“Apparently there’s a self-proclaimed vampire living in this dormitory directly above you.”
“Oh, no.” One of those.
“She’s a girl from Margot’s town in New Jersey, one year older, now a student here. And for whatever reason, Margot wants her body, her boyfriend, and her life. But the body-swapping spell she cast and aimed in this general direction was—”
“Was aimed at a real vampire,” I said in exasperation. “And so, sleeping innocently in the same area last night, and being the only real vampire there, I got the whammy.”
“Precisely.”
“Hell and damnation! I could just eat Margot’s eyeballs for this.” As soon as I said it, I felt queasy again. “César, I have got to get out of this body. You have no idea how disgusting being mortal is.”
“Oh, believe me, ma chére, I remember. In fact, I even had acne when I was mortal. Can you imagine?”
“Let’s not reminisce.”
“Fortunately, Margot thinks we can reverse this.”
“She thinks? Thinks? She’d better reverse it, or I swear I will feed her mother to you while I make her watch! I’ll—”
“Calm yourself, ma belle. If it’s any consolation, the experiences of the past few hours have terrified her so much, I think it may reduce her mortal lifespan by ten years.”
“Given what her mortality is like, that really isn’t much consolation,” I said. “So, how does she think we can reverse this?”
“In her bedroom, there should be some candles, some idols, a bell, and some henbane, which looks a bit like—”
“Like a weed?” I said, moving toward the dresser, where all of these props were laid out.
“Yes! You’ve found it?”
“I’ve found all of it.” I eyed the bowl of ashes I had noticed earlier. “She performed a ritual that involved chanting to these idols, ringing the bell, and burning the henbane? And—poof!—I woke up human.”
“That’s it, more or less.”
“It’s outrageous. She has no right to play with my existence this way.”
“I think she has come to full and sober realization of that fact,” César assured me. “And she has already experienced her punishment, in the form of shock and fear which will remain fresh in her mind for years to come. Thus, all that remains, my dear, is for us to enact the ritual and get you back where you belong.”
Margot’s heart was pounding again. God, it was annoying. With a distraction like this clouding my mind, I really hoped I would be able to competently conduct—of all the idiotic things—a black magic ritual for mutually reciprocal incorporeal translocation without winding up in the body of a poodle.
I lighted the candles, took a few breaths (how laborious—breathing), and said into the phone, “I’m ready. What do I do?”
“I’ll put her on the phone so she can walk you through it,” César said. “The next time I speak with you, I hope it will be face to face—your face. Good luck!”
A moment later, she said, “Hello?”
I told her I had the materials ready and asked for the first step in casting the spell.
She said, “God, your voice sounds so nasal!”
“It’s your voice,” I replied through clenched teeth. “Now how do I start the spell?”
“Your clothes are cool,” she said.
Based on the evidence of her taste which I had seen today, I realized I would need to seriously rethink my look once I got back into my body.
“But, God, your skin is like ice,” she said. “So is your boyfriend’s. And it grosses me out that I wanted to bite the neck and suck the blood of the girl who was just in here doing her laundry. I mean, I know it’s instinct and you can’t really help it, but still.”
“Then let’s hasten your return to your own body,” I said. “What do I do first?”
She walked me through a reversal-version of the black magic spell that had caused this outrage in the first place. It was fairly standard stuff, though the difficulty of breathing and chanting at the same time tripped me up, so I had to give it a few tries before I finally got it right.
After some dark whirling and flashing lights, I found myself sitting in my lovely, pale, cold, bloodthirsty body in the laundry room of the dormitory beneath which I keep my lair.
“Ma chére?”
I lifted my head and saw my handsome César gazing anxiously at me. “It’s me,” I assured him.
He made a little sound of relief and embraced me. I kissed him, enjoying the cold feel of his lips pressed against mine. From the corner of my eye, I could see and sense the pulsing jugular vein of the college student who pretended not to notice our embrace while he folded his whites.
“It’s so good to be back where I belong.” I said.
