by Clare Willis
The compact laptop computer on his tray table displayed a photo from an article in ARTnews magazine. He turned his attention back to the attractive young woman in the photo, Sunni Marquette, standing in her eponymous San Francisco art gallery. He had enlarged the picture until Sunni’s distinctive emerald eyes and heart-shaped face had pixilated beyond recognition, but not before he assured himself that he was right. He had been looking for her for years. Now he just had to get to her before another vampire did.
He wondered if the Council knew about her, if she was protected. If so, that would make his job more difficult, although not impossible. He had killed vampires before. He smiled and fingered his impeccable tie and the collar of his hand-sewn, Egyptian cotton shirt. Yes, he had killed before, and would again. That was why he needed Sunni Marquette. The Council had numbers and he was alone in the world. Alone, and he was tired of it.
The blood smell insinuated itself into his consciousness again. This time he focused on one particular scent—the mousy, middle-aged woman in the seat next to him. He had already spoken with her, and he could feel her tender body thrumming with anticipation that he might turn to her again. She put down her glass, checked her watch, and then sighed very quietly.
“Does it really matter what time it is?” he murmured.
She winced, as if she’d been caught doing something naughty. He thought she’d probably never done anything naughty in her life, but there was a first time for everything. After all, she’d never met Richard Lazarus before.
“The concept of time is so odd when you’re in an airplane, isn’t it? My watch is on New York time, which is 2:00 A.M., and it’s 11:00 P.M. in San Francisco, but what time is it here?” She nodded as if responding to something he’d said. “You’re right, it doesn’t matter. I don’t feel tired at all, you know.” She sipped her drink, and then shook the ice cubes sadly, looking for more liquor. “Are you tired, Richard?”
He shook his head.
She giggled. “I feel like I’ve told you all there is to know about me.”
Yes, he knew everything about Vera Grant: the eighty-hour a week job; the boss to whom she was practically married, except that he already had a wife; singing in the choir at Altamount Methodist; the condo she wished she could sell but owed more on the mortgage than the place was worth; and her two cats, Rusty and Clayton. She was a very talkative lady.
“And I know practically nothing about you! Just that you’re a widower, and you live in London. Oh, I’ve hogged the conversation.” Her hand flew to her mouth, as if she could put back the words that had already been spoken.
“Not at all, I have found our little talk fascinating.” Richard pressed the call button. The flight attendant arrived in less than twenty seconds.
“I love first-class,” Vera said.
“The lady needs another gimlet,” Richard said. He reached across Vera’s lap to pick up the glass.
“Oh, no, Richard, I’m sure I’ve had enough.” She put her hand on his. “I can’t even remember how many I’ve had.”
“The night is still young,” Richard said. “At least where we’re going it is.” In fact he wished she wouldn’t drink, but it would make things go so much more smoothly.
She giggled and nodded. “Okay, maybe a little one.”
“You, sir?” The flight attendant looked at Richard.
He shook his head. “Nothing for me.”
Vera frowned. “You haven’t had a single drink. You’re going to make me look like a lush.”
“I haven’t had a drink in a very long time,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy yourself. “ He allowed a hint of lasciviousness to slip into his smile, and he sensed Vera’s mouth going dry, heard her heart beat a little faster.
“I have enjoyed myself, very much,” she replied.
“And I have enjoyed you also,” Richard lifted a lock of Vera’s hair and coiled it around his finger. “You are such a lovely woman, Vera. You have the most beautiful hair. Black like a raven’s wing, so black it seems to have blue in it. I love this color. ”
He didn’t care for the stench that assaulted his delicate nose, but he had learned to endure it. Many women dyed their hair with petrochemicals these days.
The flight attendant returned with another drink. Vera sipped with evident enjoyment. She had never had a gimlet before. It had been Richard’s suggestion.
“You know, Vera, I can think of a way we could enjoy each other’s company even more.” He gently, tentatively, touched her thigh.
