100 Yellow Doors

august 25th, 2019, 12:32 p.m.

"Who was that?" asked Fritz, rounding the corner wearing only an oversized Santa Monica T-shirt and boxers. His longish black hair was pulled back by a psychedelic headband and there was a cup of chia pudding in his hand. Of all the things to eat when no food had any caloric value, Julien could not fathom why anyone would choose chia pudding.

"Iman," said Julien, clicking the phone off and setting it on the sofa beside him. He was lying on his back, eyes rolled back behind him to see where Fritz stood by the front door. It was a strange thing: this place, and Fritz's existence within it. It was the third day, almost, Julien had spent in the other vampire's Baltimore apartment, and it was still off-putting.

Fritz and his house were contradictions of each other. Where Fritz was dark, somewhat brooding, all angles and sharp words and stark clothing, his dwelling was a burst of color. Tapestries adorned every available wall space—that, or Andy Warhol-esque portraits of modern day celebrities: Barack Obama, Yoko Ono, Kylie Jenner. The furniture was all low to the ground and vintage-chic, most of the doors in the house replaced with curtains of multicolored beads. The kitchen's fiery backsplash and bright yellow refrigerator made Julien's eyes hurt.

The only reason, in fact, he was still here at all was because Fritz refused to let him leave.

Three nights ago, after Fritz had shown him the blood bank, Julien had been locked in such a haze that it had taken him half an hour to realize they were heading out of DC and not further into it. Julien had shot up in a frenzy. "Holy shit, Fritz, are you kidnapping me?"

Fritz had only clicked his tongue: tsk, tsk. "You're staying with me until I know you're not gonna go psycho and eat a bunch of children."

When Julien protested, all Fritz had to say was: "Besides, it's best to keep Sera guessing, isn't it?"

Julien did not want to think about Sera, even if he was always thinking about Sera. For that reason, he was silent the rest of the drive.

Now, Fritz finished off his chia pudding, dropped it in the waste basket—equally as psychedelic as his headband—and perched himself on the couch arm, peering down at Julien. "Iman. That's the time traveler, right?"

"Sí."

Something passed over Fritz's face, but Julien couldn't tell what it was. Confusion? Distress? Or...fondness, maybe? Either way, there was something that Fritz wouldn't say, and Julien didn't like it. "Why are you making that face?"

The something vanished immediately; Fritz's face went blank. "What face? I'm not making a face."

Julien sat up, turning around to look at him squarely rather than crane his neck so much. "You know her well?"

An extremely slight beat of hesitation, so slight that Julien nearly missed it. "Besides when we met at your housewarming," said Fritz, leveling what Julien thought was a glare at him, "no. But she seems very nice. How long have you known each other, again?"

Fritz was deflecting all of this, Julien knew. Directing the conversation away from himself and back at Julien. Just this once, however, Julien allowed it. "I don't really have an answer to that question," Julien said. He grabbed a fluffy white marshmallow from beside him that he realized soon after was a pillow, hugging it to his chest. "I first saw her in...it was 1959, I think. Then I saw her later that same year, and in '60, '61, didn't see her at all in '62—you know. It's weird. Sometimes she came consistently for days in a row and sometimes I didn't see her for three years."

Fritz scoffed. "How the hell are you friends, then?"

"She popped up in my house uninvited at random times. It was kind of hard for it not to turn out that way," Julien said. He was wearing one of Fritz's worn, woolen sweaters, and the fuzz from the marshmallow was clinging to it. He tore the tiny fuzzballs away from the sweater fibers, averting his eyes from Fritz's. "Besides...I was lonely back then. It was nice to have her around, even if it wasn't as often as I wanted."