Stainless

by Todd Grimson

  One night he asks her, and she doesn’t answer for a long time. Then she says, “Do you mean, does it make me drunk?”

  Artless, she seems genuinely puzzled that he would guess this, or have the nerve to bring it up. Keith never knows when or if she is playing the faux-naif. Never, perhaps.

  “Yes,” she says. “Not every time.”

  “Sometimes it just gets you straight.”

  “Yes.”

  He kisses her hand. He means it ironically, or would to anyone else, but he also just wants to kiss her hand.

  He likes her. In some ways—probably his false interpretation—she seems shy. He takes certain liberties with this.

  Undead. Both of them are in between, living but dead. Undead.

  Keith listens to music, to tapes sped up so that a fifty-minute side of a cassette takes about half that time.

  He puts headphones on, and lies there, waiting for the sun to go down. There’s a particular silence when the burning orange-pink sun goes down behind the distant line marking the end of the world, there’s a silence in which the birds pause for an instant, the dogs don’t bark, that moment when the vampire’s eyes come open, safe from the light.

  Keith listens to music, out in the air, at the ordinary, usual speed. He waits. He has no thoughts. He is in a state of unpeace.

  FOUR

  Ever since she began coming here to clean, Consuela has been curious about these locked doors. She has been coming once a week, on Monday afternoon, for three months. Just another expensive house in Beverly Glen. But these locked doors.

  Consuela has tried to look into the rooms from outside, but there are plum-colored drapes concealing the interiors, drapes which are always drawn. The only person she’s ever seen here is a young, good-looking Anglo, twenty-five or so … but he’s not the owner, she understands. He’s house-sitting. From what she has seen, he sleeps well into the afternoon. Something is wrong with his hands.

  He’s amiable, he is nice. She will tell Elvis not to hurt him. It’s going to be bad enough, they’ll scrutinize her very closely after a burglary at one of her houses, she’s been through it before. She doesn’t want to hear about any violence. Otherwise, well, there’s a lot of crime in L.A., and this place doesn’t have the best security, places a lot more protected than this get hit every day. There’s no “pattern.” It’s not as if the houses Consuela cleans sooner or later all get robbed.

  This house … its time has come, that’s all. Elvis has problems, he needs money bad, so finally she said, “Look, I might know a place with a lot of good stuff.”

  They’d never be able to prove anything. Most crimes like this are solved by somebody talking, somebody copping a plea. (That is, if they’re ever solved, which most are not.) Nobody here would ever talk. The Rodriguez brothers are Elvis’s cousins, they’ve been tight since they were kids. It’s their truck, and it’s Victor Rodriguez’s father-in-law who’s the fence.

  Consuela doesn’t even know the rich people who own this house, she’s never seen them, and this guy who hangs around, yeah his hands are fucked up, something happened to him, but even so he’s not poor—look at the beautiful house he gets to stay in while he gets well.

  She doesn’t feel great about it, but the finder’s fee will sure help and sometimes you just have to do something bad. Once it’s occurred to you, and you know it’s possible, and when you add everything up it doesn’t seem that risky after all. Once she mentioned it to Elvis … it’s become a little like being in a movie, working undercover, pretending like everything’s the same. It makes all the rest of her week a little more exciting, waiting to come back here. Elvis lent her a little camera, and she discreetly, like a spy, used up a roll of film.

  It remains frustrating, however, not to be able to sneak a look into the locked rooms. What treasures might be hidden behind those doors?

  Consuela studies all the furnishings and art objects with a different eye, appraising in the dining room the eight high-backed Louis XIII chairs, the pewter table service, the tall sculptures which cast such intricate shadows on the walls. She turns a critical eye on the many paintings, which might end up in South America, Miami, or Guadalajara.

  She particularly likes, in the study, the Bessarabian carpet, dark blue and gold and wine red, and in the bedroom, the twelve-fold screen painted with some scene out of the Crusades. Wonderful booty, meant to be stolen, to travel mysteriously all over the world.