Vera’s hand shook. She placed the drink on her tray table just before it sloshed onto the floor. “Oh, Richard, I don’t know.”
He lifted his hand. “I have offended you. Please accept my apology. ”
“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that.” Her short fingers inched up his leg like five caterpillars until she found his hand. “It’s just, well, it sounds trite, but I’ve never been that kind of a girl. We just met.”
“You are right, we just met.” His other hand slid along the arm of her silk blouse, stopping at her collar. He reached underneath her pearl necklace and stroked her throat. He could feel her heart, now pounding wildly.
“But there is a connection between us, Vera, I felt it as soon as I sat down. Didn’t you feel it?”
“Yes, I did.” Her gaze flicked away, but quickly returned. The hope in her eyes was almost comical. “I’m going to be in San Francisco for four days. Maybe we could have dinner, or something. ”
“Maybe. But we’re here now, aren’t we?”
He caressed her cheek, feeling how the skin was thinning near her eyes. So delicate, these humans, so temporal. Vera grabbed his hand and pressed it into her lap. He could feel her heartbeat in the veins in her thighs.
“Shall we go somewhere?” she said in a husky voice.
“No need,” he whispered. He turned off the overhead lights, plunging their seats into darkness, and then he spread a blanket over her lap. “Now, take off your stockings.”
Vera giggled again. “I just love your English accent. It’s like a BBC newscaster is talking dirty to me.” She did as he commanded, pulling up her skirt and rolling her stockings down her legs.
“I’m so glad you’re wearing a skirt,” Richard said as his fingers slid through her hair and lightly scratched her scalp. “I hate it when women wear pants. A woman should be a woman, as you are, Vera. ”
Vera reached up with both hands and cupped Richard’s cheeks, her lips puckered for a kiss. But then she drew back.
“Your skin … It’s so cold.”
“I’m sorry, I should have warned you. I have a condition—my blood does not circulate well. It makes me cold in my extremities. Is this a turn-off, as the Americans say?”
“No, not at all.”
He parted her lips and kissed her deeply in the French fashion. It was not his favorite part of the interaction, but he had learned long ago that humans expected it, and he liked to think that he left them happy.
“I’m going to kiss you down there. Would you like that?” Richard asked.
She didn’t say anything, but he could feel her answer in her heartbeat, in the rapid rise of her temperature. He neatly folded himself into the generous foot space that the airline provided for its first-class customers and disappeared under the blanket. He gently spread her legs. Her hips rose up to meet him.
Richard knew when Vera had moved into that other place; he could feel it in the blood coursing through the veins in her silky thighs. He could hear it in her thoughts, or lack thereof. If someone spoke to her now she would not respond, could not respond.
With the exquisite sensation of anticipation that an erection brings, he felt his fangs extend. He licked them with his soft tongue, probed their needle-sharp points. Vera was a lovely woman. How could human men have treated her so unkindly, left her alone for so long? Were they intimidated simply because she was intelligent and successful? Couldn’t they see that inside her suit she was all woman, just waitin
g to give herself to any man who had the guts to walk up to her and ask? Ah well, their loss was his gain. If Vera had been traveling with a husband he would not be here now, between her thighs, seconds away from piercing the femoral vein that pulsed hotly against him and drinking until Vera’s delicate heart fluttered hopelessly like a sparrow in a hurricane. Life was so much easier for Richard now that women were independent.
When the plane landed at San Francisco International Airport Richard was one of the first people to disembark. He left his seatmate curled under a blanket, her face turned toward the window, while a flight attendant made his way over to wake her up. Sometimes watching the aftermath of a kill was interesting: loved ones wailing and screaming, officious policemen stamping around, pretending at competence. But he knew this one would be neat. The flight attendant would quietly call an ambulance and the paramedics would bundle Vera up and carry her away. It would be hours, or even days from now, before anyone noticed that Vera had been exsanguinated. If they figured it out at all.
