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After visiting an establishment called Bubba’s Beer and Bait, I responded by drilling a little hole in the basement door and gently coaxing two containers of live crickets through a funnel and onto the basement steps. I corked the hole and wedged a towel into the crack under the door so they couldn’t escape. The best part was that Sam would never find all of them. They would crawl under his bed and into corners, and he would drive himself nuts trying to find the source of their annoying little cheeps.
I was careful to lock myself in my room by sundown that night, just so I could listen to his irritated yelps as he woke up to hundreds of chirping bunkmates. The combination was downright musical.
I was having fun. For the first time in a long time, I felt challenged by a man, and not just in a “You can’t tell me what to do!” rebelling-against-Daddy sort of way. Sam was playing with me, sometimes in a mean-spirited, irritating fashion, but he was devoting a lot of time and effort to keeping me entertained. And that made me like him just the tiniest bit.
But then the sawing started. Nights at the house went from blissfully quiet to my own personal construction zone. Sawing, hammering, drilling, and some sound I could only identify as a cat getting stuck in a dishwasher. I never knew when it was going to start. And some nights, I would sit up until the wee hours of the morning, waiting for it, only to be treated to a quick fifteen minutes of audio torture before dawn.
I would wake up every morning, unlock my bedroom, and find some project half-completed that made my life more difficult. The tub was left stripped and half-caulked, meaning that I couldn’t bathe without doing permanent damage to the surrounding drywall. The hardwood floors in the hallway were refinished, meaning that if I wanted to leave my room, I had to choose between climbing out the windows or walking across the fresh sealant and ruining his work. He knew I liked the house too much to want to hurt it. Damn him.
One morning, I found that he’d removed all of the knobs from the house. All of the knobs. The faucets, the doorknobs, the drawer pulls for the bathroom vanity, the stove and oven knobs, and the volume knob for the TV. Yes, I was shocked that Sam’s TV had a volume knob. Let’s just say that Lindy didn’t leave him HDTV-ready.
I launched a reciprocal offensive. I roasted a turkey and placed an oscillating fan so that it blew the delicious Thanksgiving fragrance toward the basement door. I baked fragrant cinnamon rolls and lasagnas redolent with garlic and herbs. This gastronomical warfare worked on two fronts, physical and emotional. One, human food smelled spoiled and rancid to vampires. They lacked the enzymes to process solids, so exposure to most “regular” food resulted in projectile vomiting. And two, Sam would be reminded of all of the things he missed about eating as a human and—in my mind—would wind up weeping in a little pile of soggy vampire on the kitchen floor.
It seemed to be having some effect on him. Every few days, I would find a cheap discount-store saucepan in the kitchen sink, burned black and coated with some unidentifiable oily substance. Was he trying to retaliate?
I supposed I went too far when I made my special peanut-butter-cup brownies and left them under a glass dome on the counter. I even left a little card next to the display that read, “Enjoy!” The next day, I woke up to find that he’d shut off the gas connection to the stove, rendering it unusable. Clearly, he didn’t expect me to know how to fix that.
Amateur.
While the pranks kept my mind active and distracted from the potential disasters looming when I returned to Chicago, the sleep deprivation from the constant power-tooling was taking a physical toll. I was getting even less rest than when I was living at home. I took naps in the afternoons, just to keep alert during Sam’s active hours.
My routine was changing—again—and I was feeling it. What little progress I’d made health-wise took a distinct slide in the opposite direction. Chef was pleased to see that I was keeping the weight I’d gained from forced helpings of dumplings and milkshakes, but he tsked over the reemergence of dark circles under my eyes. I’d looked forward to jogging on some of the green-canopied country roads that surrounded the house, but I didn’t have the energy. I became snappish and grumpy, even with Chef, earning me a ten-pound bag of potatoes to peel.
After I’d reconnected the stove’s innards, I went back to bed and tried to think calm, happy thoughts. I needed to sleep if I was going to come up with an appropriate and painful rebuttal to this abuse of my domain. Striking at my stove was a new low for Sam. How would he like it if I went into his basement and melted down all of his precious tools?
