After a hesitation that would have been imperceptible to anyone but the two principals, Selene dropped her bags, stepped forward into Moll's open arms, and they embraced. Solid woman, Moll: hugging her was like hugging a rolled-up mattress drenched in Chanel. Eventually Moll released her; Selene stepped back; they regarded each other at arm's length.
"How I missed you!" Moll announced dramatically, tears swimming in her blue eyes; her hair was a costly dark blond. She stepped backward through a pale orange door with MOLL MONTANA, EDITOR AND PUBLISHER on the brass name plate, ushering Selene into a large office decorated in shades of beige and avocado, with a palette-shaped, glass-topped desk so large it had to have been built inside the room; the desktop was buried under stacks of magazines, manuscripts, contact sheets, proofs, and glossies.
"Now what… ? Why… ? Oh, who cares! I'm just so glad to see you." Moll's voice was shaking with emotion as she led Selene over to a couch the size of a kneeling water buffalo.
"Who is this other Selene everybody keeps confusing me with?" Selene asked as the sofa enveloped her.
Moll laughed, and fanned out the pile of magazines on her desk; when she found the one she was looking for, she brought it over to the couch. Selene glanced down at the cover—Fat Femmes, though not the issue Sherman had been reading. A morbidly obese brunette wearing a pitifully inadequate black lace bra and barely visible black panties that were rendered quite superfluous for purposes of modesty by great dimpled rolls of suet, grinned up at her over the legend: "Selene: 401 Pounds o' Fun."
"I guess that answers my next question," remarked Selene.
"Which was?"
"What exactly you edited and published. By the way, is Selene her real name?"
Moll grinned ruefully, shook her head no. "What can I tell you? It's always been one of my favorite names." She took the magazine back, held it up by the spine, and with a practiced flip of the wrist let the centerfold flop free. The other Selene again, minus bra and panties.
"Oh my!"
"She's the dearest woman," said Moll, redoubling the centerfold and closing the magazine in one motion. "Pulls in a nice living with her videos. But if she ever decides she wants to lose weight, she's out of business."
"How many years could she make a living at this anyway?"
By way of reply, Moll went back to her desk and selected a handful of other magazines, brought them back, and spread them out across the Danish steel and glass coffee table. Selene read the covers aloud—"Foxy Forties? Fabulous Fifties?"—and opened a few at random. Women—fat, thin, busty, flat, naked, costumed by Frederick's of Hollywood or Victoria's Secret or J. C. Penney or Whips 'N Leather. Some were conventionally attractive, some plain, others downright homely, but each and every one of them was within ten years of Selene's own age—either way.
Selene laughed weakly. "You mean it's not too late for me to be a porn star?"
Moll put her hands in front of her face, thumb tips touching to form the rectangle of an imaginary viewfinder, and did a rough impression of a Hollywood producer. "Take a Lady Remington to those pubes, sweetheart, and I'll make you a star."
Selene joggled the magazines into a neat stack, and handed them back to Moll. "I don't even like to shave my legs."
"In that case…" Moll started back to her desk.
"Wait." A raised hand. "I'm absolutely convinced you have a magazine over there that features hairy middle-aged women—I honestly don't feel the need to see it."
Moll shrugged. "Up to you. But you ought to try posing sometime—it can be a kick. Stills, anyway: video's grueling work."
"Really? It appeared to me as if you were enjoying the hell out of it on Halloween, on that round bed with those three other women."
Moll blanched under her salon tan, and sat down heavily; she laughed shakily as the leather sofa made an ungracious farting sound.
"I do try to keep my hand in—so to speak. But the video won't be out until March. How did you… ?" Then she brightened. "You flew! Of course—you flew!" She leaned away from Selene and looked her over again. "No offense, honey, but you look like you crawled here from 'Frisco. You did remember to take an airplane?"
"Yes, but from London. By way of Santa Luz." As briefly as she could, she recapped her adventures since Halloween night. When she'd finished, Moll patted her on the knee, picked up the phone from the coffee table, and speed-dialed a two-digit number with the knuckle of her thumb so as not to chip one of her wicked-looking inch-long mauve fingernails.