Holding hands, we adjourned to the forgotten underground passages in the building which I used to access my lair by day. Once safely ensconced in my coffin, we engaged in a satisfying bout of vampire sex—which, like everything else in my undead experience, is so much better than it was when I was mortal.
BAND OF BRONZE
Jean Rabe
“Thou knotty-pated execrable wretch!”
I watched Bill grab the purse snatcher by the wrist, his iron grip snapping bones and causing the thief to howl in pain and drop his foul-gotten gains.
“Thou warped elf-skinned puttock!” Bill continued, as he twisted the snatcher’s limb backward and—I’m guessing accidentally—cracked the snatcher’s ulna. The thief howled louder and Bill had to shout to be heard above the wail. “Thou churlish fool-born malt-worm ! Thou—”
“Enough with the Elizabethan curses, Bill.” I nudged his foot with mine. “He gets the message. He shouldn’t’ve pinched the dame’s pocketbook. I bet if you break his other arm, he’ll never pinch anything again.” Somewhat to my surprise, Bill did just that, and the snatcher mercifully collapsed into unconsciousness.
The throng that had gathered on this warm summer day—the young lady whose purse had just been rescued, a scattering of tourists snapping pictures, businessmen on their lunch break, a homeless gent stinking to that proverbial high-heaven, and a trio of daycare workers herding a flock of toddlers—broke into applause.
“Let’s get out of here, Bill, before the cops show up.”
He returned the purse with a flourish, bowing and kissing the woman’s hand.
She grinned coyly.
“The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief,” he said.
She cocked her head, not understanding.
“Othello,” Bill supplied. “Act I, scene III. The robbed that—”
“C’mon, Bill, we gotta go.”
Bill reluctantly followed me, as did One-from-Seven and an ugly duck. We cut down a bike trail into a more heavily wooded section thick with lofty pin oaks, where everything seemed oddly quiet. I loved this part of the park, not far from Belevedere Castle. I couldn’t smell Manhattan’s pollution here, too far from the cars belching exhaust, but I could detect a trace of manure, a by-product of the popular carriage rides. And when the wind shifted, like it was doing now, there were scents supplied by the hot dog carts and churro vendors, and let’s not forget the hint of burning salt from the pretzel hawkers.
Bill was spouting again. Distracted, I’d missed the first bit. “. . . villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars—”
“What?” I stared up into his unblinking eyes.
“From King Lear,” he said.
“Great. Remind me never to animate you again. Ever.” So maybe this year I didn’t choose wisely. Maybe this year my moniker fit. This year I picked Bill—William Shakespeare. Coaxed him down from his stone pedestal southeast of Sheep’s Meadow. Heard he’d been up there since 1864, and paid for by money raised from a benefit performance of his play Julius Caesar. He’d been sculpted by John Quincy Adams Ward. There were three other pieces by Ward in Central Park. I should’ve picked one of them, but I’d thoug
ht Bill was dressed interestingly enough to share my company, though a little out-of-date. Should’ve realized his speech would be out-of-date, too. At least he spoke some form of English.
With us was One-from-Seven. I don’t know what else to call him, as he won’t tell me his name . . . hasn’t said a single word so far. I suppose I could call him Soldier Boy or Hey You, but I like the sound of One-from-Seven better. I plucked him out of the 107th Infantry memorial. There were seven fellows there, representing what was originally called the Seventh Regiment of New York during World War I. I’d animated the one in the center a couple of years past, and he’d told me their unit saw heavy action in France, nearly six hundred of them dying before November 1918 came to an end. The memorial was unveiled in 1927, not far from the perimeter wall of the park by Fifth Avenue and 67th. The soldier all the way on the right, One-from-Seven, carried two Mills bombs and had been supporting the wounded guy next to him. I picked One-from-Seven because I thought the bombs might come in handy later today.
Last was the duck.