Hmmmm.
“Oh, come on, Tess, where are you going to get a smelter?” I said to myself, sighing and rubbing at the persistent ache in my middle. Perplexed, I sat up in my sad, lumpy bed and realized I was hungry. Not just a little peckish. I was seriously, feeling-my-belly-button-rub-against-my-spine starving. I hadn’t been this hungry in years, certainly not this early in the morning. I was usually just hungry enough to need a snack by the end of a dinner shift, meaning a lot of midnight carbs. I usually skipped breakfast in favor of running five miles to make up for the late-night eating.
I thought back to the last time I’d actually made breakfast for myself and couldn’t remember what I’d eaten. And now that I was hungry, what did I want? Waffles? Frittata? Crepes?
Those things were all well and good, but what I really wanted was Lucky Charms. I hadn’t had sugary cereals since culinary school, when I’d regularly carried those mini-single-serving boxes around for snacking between classes. My pastry instructor found a box of Sugar Smacks sticking out of my purse in class one day and embarrassed me so thoroughly for my “toddler palate” that I’d lost my taste for them. But now I wanted a bowl of marshmallowy, sugar-coated goodness—badly. But what I had was fancy cheeses, eggs, and brioche.
So, instead of Lucky Charms, I had a spinach and feta omelet.
This just wouldn’t do.
—
On my safari into the Shop ’n Save, I grabbed my Lucky Charms, and some Cap’n Crunch for good measure. I bought Oreos, Pop-Tarts, and the makings of Fluffernutter sandwiches—things I’d loved as a kid but had abandoned for the sake of refining my palate. After recovering from the shock of how little I’d spent at the register, I tucked the grocery bags underneath the front seat of my car and cast a longing glance down the quaint little street. It was one of those old-fashioned Main Street arrangements, skinny two-story buildings all bunched up against one another—a hardware store, an antiques store, one of those old-fashioned ice cream parlors, and a sandwich shop called the Three Little Pigs. The cars lining the parking lots were older but well maintained, and the people milling around did it pretty slowly. This was not the place for the Hollow’s young and hip to do their errands.
Did the Hollow have a young and hip crowd?
I didn’t want to go home just yet. So I walked. I window-shopped at the antiques store and browsed the selections at the ice cream parlor for later reference.
I walked past the Three Little Pigs, a snug little brick building with a ridiculously charming cartoon sign. Catching sight of a patron chowing down on a triple-decker ham sandwich through the front window, I seemed to be moving over the threshold before I could stop myself. I was just in time for a late lunch, and I was hoping that whatever I ordered incorporated cheese fries in some way. I hadn’t had cheese fries in years.
The interior was done in dark panels and black-and-white hunting photos, presumably of the owner’s family. The menu was scrawled on a chalkboard in bright colors. The smell was incredible, so many layers of scent—fresh bread, frying bacon, melting cheese. I had to catch myself to keep from drooling all over the floor. This might be even better than Lucky Charms.
With an emphasis on carnivorous delights, the Three Little Pigs seemed to be primarily a sandwich shop. If it once had a pulse, it could be grilled, fried, braised, or roasted, then slapped between two slices of bread and delivered to your table. I was trying to decide between the house specialty—pork chop on wheat, topped with grilled ham and bacon—or starting off small with a turkey club, when a dill pickle flew over the opposite side of my booth and smacked me square in the eye.
“Sonofa—” I yelped, turning to see the adorable strawberry blond toddler who had blinded me with dill brine. “Gun,” I finished lamely.
“I’m so sorry!” a beautiful auburn-haired woman gushed, stepping around the booth and handing me a napkin to dab at my stinging, stinky eye. Her tinny country twang contrasted sharply with the fierce elegance of her face, but I doubted the sandy-haired man sitting with her minded all that much. “We’re still workin’ on hand-eye coordination and table manners. Trust me, they normally don’t waste a bite.”
“That really stings,” I marveled as she hovered.
“I know, it’s the vinegar,” she said, clucking her tongue and offering more napkins. “I’m so sorry.”
