“Do you want a baby?”
“Well, I’ll have yours.”
Carol sat up. “What do you mean?”
Gerlinde glanced at her. “Well, you know, when you leave. We’ll all be raising the kid. I guess I’ll be like a mother.”
Carol was a little shocked. It just struck her now, although of course she’d known all along that she would be giving up the child. The idea had not bothered her until this moment. She told herself she was just being sentimental; how could she form any attachment? But what Gerlinde said grated.
“Hey, kiddo, wanna hear some stories about my immoral mortal existence?”
“Sure,” Carol said, laughing at this girl who looked younger than herself. “Tell me about the fabulous fifties.”
“Well, they weren’t all that fabulous, at least not until I got hep. Know the term?”
“You mean hip? It’s from the sixties, right? The Beatles, the Stones, you know, the hippies.”
“No way! I’m talking hep. The word goes back to the twenties and thirties and Chicago’s black jazz musicians. You oughta ask André about it. Those were some of his favorite times. But he likes the present too.”
This was one of the few things Carol had learned about André’s past. All he ever talked about was his life now and the others carefully avoided her questions or were just more interested in talking about themselves.
“Anyhow,” Gerlinde continued, “I was twenty and in Berlin and it was 1958 and there were terrific joints downtown to go to where painters and writers and musicians went—we called it a scene, imported direct from New York. The Artists’ Hut was one and The Other End, I think that’s how it’s translated from German. We were ‘beats’, the beat generation. Beatniks, the mags called us.”
Carol looked across at Gerlinde and laughed. “I can see it. You dressed in black pantyhose.”
“What pantyhose? They hadn’t been invented yet. But I wore the uniform, a black garter belt, black underwear, black stockings with seams—straight black skirt, tight black turtle -neck sweater and, you guessed it, black stilettos. It was de rigueur. I wore my hair long then, straight down my back to my waist, parted down the middle, and heavy eye makeup, white lipstick and chunky lucite earrings. And I acted ‘cool’, which is to say intellectual.” Gerlinde laughed. “I’ll tell you, kiddo, I had so much fun then. Of course, youth always creates some kind of scene for itself—hippies, punk, goth. But, the Beat scene was more exclusive, at least in Berlin. It wasn’t that big—there couldn’t have been more than a hundred of us at the most. Naturally we were outside the mainstream, that’s a must. The guys wore black too, and berets, and played the bongos at the clubs, recited poetry that made no sense and the rest of us would sit there, coolly snapping our fingers. That’s the way we applauded.”
Carol laughed. “Were you an artist too?”
“Sure. Wasn’t everybody? I still paint. Hey, if you’re interested, I’ll take you to my studio and show you my stuff sometime—it’s just across the hallway from your room.”
Carol shifted uncomfortably. “I’d love to see your work but André told me not to try to go into any of the other rooms on the second floor.”
“He’s such a tight ass. I’m not supposed to take you there because he doesn’t trust you. He thinks you’ll tell people about us when you go, not that anyone would believe you. ‘Château of the Vampires’, she said with a Transylvanian accent.
Carol giggled.
“André thinks the less you know, the better. But how earth shattering could it be if I show you a couple of canvases.”
“How did you meet Karl?”
Gerlinde smiled her crooked little smile. “He was a Beat, or that’s what he told me at first. I had my own pad. Oh, Carol, it was fabulous! Everything was red or black, the walls, what little furniture I had. I made a table out of a door—the knob was still on—and the walls were plastered with all kinds of art work—my stuff and the paintings and drawings of friends. I loved that place!” she cried enthusiastically.
