My Almost-Friend: The Vampire

My first months in San Francisco were not happy ones. Though I tried to hide it, not wanting to hurt my husband and son who had pushed for the move from New York, I was undeniably homesick. Worse, I was friendless, and didn't know what to do about it. I no longer had young children whose mothers would become my friends. I no longer had a dog, almost as good as children for meeting people. And I was retired, no longer having co-workers to share common ground with.

So, I resorted to what had seldom failed me in the past: the written word. I posted a note in the laundry rooms of all four buildings in my apartment complex asking anyone interested in forming a book club or a writers' group to contact me. My first response was from a woman named Tanya, who had also posted a note on the bulletin board. She was seeking writers of "horror, crime, and black fantasy." I decided Tanya and I had very little in common, writing or otherwise, and didn't answer her ad.

She answered mine. She called one evening and said she wanted to meet me. I reminded her that my writing genres were memoir, travel, and food, hardly a perfect fit. She said she was sure we could overcome our genre differences. I told her I was just as sure we couldn't, but wished her well. I got off the phone and was pouring a glass of wine when the doorbell rang. And there she was, all six feet of her, dressed in black from her earrings to her dominatrix boots. Long, lank hair, streaked with magenta spikes, framed an eerily pale complexion. Her smile revealed two prominent fangs.

Next thing I knew, she was sitting on my couch, drinking wine and trying to convince me that we could be friends. I said, "Tanya, that's not gonna happen. You have fangs, for God's sake." She said, "I've wanted fangs since I was thirteen, but my mother wouldn't let me have them." Then she told me that I was the only one who's talked to her since she moved in. "Do you believe, when I walk into the laundry room, the other women walk out?" she asked. Again I said, "You have fangs, for God's sake."

All the while, I couldn't wait for Phil to come home to get his reaction. Finally, I heard his key in the lock and the door open. He could see the couch from the doorway, but couldn't see me where I was sitting. "Cathy???" he called, warily. "I'm here," I said. "Jesus!" I thought I was in the wrong apartment," he replied. Tanya wasn't offended. She stayed a while longer. When she finally left and I was explaining to Phil how I happened to be sipping wine with a vampire, the doorbell rang, and there she was again. This time, something was moving under her jacket. It was her pet chinchilla (pets aren't allowed in our apartments). She came back because I had told her how much I missed my dog. It was wonderful to hold a pet in my arms again. Tanya had sensed that need. Behind those fangs was a kind person who, like me, needed a friend. Phil didn't think I should be it. "Think about it," he said. "If you make her your friend, she'll be the only one you have here."

When my son heard about Tanya's visit, he said, "I'm not comfortable with my mother entertaining a vampire in her living room." When he told my New York daughter, she threatened to come out and take me home.

They were right. I knew it. But that Sunday at mass the gospel was about lepers, and the sermon was about the world's rejected. Rejection, the pastor said, is one of the cruelest things we do to each other. And that's just as true today as it was in biblical times. "Who are today's rejected?" he asked. "They're the homeless, the disabled, the poor....."

".......the vampires," I added.