Mark LaMonda
Do You Want to Live Forever?
It’s mandatory for vampire stories to ask the question -- “Do you want to live forever?” I was 22 years old in the summer of 1984, in love and determined to buy my girl an engagement ring that was at least .75 carats.
I worked at an insurance company on the weekend shift in Computer Operations, and they needed bodies for the midnight shift during the week. So, for three months I became a vampire, working seven days a week, determined to get my girl the ring she deserved.
I knew I was going to live forever.
The first couple of weeks I shot around the room, twice as fast as the perfectly friendly vampires that called the midnight shift their home. There was a thirty-something guy who was in love with the music of Wham, which basically meant I had to listen to “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” over and over on an endless loop. I kept looking at the other guys, there were only guys on the midnight shift, and they seemed oblivious to this assault. They seemed to be in a daze, seemed to treat this place like their casket. The room we worked in had to be kept between 55 and 65 degrees to keep the computers from overheating. That, and the pot of coffee I learned to drink got me through the long nights. One guy sat in a corner staring at a green computer screen, occasionally tapping a key or two, then returning to his stare. By the end of the summer, I realized he had perfected sleeping with his eyes open.
My favorite co-worker was Tad. He was a fifty-year-old Japanese man, with a perpetual smile. He was the only person that seemed interested in who I was and why I was there, asking me about my girl, what I was studying in school, what I planned on doing with the theater degree I seemed destined to graduate with. I learned that he was interned with his family at the Manzanar Relocation Center for three years from the age of eight to eleven. I heard another man call him Tadashi, but I was too shy to ask him if he preferred that to Tad. I didn’t ask questions, really didn’t start asking questions of any substance until I was in my fifties, somehow afraid that questions were more revealing of myself than answers. I kind of liked to hide, liked the dark, and fit in pretty well with the vampires.
The strangest person on the midnight shift was the boss, Larry. He worked during the day as one of those van drivers at the airport, lugging people from long term parking to the terminals at LAX. He slept most of the midnight shift, his feet up on a chair, a post-it note on the sole of his shoes –
“Don’t you dare fucking wake me!”
He smoked dope behind the large printers and shared it with the security guards, who would call him whenever anyone of importance came into the building and he had to appear as he was not. The workers liked him fine, because he didn’t demand much other than to be left alone, to do a basic amount of work so that the next shift didn’t question his supervisory skills.
Larry’s boss, Mr. Temple was suspicious and would randomly pop into the office that summer, at odd times, trying to catch him in the act of sleeping or smoking. He was a straight-laced man, Mr. Temple, determined to catch him in the act. He was so sure that Larry was up to something, meaning someone must have tipped him off. It was amusing to observe how smoothly the whole charade played out. The phone would ring and Larry would jump up, put a pen behind his ear and sit down at a computer terminal, appearing to analyze how well the system was performing. Mr. Temple would stroll in, usually with a story about needing to finish the budget, or a monthly report. Larry would rise and shake the great man’s hand acting all Eddie Haskell, the rascally sidekick on Leave it to Beaver, a show that ironically was the only thing available to watch in the training room, when I took my 3 am lunch break. We all enjoyed watching Larry play this role, joining in the one-act by strolling over, one by one, to say hi to Mr. Temple, and ask Larry for advice on whatever it was we were working on.
I eventually slowed down as the weeks rolled by over that summer, spending much of the last few weeks either practicing my stare next to the guy sleeping with his eyes open, or chatting with Tad. I told Tad that I wasn’t sure I wanted to pursue acting, that I really wanted to study English Lit. He asked me what I was reading and I told him I was reading Watership Down, having just finished A Wrinkle in Time. He said that he thought those were children’s books and I explained that I had never read them, that there weren’t any books in the house I grew up in. My girl and her parents were guiding me through a reading list. Tad looked sad, like he might cry. He told me that he grew up in a house full of books. He could remember how they smelled a little of the tobacco his father and grandfather smoked. I asked him what he was reading now and he said he watched tv, mostly Phil Donahue and The Price is Right. I didn’t ask him what his father did for a living, or if they brought any books with them in the one suitcase to Manzanar.
I didn’t ask him who he thought I should be reading. I hadn’t read Raymond Carver yet, but that would come in the next couple of years, making me sure of what I wanted to do when I grew up. Carver was a guy who didn’t grow up in a house full of books. If he could be a writer, maybe I could too. I never asked myself if I could make a living at the things I loved. I never asked myself what that life would look like.
I got the ring. Got the girl. Got the good job in computers. Years later when we had the ring cleaned they showed us that it had a major inclusion, one that wasn’t in the diamond they showed my before I purchased it. I worked all summer and was duped in the jewelry district. You couldn’t see it with your eye, at least not that well, and my wife said that she liked her ring.
I worked forty years as a computer programmer, driving fifty miles back and forth. I worked the day shift, but would come in a couple of hours early, so I could leave early and beat the traffic. I would drive down Highland Ave. in the early morning hours, and the vampires, the midnight shift workers, would be sliding out of the buildings, stepping over those that didn’t make it to their shifts. You had to drive slowly because there are no traffic laws in effect during the early hours, there’s no one waiting for a walk sign to step in front of your car at 5 am. In the early morning hours, I always got the feeling that no one was watching, that you were on your own.
Do I want to live forever? Now that I’m spending most of my day doing what I wanted to do when I grow up, I do. I want to live forever. I want to tilt my neck and let the vampires have their way. They say that 60 is the new 40, but it is equally true that 8 pm is the new midnight.
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Mark LaMonda is an artist and writer who currently lives in Santa Clarita California. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals, including Painted Bride Quarterly, Bull, Autumn Sky, San Pedro River Review, Rat's Ass Review, SoFloPoJo, and MacQueen's Quinterly.