“Anyway, I met Karl at The Other End one night. I noticed right away that he didn’t drink—beer or anything. He had a great line, though. He was writing a book, the story of creation as seen through the eyes of the first single-celled life form, which, of course, kept changing because the life form kept dividing. He told me he needed to fast so he could always stay in contact with the microscopic world. He was an intellectual, an existentialist, and he raved about Gide and Kafka and Camus and this French guy, Alfred Jarry, who wrote Le Surmâle, that’s Supermale, and was into something called pataphysiques, which I’ve never been able to figure out—has something to do with what is but not the real way it got there. I thought Karl was cute and a little nuts. And he was a terrific lover, fun to be with, and different—most of the guys then were either too square or real dopes. I didn’t find out he was the way he is until two years after I’d met him.”
“Two years? Didn’t he try to take your blood?”
“Sure he tried. And sometimes did. I was a wild kid and ready to do anything at least once. He convinced me that if he took a little of my blood our sex life would be even better and the germs in my body would mix with his and he’d have these terrific insights into the germ world and it would help his writing. Well, I was a sucker for art then.”
Carol was killing herself laughing. She wiped the tears from her eyes. “How did you find out he was, you know, a vampire?”
“One night he just confessed. Of course I didn’t believe him, even though I knew he was really weird. I mean, in two years I’d never seen him eat or drink—except for water and my blood—and he only came by at night. Also, he wouldn’t tell me where he lived. But by then he was my main course, as we used to say, and I just accepted him. Everybody in our scene was strange so he wasn’t that odd, really. And he was amazingly romantic. He used to tell me I had bedroom eyes.” Gerlinde batted her lashes a couple of times.
“Anyway, we went to see this new British film that was all the rage—Christopher Lee in The Horror of Dracula. Afterwards I joked, ‘Hey, Karl, maybe he’s a relative of yours.’ He looked at me kind of funny and then told me what he was and that’s why he’d been taking my blood. Of course I thought he was kidding. I went around calling him der Nosferatu—that’s German for the undead—for about a week after that. And then one night he made me listen to him. He showed me his teeth which, believe it or not, I had never realized were so long. He explained his life, in detail, and little things started to make sense. He was so intense. He told me he wanted me to be with him, like him, for eternity and that he could make me that way but he would only do it if I agreed. He said he’d give me time to think about it. If I said okay, great. If I said no he’d leave and I’d never see him again because it would be too dangerous to stick around with someone knowing what he was and too painful for him because I’d be near and he couldn’t have me and I’d grow old and die. I tell you, kiddo, when he left I was shaking like a leaf.”
“I can imagine,” Carol said. He’s so different from André, she thought. Karl was nice to Gerlinde, unthreatening. She wondered what was in her own karma that she’d hooked up with such a sadist.
“Well, two weeks went by, hell for both of us,” Gerlinde continued. “I thought about it and thought about it. I couldn’t decide if I was nuts or he was or what. I tried talking to my girlfriends but they just laughed in my face. He’s neurotic, Blanche, they said. A Streetcar Named Desire was big then too. Anyway, he came back because he couldn’t stay away and I realized I’d missed him as much as he’d missed me and, well, our hormones were working overtime and we made out and screwed and it was great and then, well, one thing led to another and I said yes. It’s kinda like a marriage.”
“Have you ever regretted it?”
“Not yet. I’ve got everything I want.”
“But doesn’t it bother you sometimes—the blood I mean. I’ve seen you when you’re hungry. You look starved and in pain. All of you look that way, althoug
h I haven’t seen Chloe hungry.”
“Chloe’s better at controlling it than the rest of us.
She’s been around longer. But no, it doesn’t wig me out. It’s not too different from eating food.”
“I’ve never been hungry enough that I’d think about killing,” Carol said.
They stared at one another.
“I’ve never killed anybody,” Gerlinde said.
“But you live off human beings.”
“Look. If you were in the woods you’d have to catch something and kill it to survive, right? You wouldn’t think twice because it’s different than you—lower on the food chain. But there’s all these steps between you and the food so when you get a slab of hamburger you don’t even recognize it as meat. We don’t have so many systems in place. We’ve got some, though, frozen stuff, just in case. But I tell you, it tastes a hell of a lot better right from the old vein. It’s like the taste of spinach picked fresh from the garden, which I used to be crazy about, and canned stuff. You guys can’t even tell the difference anymore, you’re so used to it. But we still can.”