"Hello, darling!" Shouting exuberantly into the receiver. "Guess who showed up on my doorstep? No, Selene—Selene Weiss… Yes, she did… Hold on."
"When did you take the Fair Lady, hon?" Moll asked Selene; she repeated the answer into the phone, then squinted nearsightedly at Selene. "She appears to have survived… But she's gotten herself into a hellacious situation. Can I bring her over?… That'll be great—she looks like she could use a few hours' sleep anyway."
* * *
The rather plain young woman who showed Selene up to the third floor was costumed in a white blouse and a short plaid parochial school pinafore, with her hair done up in schoolgirl pigtails. "I had a shoot this morning," she explained, when she noticed Selene looking over her outfit. "Three hours—I went through two of those big swirly round lollipops." She stuck her tongue out for Selene's inspection—it was still cherry red. "And I fucking hate lollipops."
Selene shrugged. "I guess it's a living, huh?"
"Actually, I'm a secretary over in ad sales. But Ms. Montana encourages us to moonlight. I used to be a fluffer, but I was getting carpal tunnel."
"What's a fluffer?"
The girl looked as surprised as if Selene had asked her what a secretary was. "For videos," she explained. "In between scenes, sometimes the men need somebody to keep their interest up, if you know what I mean." She mimed a jerk-off motion, and winced. "Like I said, carpal tunnel. Here we are."
She pushed open the door and saw the room she'd flown over on Halloween—looked like a cheap motel room with an enormous glass shower stall in the corner, a round bed, and enough track lighting on the ceiling to cook eggs on the shag carpet. Selene looked around dubiously.
"Don't worry," the retired fluffer assured her. "They change the sheets after every shoot."
* * *
Once she got over the feeling of being watched, Selene had to admit that the shower was sublime—plenty hot and plenty of it, water pressure like a fire hose, adjustable hand-held massager. The bed was quite comfortable too, though the mirror on the ceiling was a bit discomfiting. She awoke sometime later to the sound of Moll opening one of her suitcases.
"I let you sleep an extra hour, so we have to hustle the buns. Let's see what you've got to wear that's clean." Moll started going through Selene's new clothes, laying out a pair of cashmere-and-wool-blend tan slacks, a russet silk blouse, and a cashmere cardigan, beige with rust-colored buttons. "These'll do. I called a cab for us—meet me downstairs in fifteen minutes."
Same old Moll. "Sure you don't want to pick out my underwear, too?" muttered Selene.
She waited until the door had closed behind Moll before slipping out from under the covers. She wasn't sure why—partly modesty, but with a component of embarrassment, an unwillingness to bare her middle-aged body before a lover who had known it in its youth. But after donning the wispy, silky, apricot-colored bra and matching panties, she couldn't help checking herself out in the full-length mirror against the wall opposite the bed. Funny how just knowing that magazines like those she had seen in Moll's office existed gave her a whole new perspective on her body. She tried out one of the poses she remembered, cocking her hip to the side, resting her hand on it, arching her back. Not bad. Not bad at all.
The slim woman in the mirror smiled back knowingly. Foxy forties, indeed—no wonder Jonas Whistler had…
At the thought of the old man, the smile faded.
CHAPTER 10
« ^ »
"Pleuraaaay mes yeux…" Lat
e Sunday night the aria from he Cid issued from Bose speakers the size of doghouses installed in every room of Aldo Striescu's soundproofed flat a few blocks off the King's Road, Chelsea.
Aldo himself was installed in his clawfoot tub listening to his new Callas CD (Hamburg '62) while sipping Stoli out of the bottle in his left hand and O-positive out of the bag in his right. What a glorious weekend it had been. After maxing out the daily cash limit on his employer's credit card Saturday night (how Aldo was going to miss that thing), and visiting the little shop on Neal Street near Covent Garden that specialized in hard-to-find (read: bootleg) opera tapes, CDs, and even vinyl, he had popped into the Cock and Fender and bought a round for the house, then doubled back to visit his connection at the Royal Free Hospital on Gray's Inn Road, then back to the C and F—all of this by cab, crisscrossing London without regard to route or fare, and even tipping the drivers a generous (for him) five percent. Not that the bastards ever thanked him.