  Outside, she gets in her car and lights a cigarette. She’s not allowed to smoke, or use strong-smelling cleaning solvents, inside. She feels nervous as Keith comes out of the shadows, watching her, electronically closing the gate as she drives out. The place is so very silent and still. She feels a stab of fear.

  FIVE

  Some miles from Richmond, Virginia, in April of 1837, James Robert Ward continued walking at a brisk pace steadily home. It was quite dark, and he reckoned he had at least another two hours or ten miles to go. He was a strong and healthy twenty-one years of age, accustomed to walking tours and long strolls.

  By now, after walking alone for many hours, his earlier concerns had faded away—foremost among these a misunderstanding he had suffered with his prickly brother-in-law, upon whose wealth both he and his widowed mother were somewhat dependent—and his thoughts had settled into contemplation of his last meeting with Ermina, whom he loved. The ringlets of her hair, the charm of her unaffected smile … he pondered her every aspect in the light of Universal Redeeming Love. Oh, if she truly returned his love, every obstacle could be surmounted!

  Surely, for instance, in his absence, his sister would now work to soften her husband, to make him see how light a favor was required to put James on his own footing from now on. This material question once settled, James would feel free to ask Ermina for her hand. He had already pledged her his love, through poetry, and although she had not come out and said she returned his emotion, she must—he had seen the answer in her shining eyes!

  James was an optimist. All would be well.

  It was pitch black now. He was walking, on this road, through a low-lying glade where the trees formed a canopy obscuring the stars. The air seemed preternaturally hushed, and James found himself thinking, just for a moment, of ghosts. And then, more frighteningly, somehow, because more concretely, of runaway slaves.

  Yesterday he had seen some newly arrived slaves, manacled and unhappy, on their way to be shipped over the mountains, to the Ohio River. Like cornmeal, tobacco, barrels of herring, or hams. His brother-in-law dealt in such wares.

  James came out from the peculiarly dark corridor, into a more open space, under the sky. He was somehow relieved. And yet, strange, there was absolutely no sound but for his own hushed footsteps. It had been windy earlier on, so that he had been glad to have his Marseilles greatcoat, but all the entranced boughs remained perfectly still.

  He walked on, gazing about attentively, but there was nothing, no reason to fear. He relaxed, and began to enjoy the quiet. It was a poetic, a magical night.

  But then … he did not believe it at first, but then he clearly perceived, standing there, seemingly staring at him, a young woman. Clearly, she saw him. Indeed, it was as if she had been waiting for him! She advanced, at the edge of the meadow, and he moved to greet her, wondering if she needed his aid.

  She was dressed in mourning, pale and melancholy, of a waiflike thinness perhaps somewhat consumptive, with hot, liquescent eyes and long black hair. She gave James a nervous smile, and said, “Please, sir, you must help me. Can you? I do pray that you may help.”

  “Yes,” James said, feeling an attraction intermingled with dread. “What is it? Yes, I will assist you in any way that I can.”

  “Come then,” she said, taking him by the hand, and he dropped his walking stick and followed her. Her hand was so cold, so cold! He smelled violets, or orris root, and all at once the wind swelled up, rustling the leaves.

  “What is it?” he asked, as she led him into the woods, but he hardly knew if he
spoke aloud or within his head. She turned to him every so often, with a sorrowful smile, and he felt keenly that there was something wrong, and yet he was so dreamy, he could not resist. Something like the promise of forbidden, horrid voluptuousness seemed to lie waiting, just ahead, as they penetrated the woods.

  They stopped in a clearing; it was so black all he could see was the pallor of her face and hands. He was suddenly so afraid, so unbelievably afraid, as she stared, much less shy, into his eyes. Gently, she touched his face with both of her cold hands.

  James found himself falling, slowly, ever so slowly, swooning, and a cat or some such creature bit him sharply on the neck, he wanted to push it away but he found that he could not.

  Oh please, if he could only move one hand! Or, failing that, if he could only manage to utter one sound, even if he should just cry like a child or squeak like a mouse!

