The shop bears an inscription above the doorway:

Deus ex machina. God from the machine.

In this case, la machina... a very expensive, very shiny espresso maker. God, one would assume, would be coffee.

"How long you been awake?" he asks me, hands jitterbugging along the paper on the table.

I brush the question aside and call for another plate of french toast. 

He says he's been awake for four days straight. He sees things in his dreams, so he prefers not to dream anymore. I tell him this isn't healthy. He looks at me as if to say, "Duh."

Me? I feel a bit worn, a bit frayed at times but he's unraveling before my eyes. I can see the red veins around his iris, the tremor in his upper lip, his fingers, his tense body posture. I ask this guy if he's using and he says, "No... no, no drugs. Just the bean."

Two vampires on skates roll in. I ignore them as best I can.

"So, bad dreams. Yeah." 

He orders another demitasse of espresso. Dark, rich. A shot of artificial adrenaline. I dive into my french toast and ponder the inevitable follow-up.

"You're the only one who doesn't?" he asks me and I say yes around a mouthful of lost bread, butter and faux-maple syrup. The kind that comes in little plastic pods with the peel-off lid and the diabetes-inducing contents.

"Millar's on the East Coast, so's the Roach, I hear. I don't talk to either of them much, though I know they've tangled in this recent past. The others? No idea where they are. But yeah, I'm the one who got the permanent No-Doze."

He looks forlorn. I toss him my ace card, to keep him interested. "Of course, there's rumors of a second round of test subjects."

He looks up from his coffee, thick with Splenda.

"Mister Rote. I'd... I'm really in a bad way here. If you can just give me a name, a lead... anything!"

I write down a phone number on corner of the paper tablecloth and tear it off. 

"You call this guy. You ask him about the Dark." I hand it to him.

"The dark?"

I pull the paper away, catch his eyes and fix them with my own. "Capital D. Man means business. Don't go during the nighttime."

The guy takes the paper and stuffs it into a wallet full of newspaper clippings and business cards and receipts but not much else.

"What happens at night?" 

I shake my head, hoping he'd have at least enough to cover the tip. "That's when he sleeps."

At least he paid in advance, I think to myself.

The vampires were giggling at something on their cell phones when I left. Something funny. Funny to vampires.

Tags: darkpages, fiction