“How long will this take?” her new patron asked, arranging himself carefully in the high backed chair.
“Three weeks. A month at the most,” Julia answered, sorting through her chalk, preparing to begin the sketch.
“Vasquez painted my portrait in seven days,” Jean-Luis informed her. “It was so magnificent, I spared his life.”
“I’m already dead,” Julia told him. “It will take me at least three weeks.”
The vampire sighed, waving a hand. “All the great ones are gone. Proceed.”
Julia began to sketch.
* * * *
A few nights later, a tired Julia plodded home from Jean-Luis’. She was spending five hours a night with the old vampire. He loved to talk, but he was starting to repeat himself. All his stories had him as the central character, of course. Famous people, historical figures were a mere footnote to Jean-Luis. He also told her things about vampires that she never wanted to know. It made her glad she was a modern vamp. No coffins, bats and underground crypts for her! Having an apartment with a big window was a little awkward, but it was rent controlled. She’d never be able to afford anything else.
As she opened her apartment door a small rectangle of paper landed at her feet. She picked it up. It was a business card; Detective Clive Dubinsky, NYPD. Julia’s stomach roiled. The card terrified her. This had to have something to do with the super! She counted back. Sergie had made his final exit on Friday and this was…Tuesday. They must have discovered he was missing! Maybe even found the body. After all, she hadn’t actually paid the Sweepers for their services, maybe Aeron hadn’t either. What was she going to do now?
Shutting her door, Julia threw every single lock it had. Then she sat down on the couch and shook. Aeron was going to kill her for real this time.
* * * *
Aeron had a good instinct for trouble coming his way. In fact, at that very moment, he could hear it dragging its feet reluctantly toward his table.
Julia sidled up to the booth. “I’m kind of in trouble,” she said.
Aeron folded his arms, waiting.
“I sorta violated rule number one and, I guess maybe, rule number two. I think the police are after me.”
“Who?” he asked.
“The building super.” She winced. “He really was a pig. He told me he’d fix my rent problem if I was…nice to him. Then he jumped on me.” Julia fidgeted under Aeron’s steely gaze. “I lost my temper. This police detective left his card yesterday. Do you think he wants my fingerprints?” She held the tips of her fingers up in front of her face, examining them closely. “Do vampires still leave fingerprints?” she asked hopefully.
“What did you do with the body?”
Julia wouldn’t meet Aeron’s eyes. “I remembered about the Sweepers. I owe them $750. They said they’d wait to be paid. I thought I could use part of my fee for the portrait. But, if I don’t finish it soon, I’m afraid they’re going to come talk to you.” Julia didn’t know whether Aeron’s slightly bemused expression was because she’d called the Sweepers, or because she’d let him know she’d taken the commission to paint Jean-Luis.
His next question was only: “Have you been able to pay your rent?”
“I’m, um, not caught up yet.”
“How many notices have you gotten?”
“Two…” Aeron raised an eyebrow. “Okay, five. But none since…you know.”
“So you’re being evicted.” Aeron appeared relieved. “If you disappear suddenly, they’ll think it was just because you couldn’t come up with the rent. It happens all the time. Is there anything in your apartment you really need?”
Julia thought for a moment. “Some clothes and my painting, I guess. The one I couldn’t finish.”
“Go back.” Aeron began shoving his manuscript into its envelope. “I’ll meet you there. One small bag,” he warned. Seeing her face fall, he added, “and we’ll take your painting.”
* * * *
Julia answered Aeron’s knock. She’d packed a small duffle with three changes of clothes, clean underwear, her toiletries, and the extra brushes and paints she hadn’t taken with her to Jean-Luis’. She’d also slipped in a small family album that held pictures of her parents—now deceased. The unfinished landscape was wrapped in an old sheet and tied with twine.
“We’re going out over the roof,” Aeron told her. He pushed her toward the door. “Take the stairs. Wait for me at the top.”
