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I pushed the button on the blender and watched
as the mixture turned
    form separate pieces of raw meat, milk and Ex vino into a red mushy smoothie. The
kitchen was spotless, with the buttery light making it look soft and homely in
the early hours of the night. The only workspace that
    was dirty was the countertop I was using.
    Lashan liked his home clean and tidy. I worked
hard to keep it that way.
    Lashan walked into the kitchen, the paper
under his arm. I turned my head for a peck on the mouth, but he kissed me on
the cheek.   “Evening, honey,” he said
and sat down, flipping open the paper. We weren’t going to have much of a
conversation. We didn’t often anymore. I poured half of the smoothie into a
glass for him. He took it from me, his eyes on the headlines, and took a sip.
    “Geez, Leanne, what is this?” he stared into
his glass with a sour face, working his jaws in a circle.
    “Breakfast,” I said calmly, pouring a glass
for myself and sitting down at the table with him.
    “I wish you’d stop using that damn substitute.
I need real blood to function.”
    I shrugged. “If you’re going to make time to
hunt, I’ll serve it. But I’m not going out there and killing those animals. You
know how much I hate it.”
    Lashan shook his head and put down the
smoothie. “I don’t understand why you’re going against your nature. We’re a
vampire, for god’s sake. Blood is what keeps us alive.”
    I got up and poured his smoothie down the
drain.
    “Don’t be mad,” he said, twisting in his chair
to look at me. “I just don’t see why you have to be so different about it. All
vampires kill animals. It’s natural.”
    “I don’t like it. You didn’t have a problem
with my ways when we got married.”
    He exaggerated a sigh. “Your family had a
different way of doing things… I accepted it. But you learn and grow when you
break away from your parents. We have the money to eat whatever we want now.”
    “My family didn’t substitute blood because
they were poor. They were compassionate.”
    Lashan kept quiet for a moment, the words he
wouldn’t speak hanging in the air. Is
there a difference?   He always asked
me that.
    “You know I love you, right?” he asked after
the silence like that would erase whatever the problem was. I nodded.
    He looked at his wristwatch. “I have to get
going,” he said and stood up. I didn’t move from the sink. Instead I leaned
against the counter with my hips and folded my arms over my chest. Lashan
scraped some papers together and stuffed it in his briefcase, and walked out
the kitchen.
    “Love you,” he called from the front door
before it slammed shut behind him.
    “You said,” I answered to the empty house.
    When I heard his car pull out of the drive I
wiped down the counter with a wet cloth and rinsed out the blender, packing it
on the rack to dry. Then I went to the bedroom to get ready for work.
    Lashan wanted me to be a housewife. He
believed it was a women’s job to keep the house tidy, ready for him to come
home to, and raise the children while he was out earning the money. Five years
down the line we had no children, and I had realized a long time ago that it
was impossible to keep him happy. So I’d gotten a job.   I worked from nine in the evening until three
in the morning. I clocked in an hour after he did and left an hour before, so
that I was home to have his supper ready when he came home an hour before dawn.
    He didn’t know. I’d been doing it for four
years. The money I earned I had in a separate account. I was leading a double
life.
    I think the only thing that bothered me about
the double life I led, was that it didn’t bother me at all. Having secrets from
Lashan seemed like second nature by now, because he didn’t seem to care that he
knew nothing of my life.
    I swapped my nightgown for a pencil skirt and
button-up blouse. I pinned my hair up in a French Roll, and put on three inch
black heels. A bit of make-up, mascara, some