Page 14 of A Deeper Blue
“Fifty years… How old are you?”
Rafe cleared his throat. This part was always a little awkward. He thought about shaving a few decades off but realized that he would never remember that lie later. “A hundred and thirty-eight.”
“Oh.” She appeared to consider that. “Meh,” she said with a shrug. “I’ve dated older.”
“What? When?”
“A vampire. When I was in high school. It was a bad idea.”
“Why are vampires such sickos? I mean, high school… ew.”
“Well, he was turned when he was twenty-one, so it’s not like he was going to find someone in his own age group. Plus, I do feel like they kind of get stunted at the age they get turned. I mean, that’s just a personal opinion, but….”
Rafe made a barf face.
“Oh, like you’ve always dated complete winners. I’m definitely feeling like there’s at least one girl out there who has stolen money out of your wallet.”
“If it was just one, then I’m lucky,” he said. “All right,” he said, turning to the VFW, “drink time.”
“Great,” she said, going in front of him.
“I thought you were going shopping?”
“Oh, I don’t shop at Walmart. It’s exploitive and full of plastics. Also, they don’t carry the kind of underwear I like.”
“The boring kind?” He knew he shouldn’t have said that, but her underwear had been a basic black bikini cut, and this morning’s had been beige. An ass like that should have been covered in lace and strappy things and possibly some sort of jewel just because it rated decoration.
“The kind made out of renewable bamboo,” she said, and he felt his mouth swing open.
“That’s a plant.”
“So is cotton. Walmart doesn’t carry them. I need a store that cares about the environment.”
“You need a store for unwashed hippies?” He knew that with a beard, his own plot of land, and a composting toilet, he wasn’t exactly looking like a Joe Friday, but he had spent a fair portion of the sixties punching hippies. He maintained that they had earned it. It was a one plus one equals two situation. Taking that much LSD plus yelling about werewolves equaled getting punched in the face.
Although, from the way his father talked, anyone would have thought that Rafe was a poster child for free love. Sleep with a few humans and suggest that possibly technology wasn’t the devil and could be turned to their advantage, and suddenly he had beennot wolf enough. Whatever the fuck that meant.
Azure was staring at him, with one eyebrow raised skeptically.
“Yes, that is exactly the kind of store I want. I want it populated by filthy hippies smoking joints and listening to The Doors while working on macramé and making goat cheese.”
“I hate macramé!”
“Who doesn’t? You do know that hippies are old and nearly dead now, right? Now we just have hipsters who charge double for the goat cheese because they’re capitalist bastards. But whatever. They’re still the only people who will have underwear that won’t make me break out in a rash. So, we’ll go have a drink. You can tell me about your cabin that I’m practically sure has running water, and then you’ll take me to the Food Co-op down the road.”
“I have running water and electricity. Stop insulting my cabin. It is a nice cabin!”
“Water and electricity: top-notch. Do you have a phone?”
“I have a phone…booth.”
Azure threw her head back in a laugh. “A phone booth?”
“Well, it was a lot of money to get a phone line all the way out to the house, and I didn’t like the way it buzzed in the air. So I just put a little house out by the road for it. And I go out every couple of weeks and check the messages when I collect the mail. Honestly, who wants one of those things blaring at them all the time?”
“Not me,” said Azure. “I leave mine on silent ninety percent of the time.”
“And besides, anyone who really wants to get ahold of me would come in person. You know, unless you’re my dad.” He wrinkled his nose in anger at the memory of hearing his dad’s voice on the answering machine. When he’d left the pack, Albert was still refusing to use phones at all, and now that he had figured it out, of course, he was using the technology to yank Rafe’s chain.