Back in the apartment, Aeron snatched up Julia’s small bag and, more carefully, picked up the wrapped painting. He’d made sure she left the keys on the coffee table. As he shut the door, he inserted the policeman’s card back into the space between the door and the jamb, hoping the conclusion would be that Julia’s move had happened before the police started canvassing the building.
Julia was waiting for him on the roof. Aeron tossed her the duffle, then led her silently from building to building in small leaps. Vampires didn’t fly, but they had impressive range when necessary. Aeron didn’t care about broken rules anymore. He was never going to put himself into the position of having to instruct another fledge as long as he existed.
* * * *
Aeron lived in an old, two story industrial building that had once been used to make machine parts. It wasn’t a flashy SoHo loft, just a serviceable shelter where his nightly comings and goings wouldn’t be noticed by the neighbors, if there actually were any neighbors in this scruffy part of the city. The brick walls and plank floors of the second story had been painted white, the furniture was sparse and modern, and except for an old leather couch, didn’t look comfortable enough to use. The only part of the room that looked as if it was actually occupied was one corner that held a large plank desk with a computer on it, an overflowing bookshelf, an old-fashioned wooden file cabinet, and a battered metal chair on casters. Tears welled in Julia’s eyes. The settled-in look of Aeron’s personal workspace overwhelmed her with an acute sense of homelessness. She had screwed up, and now she had nowhere of her own to go. Setting her one small bag on the floor, she dared to hope Aeron would let her stay.
* * * *
Aeron paced in front of a penitent Julia like a drill sergeant with a faulty new recruit. He had taken her in, but he was not exactly happy about it. The loft was his territory. He wanted to be very clear about that. He wasn’t used to living with anyone so the more invisible Julia could make herself, the better. She could have her own room, there were three to choose from on the windowless ground floor, and go on about her business—quietly. When Aeron was writing he wanted to be left strictly alone. And, if she did ONE MORE THING to call attention to herself, she was gone. And, by the way, he was taking her painting as compensation for paying off the Sweepers.
After sending Julia off to get settled in, Aeron had carefully unwrapped his new possession and hung it where he could see it from his desk. It was extremely good, and mostly finished. The lower third of one corner sort of meandered off into blank, gessoed canvas, but when he thought about it, each moment of eternity was like that, you could never see all the way to the edge. After eleven hundred years, Aeron didn’t have a problem not knowing how things would end.
* * * *
Julia made her way back and forth between Jean-Luis’ residence and the loft. The portrait was taking shape—even with all the problems Julia was having with the light. It wasn’t a difficult sitting. The old vampire could be very still when she asked for it. He didn’t fidget, and he almost never blinked. When she asked for immobility, he also stopped moving his lips. Julia was asking a bit more frequently than she needed to.
Also, she wouldn’t let him look. After a bit of an argument, he’d promised, on his honor, that he wouldn’t. Surprisingly, she believed him. She’d also started probing him for information about Aeron.
Jean-Luis was a born gossip and he’d warmed to the subject: Aeron was an enigma, he told her. He’d been a knight—or maybe a noble—but certainly, a soldier. There’d been a woman—actually a vampire. Ae
ron had fought a duel to avenge her honor and been mortally wounded, or perhaps that had happened in battle. Anyway, she’d turned him on his deathbed out of gratitude for his gallantry. Together they took revenge on her enemies.
Years later, Aeron’s sire had been captured by an angry mob and burned at the stake. Grief stricken, Aeron became the leader of a group of mercenaries who left a trail of terror, death and destruction wherever they went.
“Very romantic,” Jean-Luis confided. It was obvious to Julia that the old vampire wasn’t privy to the actual details of Aeron’s unlife. He’d been a soldier of course, but the terror of Europe? She just couldn’t see it. Her sire continued to be a mystery and she’d just have to accept it. What Jean-Luis did know was that over the years, Aeron would pop up in different places, stay awhile, then move on. He liked his privacy. Even today he was rumored to be a dangerous man.