  … so heavy and hot, his body was so heavy it should sink into the earth, heavier than lead and now burning, molten, molten like some new amalgam, some unholy alchemy transforming his entire being as the sky swarmed at him, he was unparticled, blind, as he surged up into the sky.

  SIX

  She’s not sure, not positive, but she believes that the blood tastes different now than it did in the faraway past. It seems like it is fouler now, also more complicated, more of a metallic mineral tang to it, like licking the hood of a warm automobile. Somebody told her once about the minerals in the blood. She remembers magnesium and zinc. It flows through the veins and, deeper and richer, the arteries, through the pumping heart, the organs, the brain.

  It’s possible that any perceived difference is imaginary, or inconsequential. The same dark salty ancient flow is certainly present, unmistakable, probably the same as it was in the time of the Romans, the pharaohs, or back further than that.

  They used to say, “Evil is in the blood.” Or, “They are of noble blood.” They used to put leeches on people to try to get rid of the “bad” blood.

  Justine was a peasant. She had peasant blood. After she became a vampire, she used both kinds, noble and peasant, but whenever it dwelt inside her, it was the same. Evil. She used it up, in some fashion, and always needed more.

  When she thirsts, and the first gout comes into her through her fangs, it hits her body like magic. A magical, sustaining fluid. She is infinitely familiar with blood in its different temperatures, with how it stains, or dries, or how fast it will bleed out of a wound. It is nothing to her to wake up with caked blood in her hair, dried brownish flaking blood to rub off of her face.

  It doesn’t feel to her like she’s been alive so long, it doesn’t feel like she’s old. All the past is so indistinct, or nonexistent—it’s more like she’s a creature, reborn anew, with certain instincts but no real history, only occasional fragments which she dreams of during the inanimate long days.

  At night, when she arises, she washes her face and wonders if there’s anything important she’s forgotten, and it takes a while for present circumstances to come back.

  A long time ago, she might have compared her existence to that of a rat, or a worm, a maggot, and she feared sometimes that she was hideous, that she imagined she stayed young but was deceived.

  She became much more dispassionate, bit by bit. She did things, and they made a big impression on her at the time, but in many ways no single night was more important than the next, and she forgot.

  SEVEN

  There’s a lot of time to think and he thinks about how Ornette Coleman said that if the sound of a clarinet is two inches, the sound of an electric guitar is at least twelve. Somebody once told Keith, on the telephone in New York, about “sex chocolate.” “It’s new,” the person said, and started to laugh. “I’m serious. It wears off too soon, though.”

  Everything wears off, he thinks. He wonders, not for the first time, if death is like sleep. If it is, what does that mean? Everyone dies. When this cat of his died, put to sleep after a bad illness, no hope left, the cat looked like he accepted it. He was relaxed, like he knew this was an inevitable part of life. If there are billions of people all over the world, each with his or her individual consciousness, what can be said about their little lives, their struggles, and their deaths? Beethoven died. Gandhi died. It’s not like you get some prize. Like the cat, there are other cats to take your place. That’s it.

  A vampire is just an animal. It lives by what you might call abnormal means, but its physiology has its logic, it’s a metamorphosis of what used to be human, of what started out as a human being like anyone else.

  He talks to Justine sometimes about things he knows she doesn’t understand. She listens, and he says at a midnight show of some band, “Repetition is change,” and how Africans like buzztones, then the band bums him out and he says, later on, outside, “You play your guitar a while, then step up to the mike and sing your little song—about pain, and loss, or love—how can this be significant to anyone anymore?”

  They get in the car and he feels antagonistic, he’s sick of her, the suspense she keeps him in, and he says, “You know, I don’t give a shit about you. I’m not even curious. So you exist. So what? It’s just a job. You do your job. It seems pretty boring to me. How can you stand it?”

  She just looks at him. He drives them into the desert, under the moon.

  Blur, blur. Smear.