I’d animated the statue of Hans Christian Anderson, the famous fairy-tale author. The duck, representing The Ugly Duckling, one of his most notable pieces, and thereby a part of the bronze display, was an impulse to bring to life. They were cast at the Modern Art Foundry in Queens, so you’d think Hans would have spoken English, right? No, Danish. We couldn’t communicate; I couldn’t get across what we all needed to accomplish this day, and so he’d wandered off, probably looking for tourists from Denmark to read to. The duck stayed with me.
Bill was babbling again.
“What? I missed that.”
“I sayeth: the world is grown so bad, that wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.”
Both of my eyebrows rose.
“Act I, scene III, Richard III.”
“Well, I guess you got the gist of it. Things are bad in the park, which is why I used my magic to give you guys flesh so you could help me clean it up.” I watched a crow leap from a branch overhead and saw One-from-Seven shrink for cover. “Gangs and drugs are the worst of it, and that’s usually at night. But overall, things are not nearly as bad as they used to be. I mean, a handful of years ago I would spend an entire morning catching muggers and kids toting cans of spray paint. But today . . . until that snatcher you nabbed, Bill, we’ve spent all our so-to-speak waking hours picking up trash in the North Meadow and the Great Hill and waving to the joggers. The park’s a great place, safe, really, given the size of it and the number of people who come here every day.”
“Sir Hatter—”
“And after the sun goes down, let me tell you, the scores of hookers I used to . . .” I saw the look of incredulity on his face. “Hookers . . . streetwalkers, prostitutes, hos . . . whores, you know . . .” I did a little bump and grind.
“Ah.” Bill understood. “Fulsome wenches, callets.”
“There were plenty of callets. I guess for the most part they’re plying their trade elsewhere.”
“Sir Hatter—”
“Mad, please,” I said. “I’m not much for last names, Bill.”
“Sir Mad—”
Another bird took flight, this a fat jay, and One-from-Seven sought cover beneath a low bald cypress branch.
“Prithee, let us endeavor to stop another micher, Sir Mad.”
“Yeah, let’s be about it.” Bill fell in step at my shoulder, then marched One-from-Seven. The ugly duck waddled quickly to catch up.
Our meandering course took us across the Great Lawn and past the Delacorte Theater, where I directed Bill’s attention to the sculpture of Romeo and Juliet, locked forever in a bronze embrace.
“It is the east,” Bill said.
“And Juliet is the sun,” I finished. “Act II, if memory serves.” I’d seen the play performed in the park a decade past, and sensed it played in years after that. I was connected to this park.
We hadn’t traveled more than a dozen yards beyond that when Bill waylaid a pickpocket and returned the wallet to its grateful owner.
“Thou ruttish onion-eyed pigeon-egg,” Bill called the thief before literally ripping his arm out of the socket. We quickly moved along before he could do something to the teen’s remaining body parts.
In the shadow of the Obelisk we helped an elderly woman regain her errant Maltese. She stared wide-eyed at us, pointing at my colorful garb and then Bill’s out-of-date duds, her gaze dropping to the Mills bombs in One-from-Seven’s hands, her mouth subsequently opening, but fortunately nothing other than a barely audible “Thank you” coming out. It was the first time today—I didn’t count the after-dawn jogger ogling us over by the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir—that someone thought us dressed strangely. Through the years I’ve learned that most people don’t give me and whoever I pick as my companions a second glance. This is New York, after all.
Next we chased a pair of persistent beggars away from a priggish-looking woman feeding a gaggle of pigeons.
“Thou adulterate motley-minded scurvy knaves!” Bill shouted after the pair, nearly grabbing the slower of the two by the arm.
One-from-Seven kept his distance, his terrified gaze locked onto the pigeons cooing prettily and strutting in front of the park bench. I understood the soldier’s fear of fowl, but I didn’t share it. My hat is tall, the brim broad, and so when I am bronze no poop plops on my shoulders or onto the lips of my overly wide grin. Lacking a helmet, One-from-Seven does not have such protection.
Just north of The Ramble, we came across a drunk trying to make off with someone’s ten-speed.
“Thou loutish dizzy-eyed haggard,” Bill called him.
The drunk rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, fingers playing with the lock he’d managed to work free from the rear tire.
