Without the mirror I have no idea what I look like any more. My face, which I’d kept clean-shaven for the better part of the past century, is now sprouting the first stages of a beard, and the hair on my head is starting to grow back. I bet with a good enough look at my reflection I could use that to determine the length of my captivity.
How had I ended up in this state? There’s the real question. I’d have to go back to the day I woke up behind the futon.
* * *
My first thought, upon waking up, was that sometime the previous evening I’d become paralyzed in a tragic accident of some kind. I was almost entirely unable to move, largely because all four of my major limbs had fallen asleep and were not nearly as interested in awakening as the rest of me.
It took a little work and a lot of wriggling to ascertain that I wasn’t paralyzed. I was simply pinned behind a futon. The smell of stale beer, tipped ashtrays, and vomit triggered vague memories of a party of some kind, one that I may even have been invited to. There was also the outside chance that the futon belonged to someone I actually knew, but that was, statistically speaking, a long shot.
I’m actually something of an aficionado in the “waking up stuck in strange places” department. I’ve woken up in hay lofts, under a butter churn, on roofs, in a choir loft (twice), under tables, on tables, in trees, in ditches, and half-pinned under a sleeping ox. One time in Bombay, I woke up to find myself lashed to a yak. This was my fourth futon. So, you’d think I’d have been used to it by now.
I could hear an American-style football game playing on the television, meaning first, someone else was in the room watching the game, and second, I was still in the United States. If I was exceptionally lucky, I was still in Boston, the last place I could recall being in.
My guess was whoever was in the room was also sitting on the futon, because the futon was rather heavy, and past experience suggested most unoccupied futons are easy to dislodge with minimal effort.
“Hello?” I said.
There was a lengthy delay, long enough for me to think I hadn’t been heard. Then, “D’you hear that?” someone said. Man’s voice, unaccented English. Okay, still in the United States, possibly not in Massachusetts any more.
“Yeah,” his friend said. They were both on the futon.
One of them peeled back the top and looked at me through the back support. “Hey, dude,” he greeted.
College student. Had to be.
He and his buddy stood up and pulled the futon away from the wall, affording me the opportunity to crawl to the center of the room. They pushed the futon back, sat down again, and continued to take in the game while I lay there and waited for the tingling sensation in my arms and legs to subside. That accomplished, I made a half-hearted attempt to get to my feet, but discovered that was far too difficult, due to a screaming hangover, which almost never goes well with bipedal movement.
“How’s it goin’?” one of my new friends asked, without taking his eyes off the game. “You need any help?”
“I’m fine right here, thanks,” I said.
“’Kay.”
If you’re thinking they were acting terribly nonchalant about discovering a stranger behind the living room couch, you’ve never been to a collegiate keg party.
“Beer?” he offered. “We’re still draining the keg.”
* * *
After two cups of beer from my prone position on the floor I managed to gain my feet, struggle into the only other non-floor-position seating in the place, and watch a goodly portion of the football game.
I don’t understand American football. If you’re going to line a bunch of behemoths up in front of a bunch of other behemoths and ask them to hit each other as hard as they can, why tell them they can only hit one another a certain way? Too many rules, that’s the problem.
The Romans did it right. Plus, back then the combatants were slaves and didn’t command massive signing bonuses. So, that’s two points in favor of the Romans.
My bleary-eyed cohabitants shuttled between active interest and practical catatonia. Once in a while one of them would muster up a “good play” or “run, dude,” but that was pretty much it. We did work out basic introductions. The one on the left—blond, gap-toothed, wearing nothing but shorts and sneakers with no socks—was named Gary. On the right—jeans and T-shirt, barefoot, black hair, black skin—was Nate. A more detailed review of their character and standing would have to wait.
By the time the game ended I was on my fourth beer and had probably overstayed my welcome, but I’ve never been one to much care about that sort of thing, so I sat where I was.
“So, you live around here?” Nate asked.
“I guess,” I said. “Is this still Boston?”
He looked at Gary. Gary looked like the kind of person who enjoyed holding people’s heads under water.
“Yeah, still Boston,” Gary said. “You know, you don’t look much like a student, Adam.” I’d given them my current American name, chosen more or less at random. Lately, I’ve taken to picking appellations alphabetically, the same way the weather bureau picks hurricane names. Zigmund was my last name but I dropped that after only a couple of months. Hard to travel around the U.S. with a name like Zigmund, I have to say. I’ve gone by hundreds of different names, including, of course, the one I was born with, which was really more of a grunt.
“Grad student?” Nate inquired. They were both sobering up enough to feel a little uncomfortable about me. And I was a bit too tipsy to lie.
“Nope. I just saw there was a party and dropped in,” I admitted. This might not have been true. I might have come with somebody. I couldn’t remember.
“But you do have a place of your own, right?”
“Not so much, no.”
“You’re a homeless guy?” Gary asked, mustering up some incredulity.
“Well, in the sense that I don’t currently have a place to live, yes. But I have had a lot of homes.”
“Geez,” he said profoundly.
“C’mon,” Nate said, “you can’t be more than, what, thirty?” The reasoning being, aren’t homeless people all a lot older?
I took a sip of my beer and decided, what the hell. “I don’t really know how old I am.”
“What, you were adopted or something?” Gary offered.
“No,” I said, “I just lost count. I’m immortal.”
You have to be a little careful about dropping that bit of information in the wrong place. I’ve been called a witch, a blasphemer, a devil, and a few other unpleasant things depending on the where and the when. But college students—and bar drunks for some reason—tend to be okay with it. Which may explain why I spend so much time with college students and bar drunks.
“Cool,” Gary said after an adequate pause. “You wanna crash here for a while?”
* * *
A couple of things about being immortaclass="underline"
First of all, I’m not a vampire. I get that a lot, even during the day when I should be in a coffin or a crypt or something. (Very few vampires bother to sleep in a coffin, if you must know. Lugging one around everywhere you go is inconvenient, and it almost always attracts the wrong kind of attention. I did know a vampire who had one, but it was mostly a kinky sex thing for her.)
I’m not invincible. Also, no super-strength, X-ray vision, power of flight or any of that. I eat, drink, sleep, and shit just like everyone else. I just stopped getting any older at around age thirty-two. Why thirty-two? No idea. I have all my hair in all the proper places, and a relatively slight build that doesn’t seem to get any larger whether I lift weights or binge. To put it in a way a twenty-first century person might understand, it’s like someone hit pause on my existence.