My Roommate Is a Vampire(20)

And he didn’t know if he had Wi-Fi? That had to be another of his peculiarly dry jokes. I’d follow up with him about that the next time I saw him.

    Frederick—I don’t throw much away either. I don’t like getting rid of anything that might have a use later, especially since upcycling is a big part of my art. But on principle I feel like two grown-ups should own at least one single trash can between them. Right? I’ll get one at Target after work.

Cassie

ps: Why do you keep calling me Miss Greenberg? There’s no need for us to be so formal with each other, is there? Just call me Cassie. :)



Before I could talk myself out of it, I added a quick smiling sketch of myself, holding a garbage can in my arms, before leaving the note on the kitchen table. I hadn’t drawn little cartoon figures in a while, and I told myself it was good practice to drown out the voice in my head yelling at me for flirting with him.

Frederick’s reply was waiting for me on the table when I got home from work with our brand-new kitchen trash can.

    Dear Miss Greenberg Cassie,

The picture you drew for me on your latest note is lovely. Is that meant to be you? You clearly have a great deal of talent.

Thank you for handling the rubbish bin situation.

Per your request, going forward I will do my best to refer to you by your first name rather than “Miss Greenberg.” However, calling you “Cassie” goes against both my upbringing and my instincts. As such, please be patient with me if I occasionally forget and revert to more formal manners of address.

FJF



I quickly tamped down the strange rush of pleasure that shot through me at his compliment on my art, reminding myself that I’d spent less than ten minutes on that doodle and he was clearly only trying to be nice. I chose instead to focus on how weird he was being about calling me by my first name.

    Frederick,

It goes against your upbringing and your instincts to call me Cassie instead of “Miss Greenberg”? Really? Who raised you, Jane Austen?

Cassie



At the end of that note I drew a hasty caricature of someone in old-fashioned garb, just to be a jackass.

His reply was waiting for me on the kitchen table the following morning.

    Dear Cassie,

Not . . . exactly Jane Austen, no.

Also, is that meant to be a picture of me?

FJF

Frederick,

Not exactly Jane Austen, eh? Intriguing. Well in either case, thank you for trying to call me by my first name.

And yes, that’s supposed to be a picture of you. Don’t you see the resemblance?? Tall, stick-figure arms and legs, surly expression, clothes straight from the set of Downton Abbey?

Cassie

Dear Miss Greenberg Cassie,

Oh, yes. I suppose I do see SOME resemblance. Though I do think my actual hair looks much better than it does on the bald little man you’ve drawn here. Don’t you?

(What is Downton Abbey?)

FJF

Frederick,

Downton Abbey is an English TV show. I think it’s set about a hundred years ago? Something like that. Anyway, it’s not really my thing, but my mom and all her friends love it. Also, you dress just like Cousin Matthew, one of the characters.

Oh, and by the way—you got a few packages this morning. I stacked them on the table for you—right beside your Regency romance novels. (You’ve been getting a lot of packages lately, actually. I know they’re not addressed to me, so I’m not examining them too closely, but I have to admit—I am INTRIGUED. They’re so weird???)

(Also, Regency romance novels, huh? I haven’t read many of them myself, my guilty pleasures trend more towards trash television, but—I definitely approve.)

Cassie

Dear Cassie,

Cousin Matthew, you say? Interesting. (Is he bald, too?)

Thank you for handling the packages for me. You are correct; they are strange. Hopefully there will not be any more of them.

I am glad you approve of my reading selections. I do not care much for the focus on romance, but I find reading stories set in the early nineteenth century comforting. I guess you could say they remind me of home.

FJF



I reread his most recent note, as amused by his defense of his Regency romances as I was disappointed in his lack of a more concrete explanation for the packages he’d been getting.

Because those packages . . .

Well.

They were truly something else.

He’d gotten six of them since I’d moved in. They all had the same return address—the sender was an E.J., from New York—written in an ornate, flowery cursive that reminded me a lot of Frederick’s pretty handwriting but for the fact that it was always written in blood-red ink.

The packages came in different sizes and shapes, each wrapped in a hideous floral wrapping paper that reminded me of the decor in my grandmother’s Florida condo. Some of the packages emitted strange smells. One of them appeared to have smoke coming out of it. I swore I could hear actual hissing coming from another.

Those had to be optical illusions, I decided. There was no way the mail would deliver anything that was actually on fire. Or living snakes.

Even though those packages were addressed to Frederick, not me—and even though their contents were patently none of my business—since he hadn’t given me clarification in his notes I decided I’d ask him about them the next time we were in the same room together.