“Ugh!” Carol said, sticking out her tongue. “Please don’t mention spinach in any form. That and liver. If I never see either one again it’ll be too soon.”
They arrived in the city and parked. The theater was a repertory cinema on the elegant Place Gambatta and the film, Casablanca, which they’d both seen before and had loved.
“Want some popcorn?”
“No, thanks. Maybe a drink, though, but I’ll probably have to pee.”
Gerlinde bought her a Perrier and they got seats in the middle, halfway down. The two women attracted a lot of attention.
Gerlinde, of course, was mesmerizingly attractive and drew plenty of looks from both men and women. And Carol too, despite her pregnant state, looked good. She wore new clothes that André had gotten for her—another short skirt and an oversized top that disguised her stomach.
As Sam played ‘As Time Goes By’ for Rick, Carol leaned over. “I hate to do this to you, but if I don’t get to the bathroom quick they’ll make us mop up the floor.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Back by the candy counter?”
“Yeah. Go on.”
Without you? Carol almost asked. But something made her stay silent. She eased her way along the aisle and hurried to the back, just making the door marked ‘femmes’. It was the first time she’d been out of range of any of them. When she came out of the washroom, impulsively she turned and ran out of the theater.
This is crazy, she thought. Gerlinde will surely find me.
And I feel mean, betraying her trust like this. But Carol didn’t turn back. She wasn’t quite sure where she was in the city but just kept going, as fast as she could.
A few blocks away at an intersection she stopped to catch her breath. This area seemed familiar. She looked in all four directions. To the left, maybe two streets away, she saw the promenade in the old part of town that André loved to frequent.
Without any hesitation she ran in the opposite direction. She asked directions once, calming herself to enter a store, but the clerk didn’t understand her, so she braced herself and asked a policeman.
“What’s the best road to Paris?”
“Paris?”
“Highway. Auto. Burrrrr,” she made a sound and mimed turning a steering wheel.
“Ah, la route à Paris?”
He pointed in the direction she had already been going in and said a couple of sentences. She heard the words ‘Pont de Pierre’.
“How long? Un, deux, trois?”
He nodded understanding. “Cinq rues.” He held up five fingers and counted them off to be sure she understood.
Carol thanked him profusely then hurried away. When she got to the bridge she crossed it, nearly running, until she reached the highway. There was a complicated overlap of roads and it took a while to get on the right one, the road with the sign that said PARIS, 250 KM. As soon as she held out her thumb a car stopped. Inside sat a middle aged couple, tourists. “Do you speak English?”
“Nothing but,” the hefty woman said. “Y’all goin’ to gay Paree? Hop in, then. We’re headin’ there ourselves.”
Carol was so relieved she almost cried.
The couple, Judy and Bill Harris, Americans from Texas on a month’s holiday, drove her all the way into the city. She concocted a story because the truth seemed too bizarre and she didn’t want them to think she was crazy. She told them she was travelling alone, a stupid thing to do, and that she had been robbed in Bordeaux and needed to get back to Paris to find the girl she’d been travelling with and borrow the money to call home. Yes, she was pregnant. They wanted to know about the father.
“He’s dead. I’m alone.”
It sounded so ridiculous they believed her. They bought her dinner and handed her fifty dollars. Carol was more than grateful. She hugged them, took their address, and promised to repay the money.
She found a phone and immediately placed a call to Philadelphia.
“Hello?” It was Phillip’s voice. He sounded exhausted. She had only called because Rob and he were living together and she didn’t know who else to ask for help.
“Phillip, it’s Carol. I’m in France. This is an emergency or I wouldn’t have phoned. I need to talk to Rob.”
There was a pause. “I guess you didn’t get my letter. Rob died four months ago. Carol, I’m not in any shape to help anybody. Whatever it is, babe, you’ll have to deal with it yourself.” He hung up on her.