“Thou unmuzzled shard-borne bear-whelp,” Bill pronounced. “Thou accursed earth-vexing clotpole.”
The drunk belched loudly and glared defiantly.
The duck quacked menacingly.
Bill broke both the man’s arms.
I was beginning to see a pattern in how Bill dealt with ne’er-do-wells, and so I moseyed us along. It wouldn’t do for us to get arrested. We could only spend twenty-four hours in skin, and we’d turn back into our bronze selves a little after midnight. Whatever would the cops do with Central Park sculptures in lock-up?
I took my troops past the Boat House, and Bill, One-from-Seven, and I stopped to pick up fast food wrappers and Styrofoam cups while the duck enjoyed itself in the lake. The sun was angling lower, and it sent motes of molten yellow dancing across the water. It looked like a pirate had cast out a sack of doubloons, all of them floating.
The park was the best part of this massive city, as far as I was concerned. A half-dozen decades past, I’d spent my twenty-four tooling around the streets of Manhattan, nothing more than a lookee-loo taking in all the noise, color, and constant rush-rush-rush of people essentially going nowhere. Through the years the city has only gotten louder. But the park . . . ah, Central Park has remained a constant. It is sweet-smelling grass and a hint of simpler things and times. It is dogs and children, picnics with strawberry wine, lovers kissing, old men playing chess, and friends sharing conversation. It is the polished, red shiny bit of skin on the Big Apple, a blessed respite from the cacophony that surrounds it. It is my home, and I have no plans to leave it ever again. So I’ve vowed to help keep it clean . . . at least for a twenty-four hour stretch, and hopefully my deeds will have some impact well beyond these hours.
I figure if any purse snatchers read the newspaper tomorrow or listened to the evening news they’ll think twice about trying to get a five-finger discount in my park.
Yeah, my park.
Near the Conservatory Pond—where the ugly duck decided to take another dip—I took Bill and One-from-Seven to see my crib, the spot where I’m forced to spend the other three hundred and sixty-four days.
“Yon statues are so—”
“Shiny? Yeah, they are that. Me, too, when I’m
hanging with them.” The Alice in Wonderland statue, not far from East 74th in this part of the park, is a favorite with the children. There’s Alice on a giant mushroom, fingers stretched out toward the pocket watch the White Rabbit has. The Cheshire Cat—who I animated a few years back and who disappeared on me for the rest of the day—peers over her shoulder. The dormouse and I—except for today—flank Alice. I’m sculpted with a crazed shit-eating grin splayed on my face, but never smile when I’m in skin. Gotta give the face muscles a rest. A fellow named George Delacorte Jr. had the Alice piece made in the 1959 in honor of his late wife, Margarita. The ensemble was shaped by José de Creeft, who on a blessed whim put magic in me. Old de Creeft was a wizard as well as an artist and gave me the gift to spring to life once a year, for a day at a time, and to bring four others with me. I suspect he figured I’d bring Alice—who supposedly looked like de Creeft’s daughter—Cheshire, the dormouse, and Rabbit. Excepting for Cheshire those years back, I’d made my choices from elsewhere in the park.
“Why art they so—”
“They’re shiny ‘cause the kids can’t keep their hands off ‘em. Shiny from thousands of oily fingers that have polished the bronze to that patina.”
“It fairly glows,” Bill said. “Beautiful.”
“Yeah, it is that, ain’t it?”
The duck quacked.
One-from-Seven didn’t say anything.
Plaques around the sculpture were filled with inscriptions from Lewis Carroll’s book. Bill went from one to the next, intently reading. He scratched his head when he came to a poem chiseled in the granite circle that surrounded the work.
The bard cleared his throat and recited: “Twas bril-lig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”
“It’s from ‘Jabberwocky’,” I explained, as I stooped to pick up an empty soda can.
Bill managed to break the arms of another purse snatcher before sunset. But we had more important villains to deal with.
Bill cleared his throat: “In peace nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, disguise fair nature with hard favored rage—” He paused. “The Cronicle History of Henry the Fifth.”
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