  The black desert is never-ending. That’s all the world is now. Endless desert, endless unchanging night. If there are habitations, they are nothing more than gas stations and all-night diners, places where if you stop you might be killed. Your head might end up in the fridge. Justine accepts this situation, naturally, as she would accept burial in a shallow grave out by the railroad tracks. He stops the car and gets the shovel out of the trunk. He leaves the car running so he can see what he’s doing, digs in the glare of the headlights. He buries her, tamps down the sandy dirt.

  Then when he begins driving again she is soon there next to him in the front seat, uncommunicative and cold, pale as moonlight in a dark blue scary room. He stops and buries her again, drives a stake through her heart, but she turns up once more, his silent passenger, nothing to say.

  He is weary. “What do you want from me?” he asks, and she seems not to hear, to be listening at all. He comes to a police roadblock. They look inside, check his driver’s license, then wave him on. The sign says Flagstaff, Arizona, Tombstone, Death Valley, Dodge, Nowheresville. They are below sea level, they are on a highway underground.

  Keith stops the car and runs out into a graveyard, in a ghost town. Justine claws her way up out of the dirt, blood on her mouth, a worm crawling down her face. She sits in the car, a blanket around her, dirt in her hair. Keith smokes a cigarette, standing at the side of the road, looking around, then gets back in to drive the car.

  In a cheap hotel room, she lies on the bed, her dress carelessly up over her thighs, while he uses his tie to make a vein stand out in his arm. He melts the heroin, while Justine pays no attention, and he shoots up, sighing, releasing the tie. Pantomime.

  ‘He’ puts out a cigarette on her calf. She fails to respond. He says, “Honey, you’re either dead or a real good faker.” He waves his hand in front of her eyes.

  Driving again. He yawns, big time. Suddenly, no apparent change, but he sees that she has fangs. Oh boy. He buries her again by the side of the road, but by the time he finishes, dropping the shovel and planting a wooden cross, she is already back in the passenger seat as before.

  At a diner, he mashes a cheeseburger against her lips, to no avail. In the bathroom, he sits her on the toilet and waits, then stands her up and wipes her pubic hair, throws the tissue in the water and flushes it down. He washes her face, saying, “There, that’s a good girl.” He puts fresh lipstick on her mouth, and holds up her compact mirror.

  In the car, she suddenly awakens, mouth open, turning to him with her hungry fangs. He steps on the gas, floors it, 80, 90, 100, but she doesn’t care. She hisses, going for his throat.

  Then not
hing has happened. He’s driving, she is his passenger on the desert highway in the night.

  She says, “How far do we have to go?”

  EIGHT

  The second-youngest of five children, Keith could not remember a time when he was not at odds with his parents, a scapegoat, blamed for all manner of sins and petty crimes. His father was an alcoholic, and this condition worsened considerably when Keith was about eleven or twelve. His mother found Keith rebellious and unmanageable, and regularly told on him, so that his father would focus on Keith, drunkenly hitting him or whatever, ugly scenes, to make him sorry for upsetting his mom. The boy remained unredeemably stubborn; he would never give in.

  When he was thirteen, during a particularly hot St. Louis summer, he spent all three months sleeping out in a hammock in the backyard. His parents disliked this situation, but if he agreed to stay inside, by midnight or 1:00 A.M. he’d be back out in his hammock, listening to his Walkman or to the ambient sounds of the night. Friends came over, bringing beer or pot, and on a few occasions he managed daring romantic rendezvous. Many, many nights he wandered the streets. At 5:30 A.M. he’d be off on his bicycle to deliver the St. Louis Herald-Dispatch.

  He shoplifted batteries for his Walkman, anything else he thought he really needed, and never once was caught. His mother wouldn’t allow him to play the family piano, so he got a guitar instead. He practiced it quietly, with damped strings, out in the backyard.

  His oldest brother and sister, safely off to college before their father really degenerated, blamed Keith for causing trouble. He in turn disliked them. They were ignorant, they had never experienced what he had. He wouldn’t explain it to them, either. It was too shameful, having your arm twisted up behind you in a hammerlock until you thought it would break, one fraction of an inch from snapping like the slim bone of a bird.