He could have picked up any number of hookers of either sex, had he been so inclined, but as always, after an extended spree of arson and asphyxiation, Aldo's sex drive was all but nil. Instead he returned home alone after the pub closed, and popped a tape of Red River into the VCR. Aldo was a fervent John Wayne fan—had been ever since the Duke had rescued him from the Orfelinat. (Indirectly, of course: three or four times a year the orphans had gathered in the gymnasium to watch old movies projected onto a bedsheet screen. These were almost always pirated prints of American movies, with inexpensive and inaccurate Romanian subtitles. It was after one of these, Stagecoach, that Aldo was overheard by the matrona amusing his buddies with a letter-perfect imitation, in English, of the Duke. The matrona quickly informed the sef, the principal, of their little prodigy. The sef of course immediately informed the Securitate, and it was good-bye Orfelinat, and hello Institut Limba Strain.)
When Red River ended, shortly before dawn, Aldo swallowed a handful of sleeping pills and slept soundly straight through that rainy Sunday afternoon, awakening shortly before sunset well rested but famished. As soon as it was dark enough to leave the apartment, Aldo had maxed out the cash limit on the credit card again and treated himself to a steak dinner at the Chelsea Chop House around the corner from his flat before dropping by the Cock and Fender to attend the regular Sunday night poker game in the back room. Normally a cautious—and successful—poker player, he found that the prospect of being rich had thrown his game off: he was tapped out by midnight; Danny Dimitriu had to lend him cab fare home.
No problem, he told himself, kicking back in the tub: in a few more hours, when the banks opened, he'd be a wealthy man. He closed his eyes and let Maria's glorious voice wash over him like a mother's lullabye—and of course the phone began to ring. Never fails, he thought. He let his machine answer it, but a few minutes later it rang again, and again a few minutes after that, and eventually curiosity got the better of him. He climbed out of the tub, wrapped a towel around himself, and padded into the bedroom. Before he could reach the answering machine the phone rang again.
The conversation was curt at first. "Yes?"
"It's Jo."
"Do you know what time it is?"
"Yes I do. Do you know your ass from a hole in the ground?"
"I take it that's a rhetorical question?"
"The striga was here."
"What? But that's impossible," replied Aldo, though the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach told him it was very possible indeed.
"Try telling that to my housekeeper; she's lying on the floor of the atelier, stone dead."
Aldo shut his eyes like a man with a sudden migraine. He didn't like failure. Failure led to fear, and fear was the orphan, etc., etc. "Where's the striga now?"
"How the bloody hell should I know? All I know is that a woman you'd assured me was dead showed up at my front door pretending to be someone else, scratched me with a pin—some sort of nerve poison—instant paralysis, followed by unconsciousness—'straordinary sensation—and I came to twenty minutes ago to find my housekeeper dead on the floor beside me."
"Twenty minutes ago, you say?"
"That's when I came around."
"Just how much of a lead does she have then?"
"Hard to say. We finished dinner around eight or so, Mrs. Wah and I went upstairs…" The voice trailed off.
"Jo?" Aldo prompted him.
"I'm thinking, I'm thinking." A hint of a quaver in the old voice—whether from anger or sorrow, Aldo couldn't say. "I'd estimate she attacked me somewhere around nine o'clock. I don't know how long after that she got to Mrs. Wah. Not long, I should think, otherwise she'd have already left the room."
"Is the body cold? Stiff?"
"I don't know. D'you want me to go up and feel her?" No mistaking the barely contained fury.
You can screw her for all I care, thought Aldo. "Never mind. Just wait there, I'll be right—Hang on, what's the address?" He had just realized he had no idea where the old man lived—up to now they'd transacted all their business at the Cock (though with Jo fully dressed for their subsequent meetings).
"Eleven Cranwick Place."
"Wait there, I'll be right over."