Looking out the taxi window at the foggy, steel-gray depths of a seasonably cold June day, Richard was content. He imagined the paramedics covering her with a sheet, but not before they noticed the little Mona Lisa smile on Vera’s chalk-white face, and wondered what she had been thinking about right before she died.
By eight o’clock the toasts had been made, the cake had been eaten, and the bouquet tossed, so Sunni felt she could make her escape. She left the rest of the guests whirling like Turkish dervishes to nineties cover tunes and repaired to the elegance of the Redwood Room at the Clift Hotel. Sunni’s booth faced the monumental wooden bar, rumored to have been carved during the gold rush days from the trunk of a single Sequoia tree. Unmerciful techno pop music hacked at her eardrums, but thanks to California’s no smoking ordinance, the air at least was clear. Sunni always appreciated it when a law touted community benefit over individual freedom. Unless her freedom was in jeopardy, but she’d quit smoking when she was sixteen. Her bridesmaid’s dress was in a shopping bag on the floor, and she’d changed into a comfortable going-out outfit: jeans, black silk blouse, and a short, close-fitting red leather jacket.
On her size five feet were a pair of Prada pumps with four-inch heels. She always wore heels to compensate for her short stature, and she stretched her modest budget to buy the good ones—Prada, Louboutin, Blahnik. The cardboard monstrosities Lydia called shoes were in the garbage can outside the reception hall. The dress would join its sisters at Thrift Town on Valencia Street, where perhaps it might find a second life as a prom dress or a Halloween costume.
Her best friend Isabel entered the bar, craning her head as she looked for Sunni. Quite a few of the patrons stared as she wove around the tables, and not only because her neon green animal print dress could have doubled as a hazard sign. Isabel’s arm crutches seemed to make people think they had license to watch her like a show on cable TV.
Isabel’s crocodile-skin Birkin backpack landed in the center of the table, perilously close to a lit candle. Sunni moved it to a safer spot.
“How was the wedding?” Isabel asked, leaning her crutches against a chair.
“Beautiful, touching, and heartfelt,” Sunni said.
“What’s wrong?” Isabel gave her the same suspicious look as the woman in the bathroom.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
Isabel waved a hand in dismissal. “I’ve known you forever, Sunni. I can tell when something’s bothering you, and it wasn’t just that you hate weddings. Spill it.”
Forever was an exaggeration, but it didn’t feel like much of one. Sunni had been fourteen when she met Isabel, on her first day at the Ashwood Psychiatric Institute in San Rafael, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. When a nurse in surgical scrubs showed Sunni to her room, Isabel was already there, sitting on one of the iron hospital beds, reading Tiger Beat magazine. Sunni had tossed her fraying duffel bag onto the other bed and sat down.
“What’s your name?” Isabel asked. She gave Sunni a big smile. Her pink lip gloss was askew, her blond hair was messy, and there was a pair of weird crutches leaning against the wall. Sunni wondered what Isabel’s diagnosis was, whether they put people with the same illnesses together or spread them around.
“Sunni.”
“Cute name. Mine’s Isabel.”
“Nicetomeechya,” Sunni mumbled. She tore a cuticle off and savored the tarnished penny taste of blood.
“I’m fourteen, how old are you?”
“Same.”
“What are you in for, Sunni?”
“What are you in for, nosy? ”
“Depression.”
“Oh.” Sunni narrowed her eyes and peered at the blond girl. She might be crippled, but her hair and skin were very glossy, and her clothes looked expensive. The girl was rich, and Sunni was ready to hate her. “Then why are you smiling like an idiot?”
Isabel shrugged. “I don’t know. Just being polite, I guess.”
But Isabel didn’t withdraw or turn away, as most people did when Sunni antagonized them, she just kept looking at her with an open, inviting expression. For some reason, perhaps because she had just been admitted to a psych hospital and didn’t have much to protect anymore, she decided to tell Isabel the truth.
“They say I’m depressed, but that’s not really it. I’m not like other people,” she said. “I have these weird abilities. But they keep getting me into trouble.”