“We are all surprised, my dear, that our Aeron has become a sire, even to someone as lovely and talented as you.”
Julia knew prying when she heard it. “Hold still, just for a moment please Jean-Luis,” she said.
* * * *
Julia tried her best to respect Aeron’s need to be left alone, but eventually she found herself perched for part of every evening on a stark comma of leather and chrome that passed as a chair in the central space of the loft, watching him peck away at his keyboard. It was companionship of a sort.
“This chair is really uncomfortable,” she ventured one night after returning from Jean-Luis.
“It was a gift,” Aeron muttered. “It’s an original.”
“Did the guy who made it ever try to sit in it?” Julia asked.
“I don’t think comfort was the point of the design. What is it you want?”
“I, um, wondered if I could have a little space, up here…to paint. Just a corner would be enough. I’m having trouble getting the effect I want with the portrait. It’s a glass room. The light changes from night to night as the moon flips through its little routine. It’s distracting, and I can’t quite get it right. I need to try some things, away from Jean-Luis.”
“I need quiet.”
“I’m not asking to practice the drums, Aeron. Painting is quiet. I won’t say a word. You want me to be self-sufficient don’t you?”
“I’ll think about it,” Aeron conceded.
When Julia returned home the next night, an easel and paint stand had been set up on a large tarp in one far corner of the room. The drape over the tall casement window had been pulled back so that the moon could peek over her shoulder as it rose above the rooftops.
Aeron sat hunched over his computer refusing to look up.
* * * *
Nights went by. Julia labored over her canvas, while Aeron attacked the keyboard of his computer. She sighed in exasperation, or threw her brushes to the floor in disgust when some effect she was trying didn’t work the way she wanted it to. He occasionally pounded repeatedly on the delete key, as if revenging himself on each and every letter of the unacceptable word or phrase he’d just written would relieve his frustration.
As the time passed, and Julia painted over one false start after another, she became more and more afraid that she was just fooling herself. She couldn’t finish painting the portrait without mastering the light around it. The tiniest fold in Jean-Luis’ velvet jacket demanded a contrast between dark and light, a subtle gradation of color, a tiny spark of contrast. The old vampire’s face was defined by planes of shadow and light. His eyes held a glow she couldn’t seem to capture.
When she was in the conservatory, the glass roof provided a constant reminder that the moon was nearly full. Its radiance brought a cold play of illumination over everything in the room, challenging the warm glow of the candle flames, liming the shadows, defining what she was painting in its own unique way. She had to get it right! And to do that she had to believe that the chance she’d been given was a blessing—not a curse. She had to stop thinking about twitching the heavy blackout curtains of the loft aside when she knew the sun was out. Had to give up the expectation that she could take one last look at the daylight to say goodbye. She knew it would be the death of her, and it scared her to think that that might be what she really wanted. She dug her brush into her palette. What kept Aeron going after all these years? Why was it so easy for him, and so hard for her?
* * * *
That night, when she could stand it no longer, Julia took her seat on the chair. Aeron let her sit awhile before he said testily, “Are you going to perch there like a gargoyle for the rest of the night? What is it?”
“I have to ask you,” Julia began. “Was it hard for you, adjusting to being a vampire?”
Aeron considered his answer. “Well, I didn’t ask to be turned, like you did. I was a soldier. There was this nun from a nearby convent that nursed our wounded and dying. She was a highborn lady, but very kind to the men. We occasionally spoke. One night she disappeared. We looked everywhere for her, but no one found even a trace. Then, men began to report seeing her in the woods after dark, or outside the infirmary tent. But no one ever got close enough to tell if it was really her. Not too long after, there was a terrible battle. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands died. I, myself, was mortally wounded; brought to the infirmary tent, given Last Rites, and left on a pallet to die.