* * *
The front door opened before Aldo had a chance to ring the buzzer; Jonas was in his face before the door had closed behind him. "If you think I'm going to transfer that money for you now, you bloody fool, then you've got—arp!"
For Aldo had reached up, grabbed the club tie, and tightened it until the old man barked like a seal. "I don't like to be sworn at," he informed the rapidly bluing Jonas. "Whatever's gone wrong, we'll handle it. These strigas can be tricky—I warned you about that."
Jonas staggered backward, grabbed the heavy mahogany coat rack to steady himself. "How dare you put your hands on me!" he managed, in a choked voice. His face was still dark, except for a livid scratch the length of his cheek.
Aldo looked up at him steadily. "Just how long have you been drinking blood, anyway?"
The old man swayed, and the coat rack with him. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.
"Not long, eh? And this 'housekeeper' of yours, this Mrs…" He prompted with a beckoning gesture.
"Wah. Mrs. Wah," whispered Jonas, in shock.
"She was probably your only source, am I correct?" He waited for a nod. "I thought so. Now listen to me. You've got yourself three serious problems: a body in your atelier that will begin to stink soon, a craving for blood that will have you climbing the walls even sooner, and a woman who already knows enough to send you to prison for the rest of your natural life."
Aldo caught his breath—his s's had grown quite sibilant. "Is that enough reason to be civil with me?" He waited for another nod. "Good. Because if you want my help, you're going to have to mind your manners, and you're going to have to level with me. I want to know everything there is to know about you and your son—the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. I'll sort out what's important. Last but not least, you're going to have to pay me what I ask without complaining. I'll need some help cleaning this mess up, and it won't come cheap. Now, have I made myself clear?" Another nod. "Good. Where's your phone?"
* * *
By the time Danny Dimitriu arrived, Aldo had calmed Jonas considerably with a sip or two from the flask he'd brought with him. He listened to the old man's life story in the bedroom while overhead Danny performed the preliminary work involved in his only magic trick—making dead bodies disappear—and whether it was the new blood that rendered the old man so talkative, or the near-death experience, Aldo soon found himself wishing he hadn't been quite so insistent on the whole truth. He interrupted Jonas in the middle of a diatribe against the philistine art establishment in London in the late fifties. "Just skip to the blood, Jo. I'd like to get home before daybreak."
As for the next part of the story—married man isn't getting any at home, picks up a woman in a bar, finds out she's strigoi, finds out he's strigoi, comes home and screws his sick old lady to death: Ho-h
um and lah-de-dah, thought Aldo. Welcome to the world on blood.
Aldo interrupted Jonas once more to help Danny carry his rubber-lined sack out the back door and around to the Freddie Forth's Fresh Fish van that Danny used for his work. Nobody ever noticed the smell of a body in a fish truck. When he returned Jonas had poured out two glasses of elderly single malt. Aldo settled himself back down on the tufted horsehide cushion of the balloon-back side chair and took a respectful sip while the old man went on with his story. He had to admit that compared to this stuff, the best Scotch at the Cock and Fender was swill indeed.
"Our son, Jamey, was in his first year at Oxford when his mother died. I don't know how he took her death—I'd gone into such a deep state of depression and guilt that I was sent to a 'rest home' in Sussex, for my own protection. The psychiatrists, of course, were of no help whatsoever. All I could tell them was that I was responsible for her death—true enough—but of course I couldn't tell them about the blood drinking, so their reassurances—that my feelings of guilt were only natural—never touched the root of the problem.
"Unbeknownst to the doctors, however, the drugs they gave me did help ease the blood withdrawal, and along with my Bible saw me through the sheer shock of the entire experience of the previous month, which you have to remember included both my own fall from grace and Alice's death—nor could I have told you at the time where the one began and the other left off.
"In the end, though, it was an altogether different sort of medicine that carried me through. It was either my second or third week in hospital; I was drifting off to sleep in the arms of Sister Seconal when there came to me what I can only describe as a vision, a bright blur of light that in outline was both feminine and angelic—not like any illustration I've ever seen. But I saw her; she was as real to me as you are, and I saw her with these same eyes.
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