Isabel nodded as if she was familiar with this problem, as if Sunni had said she was bulimic or had a drug problem.
“What do your parents say? ”
“I don’t have any parents.”
To Sunni’s surprise, Isabel reached across the suitcases and grabbed Sunni’s hand. “That must be so hard for you,” she whispered.
At that point the girl who had prided herself since the age of eight on having a heart of stone, had started to cry.
Sunni looked up at the bar. “Let’s get a drink first. I need it.”
A waiter approached, his eyes fixed on Sunni. He was a handsome young white guy with short black hair, gold hoop earrings, and a tattoo on his neck that looked like a hand strangling him. From a distance he had looked thirty. Close up he appeared closer to twenty.
“That’s a righteous tat,” he said. “Did you have it done in the city?” Sunni saw a flash of gold in his tongue when he smiled.
Sunni reached a finger to the rose tattoo just under her left collarbone. Many times she’d picked up the phone to call a dermatologist and have the tattoo removed, but had never been able to go through with it. So it remained, an ambivalent memento of turbulent times, and of people, and things now lost. She pulled her blouse to cover it. “I don’t really remember where I got it,” she lied.
He chuckled. “Hell, I don’t remember getting half of mine.”
“Can we just get a drink, buddy?” Sunni said abruptly.
The waiter lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry. Didn’t realize you were shy about it.”
“I’m shy, believe me.”
Isabel snorted with laughter.
“What can I get you, ma’am?” he asked Isabel.
“A glass of Hess chardonnay. ”
He turned silently to Sunni.
“I’ll have a margarita, lots of salt,” Sunni said.
“Certainly. I’ll just need to see some ID.” He smiled apologetically.
“Oh, really? From whom?” Isabel said.
“From you both,” he replied, but he was still looking at Sunni. “I’m sorry, ladies, it’s my job. My boss is right over there behind the bar. Otherwise it would be totally cool, you know. ”
“Will it be totally cool when you figure out that I’m thirty-two?” Sunni said as she pulled out her wallet. She gave the waiter exactly five seconds to look at her ID before she snatched it back. Isabel took longer to get hers out, but she let him stare at it for as long as he wanted.
“I’ll get your drinks.” He smiled and walked away.
&nb
sp; Isabel turned to Sunni, a quizzical eyebrow raised.
“What? “ Sunni asked.
She inclined her head toward the waiter, who was watching their table while the bartender worked the blender. “You still get these young guys hitting on you. How do you do that?”
Sunni rolled her eyes. “He was hardly hitting on me.”
“Until he saw your license he was. ”
Sunni squinted at her friend. “You want teenage boys hitting on you, Izzy? ”
“I’d like anybody hitting on me, Sunni.” Her eyelids flickered. “Seems like men think that if you have a disability you don’t have a vagina.”
Sunni looked at the table, chastened. She tried to recall the last time Isabel had been out with a man. She remembered their prom night all too well, but surely Isabel had been out with someone since then? Maybe not. Sunni rarely thought about Isabel’s multiple sclerosis, but it was probably the first thing a potential date would consider.
“It’s just because I look so young,” Sunni grumbled.
“You should be happy. When you’re fifty you’ll look like you’re thirty.”
“Humph,” Sunni snorted. “And when I’m a hundred I’ll look like I’m eighty. What good will that do me?”
The waiter silently set their drinks on the table. Isabel rolled the first sip of wine around her mouth like the connoisseur she was. “Okay, now tell me what’s wrong,” she said.
“I saw him at the wedding. This drunk guy tried to attack me in the bathroom and suddenly there he was.” Sunni took a big swig of her margarita. “My guardian angel.”
Isabel’s eyes widened. “Someone tried to attack you? Are you okay? ”
“Fine.”
“Did he save you again?”
“Actually, no, I took care of the guy myself. Kneed him in the balls and then punched him in the neck.” She smiled at the memory.