Carol felt frantic. The shock of Rob’s death left her stunned. But she had no time to grieve now. Her first priority was to find enough money to get back to the States. She thought through her friends and realized that she’d let them all slip away in the last year and a half. She wasn’t sure if any of them would help her now.
It took an hour to reach the information operator in Philadelphia, but finally she got the number of an actress at the theatre company where she had worked, a woman named Mary Skiving, a woman she had considered a friend until she found out
Rob had been fucking her.
Mary was surprised to hear from her but turned a bit cool when Carol asked to borrow a thousand dollars. “Please, Mary, for God’s sake, help me. I know this doesn’t make sense, but I’ll explain everything when I get there and I’ll pay you back, right away, I promise. I’m desperate. I just discovered that the U.S. Embassy is closed Saturday night and all-day Sunday, or I’d get help there. I don’t have any money or even a passport. If I don’t get out of France today, something terrible will happen to me. I know I sound paranoid, but I’m not. Just help me, please. I don’t know who else to turn to.”
Finally, reluctantly, Mary agreed to wire the money in the morning, when the bank opened.
Carol spent that night sitting outside the money transfer office on the Place de la Bourse. During the night of waiting, she encountered some at best odd and at worst frightening people on the street. They all made her nervous when they tried to talk with her. One guy, though, turned out to be a God-send. He was shady enough that when he found out she needed identification, he offered to “Make it happen”—for a fee. She had already checked the price of a plane ticket and had to bargain him down, ending up with a poorly-done passport bearing a photograph of her inside wearing the dress and shoes he provided her, for a fee. Even combing her hair back behind her ears, the photo let her know just how wild and frightened she looked. She just hoped the fake passport would work. If it didn’t, she would be at the door of the American Embassy early Monday morning.
Carol indulged in a taxi to Charles de Gaulle Airport and booked the next available flight to Kennedy, which would not depart until ten thirty p.m. She put herself on stand-by for an earlier flight.
She had ten Euros left over and bought snack food, the only edibles such a small amount of money would buy in an airport. It was going to be a long wait but there was nothing she could do about it.
She ca
mped out near the ladies room in order to make frequent trips. She tried to sleep but the seats were too uncomfortable and her back ached. Eventually, though, she managed to doze off and dreamed.
A pack of four wolves circles her. Terror! One large wolf. Gaping jaw, sharp teeth. Grey eyes, the pupils pinpoints. Those eyes mesmerize. She spins in a circle, looking for a way out, feeling dizzy. An airplane appears. She begins to board, but instead of the steps going up they lead down, under the tarmac. She turns, struggling to climb back up, but the steps become a ramp. She slides down fast, faster, plunging towards darkness. Right into the mouth of the grey-eyed wolf!
Carol jolted awake, slick with sweat, her heart pounding loud in her ears. She glanced at the clock, trying to orient herself. Eight p.m. She was being paged over the loudspeaker.
Chapter Fourteen
“I’m Carol Robins,” she told the woman at the Centre d’Information, who was busy with two phones and three irate Frenchmen. The woman looked blankly at Carol for a second then pointed towards a door.
“Is it a call?” Carol asked. Because if it isn’t I’m not going in there, she thought. She knew it was dangerous getting the passport and booking under her real name, date of birth, etc, but she’d have a hard enough time getting on the plane and into the States without having to memorize false information. A fake name would just be one more thing to explain.
The woman struggled to be pleasant to one of the businessmen who was yelling and gesturing in her face. A third phone rang. “Is there a call for me?” Carol interrupted.
The woman gave her a hostile look and pointed. “In there. Mary Skiving.”
Carol made her way to the door. She opened it and walked in. Gerlinde stood by the window, arms folded across her chest.
“Bad move, kiddo.”
Carol sucked in her lower lip. She left the door open. “How did you find me?”
“Easy. The cop you talked to about getting to Paris? He talked to an inspector and, well...”
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