“That night, the lady visited me. I was burning with fever. She put her cool hands to my face and told me she was there to take my pain away. The next thing I remember was clawing my way out of a mass grave behind the battle line. The lady was waiting for me. She’d turned me into a vampire, just as someone had turned her after she’d been attacked by drunken conscripts and left for dead on the path to the convent.”
“Jean-Luis said you took revenge on her attackers.”
“She was my sire, I did it willingly.”
“And when she was killed. Did you take revenge then, too?”
“Vengeance is a hard habit to break, Julia. I’m very good at it, but I’d rather write.”
“And I’d rather paint the kind of landscape you have on your wall. But I would avenge you, Aeron, if I had to.” And Julia realized, with surprise, that she meant it.
Aeron sighed as if the weight of his memories was suddenly too heavy to bear. “Sometimes the best revenge is being able to let go of what you’ve lost and make friends with what you have.”
“So I have to forget about the sunlight? Have you been able to forget your sire, she seemed to mean a lot to you?”
“Memories aren’t the enemy, Julia. The enemy is believing that the thing you’ve lost is still out there waiting for you. Embrace what you’ve been given. Make it serve your will.”
“I…” Julia started to say.
“Go try again.” Aeron went back to his typing.
* * * *
Julia went back to her canvas in the corner of the loft. It was covered with trying. She’d tried to force a brilliant memory of the sun over the reality of moonlight, thinking to take her revenge on what she’d been given because it wasn’t what she wanted it to be. Instead of trying to paint, Julia took the stairs that led to the roof. As she let herself out onto its flat, black surface, she wasn’t quite sure what she was doing there. She looked up. The moon hung in a cloudless night sky, three quarters full and blazing with silver light. In its full glory, the glowing disk could easily claim the night with the same authority that the sun claimed the day. But unlike the sun, its touch destroyed nothing. Julia had no reason to hide from the moon.
Lowering herself to sit cross-legged, with her back to the short wall that defined the edge of the roof, Julia decided she would try to make peace with what she had.
* * * *
A few nights later, Julia took her customary place on the chair. It had become her silent signal that she needed to have a conversation. She’d accepted that her future would be defined by moonlight, but she was still a bundle of creative insecurity.
“I’m almost finished with Jean-Luis.” She told him. “He�
��s having an unveiling on Saturday. Will you come?”
“I don’t…”
“Aeron, please. He’s inviting everyone he knows. I can’t be there by myself. What if the portrait’s awful? You’re my sire and only friend. If I can’t even paint a decent portrait, I might as well just open a curtain at high noon.”
Julia couldn’t bear to wait for his answer. “I took your good suit to the all night cleaners,” she said to fill the silence. “It’ll be ready on Thursday. And I read your book.” She fled to her room.
* * * *
The conservatory was filled with vampires, guests of Jean-Luis, as varied as the countries, times and races they had come from. Julia was surprised there were so many of them living in the city. In some ways the gathering was like any Manhattan cocktail party. Guests swept or slunk into the room according to their social status or nature. Cocktails and wine laced with blood were snatched off passing trays; empty glasses were traded for refills. Friends greeted each other, enemies glared. Some of the guests were bright and fluttery, others boisterous and loud, or dark, quiet and mysterious. Some had all the animation of garden statuary. To Julia’s ear, the underlying conversational tone implied both gossip and anticipation.
Of course, they’d come for Jean-Luis, not her. He had connections, and it was never wise to insult a vampire of his age and vanity by turning down his invitation. Julia didn’t care about anyone’s social status tonight; the only thing she could think about was the portrait.
She’d left it on the easel in the middle of the room, draped in a length of old velvet she’d scrounged from a thrift store. Although what she really wanted to do was run and hide, she couldn’t leave it alone. She hovered, fluttering until Aeron grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her to the sideboard for a stiff brandy.
“It’s awful!” she told him, in despair. “He looks so vain and predatory. I couldn’t help myself! I just painted what I saw, and there it was. He’s going to hate it! I’ll never get paid.”
Vampire's Dilemma Page 18
