night. It’s peaceful. The streets, low traffic by day, are now quiet. The night is something I’ve learned to appreciate since becoming a vampire. I miss the stars, though. As the city has grown the starlight has diminished.
    I stop the cabbie at a pillared mansion with carved marble flower boxes that rival the Spreckles Mansion. It’s the only house on the street with all the lights on. The lawns wind around an oyster shell driveway, lined with ornamental fruit trees. I take a running jump up the steps to the massive cherry wood front doors. They are ornate slabs of hardwood, incredibly thick, carved by master craftsmen and installed so that you can open them with a finger’s touch. They’re never locked. There’s almost always someone at home who can kick some serious ass.
    People work here - maids, a groundskeeper, and a butler, of sorts, who is on call almost twenty-four hours a day. By of sorts, I mean that he’s sort of a pain in the behind, sort of comical relief, and sort of my cross to bear. I found Andrew at the end of his rope and in need of a job. He had been a waiter in a coffee shop I frequented on Union Street. One day, the building was sold, destined to become a Pilate’s studio. While I’m sure the neighborhood needed tight heinies and ripped abs, Andrew was out of a job. He was sobbing in my coffee when I had one of my brainstorms, more like, Lily-likes-to-bring-home-strays moments. I thought, my friends don’t drink much more than coffee and tea and Andrew knows how to make and serve awesome coffee and tea. Connection-connection. Okay, so I was exhibiting a bit of my spur of the moment, off the cuff, manic tendencies. My three friends rolled their eyes when I told them. Actually, they’re more family than friends. It’s worked out for all of us.
    All three of them are home tonight. As I head in, I notice Sebastian, the youngest of the three, in his sexy, wicked jeans, worn in all the right places, suit jacket and button down shirt. He must have already been out and back again. He’s at ease sitting in the library, which is where we usually meet. Helena, my oldest friend, renovated the original house to make the library from two existing rooms, so it is huge. A row of tables lines one end of the room with computers and reading lamps. Numerous books in various stages of examination are on the tables at all times. Huge windows flank an entire wall and the remaining walls are taken up with bookcases and ladders which reach the floor-to-ceiling shelves. Souvenirs from their long lives decorate the room. For most people they would be rare artifacts, but to my family they are merely special items they couldn’t part with. We have to meet here if we ever want to include our leader, Julian, in anything. He is the quintessential book worm and scientist. Helena loves to surf on her iMac under the big, ornately framed-in windows.
    Helena, my best friend and ‘mother’, happens to be nine hundred and eighty-six. She’s Mediterranean and looks sun kissed. I was turned in the winter so I am pale as snow.
    Julian, Helena’s soul mate and lover, reads La Reppublica, an Italian newspaper, at his desk. He is seven hundred and ninety years old. Shaved head, a virtuous Roman. He’s built like a god. Julian is captivated by humans and has a protective concern for them as much as Helena.
    Julian and Helena are drinking their customary tea… sissies. They don’t have the coffee bug like I do. Sebastian sips his drink in front of the fireplace, which is big enough to roast an ox or an entire tree. None of them expect me to be off work yet. I stop by most nights, so they aren’t surprised to see me. They’d love it if I moved in. They keep asking me, I keep holding out. Sebastian calls me