The Bride of Casa Dracula

by Marta Acosta

  “Well,” he said, glancing across the way to see Vidalia watching us. “I brought her because Joseph and Cornelia invited her. We’re not dating or anything.”

  “You’re a free man, Oz.”

  “My work takes up all my time. So, are you here by yourself?”

  “Yes…I’m not…” I struggled to find words. “It’s so good to see all our friends.”

  He nodded and then let out a heavy breath and said, “I better keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t go off the rails.”

  “Good to see you, Oswald K. Grant.”

  He nodded and touched my hair. I leaned toward him instinctively, as I had from the moment I first met him, and I smelled his herb-scented sunblock. He smiled sadly and said, “I remember the day you bought that skirt.” I nodded, waiting for him to say more. But then he turned and walked away.

  He had been my world: the alpha and omega of my heart’s wishes. I dropped my head to hide my face, my tears, my sorrow, and rushed away.

  To get to the parking lot, I had to pass right by Ian and Ilena. I couldn’t stop myself from glancing Ian’s way. His eyes caught mine and I saw something there-was it regret, pity? I didn’t wait to find out. I got in my truck and drove straight back to the hotel.

  I threw my things in my green zebra case and dragged it to the lobby. “I’d like to check out of my room,” I told the clerk and slid my key across to him.

  “So soon?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He looked at his computer screen and said, “Yes, Ms. Ducharme’s taken care of everything again. Have a pleasant evening and come back soon.”

  I was about to thank him when I realized what he’d said. “What did you mean, ‘Ms. Ducharme’s taken care of everything again’?”

  He looked puzzled, but said, “I was referring to your last stay with us. It was put on Cornelia Ducharme’s account.”

  “Of course. She’s so generous. Thank you.” Cornelia had set me up for failure by hoping that I would discover either her brother or Bar None. If Cornelia had made reservations here without my knowing it, she could easily have canceled Oswald’s reservations as well, which would have explained the hotel problem on my trip east.

  I went back to the City and continued trying to mend myself.

  The Council, so willing to punish enemies without proof, was much more lenient with their own. Nixon “resigned” his position on the Rules Committee and gave me a settlement that was sufficient for me to pay Oswald for the loft. He refused to take the money so I just deposited it in one of his accounts.

  As some genius philosopher once said, breaking up is hard to do. I’d heard there was a mathematical relationship between the length of time you were together and the time required for recovery, but I’d forgotten if the ratio was one month needed for every year together, or one month for every six months together.

  I asked Nancy and she said, “Oh, I’m so over Todd already and I was with him since frosh year.” She’d separated from her husband and was living in her apartment, trying to start a business as an event planner.

  I’d given her the composition book filled with her style edicts, and after one of her sorority sisters had included part of it in a fashion column, Nancy was in demand as a style pundit, spouting insightful truisms such as “Leopard print is a timeless classic.”

  Don Pedro’s fauxoir was rushed into publication, typos, grammatical errors, and all. I spotted it in a bookstore window downtown. The cover was a cheesy drawing of a man morphing into animals, including the inscrutable platypus. I bought a copy and pasted my name over Don Pedro’s on the cover. I propped the book atop my desk, beside a bulletin board with clippings of the fauxoir’s rave reviews.

  Mercedes asked about the display and I told her how I’d been scammed by Don Pedro. When the book reached the best-seller lists, I bought a bottle of champagne and invited her over.

  She arrived carrying a big box and said, “I’ve got a couple of presents for you.” Inside the box was the much-vaulted Margaritanator 3000, a chrome-and-glass powerhouse of a blender. Mercedes took a sheet of folded paper out of her pocket and handed it to me. “Here’s another.”

  “What is it?”

  “It took considerable digging, but I found out that your pal Don Pedro isn’t from the jungle. His real name is Dave Alvarez and he’s from the San Fernando Valley. After his auto parts shop went under, he did a stint as a pet psychic, using the name Jasper Farswat, and from there he reinvented himself as a Don Pedro Nascimento. But he’s just an ordinary Mexican-American like you.”

  I handed her a glass of champagne and raised my own. “To all the ordinary Mexican-Americans and their extraordinary imaginations.”

  She toasted and then said, “I read the book. It was damn good, mujer, aside from the fact that it’s total B.S.”

  After Mercedes left, I sat on the pink velvet sofa and opened the fauxoir. After twenty pages, I realized that when I’d been channeling Don Pedro, I’d broken away from all the writing rules I’d imposed upon myself. His voice was loopy and florid, yes, but also fluid and touching. I began working again on my story about the girl who is taken to the underworld.

  I reconnected with my old friends. The vampires and their circle kept in touch with me, although they handled me carefully. I made new friends at the local Stitching & Bitching group. They taught me to knit and I made several charming sweaters for Sam’s toddler. I even invited them to my loft and fired up the Margaritanator 3000 for Rancho Sunsets.

  The needlework had an unexpected but very welcome benefit: after so many hours of controlling my small motor skills, precise movement became automatic and extended to my large motor skills. I stopped having to worry about hugging someone so hard that I hurt him.

  I decided to salvage the embroidered silk from my wedding tunic and make scarves. The garment was in a box on a shelf in my closet. I took down the box and when I pulled out the gown, a manila folder fell out of the box.

  It was the guide to the vampire marriage ceremony. I hadn’t looked at it before, but now I sat on my bed and opened it. The first sheet was written in the strange old alphabet. The phonetic translation was written on the second page along with the directions: “The groom places the braided birch wreath atop the bride’s head.” The wedding was consummated when the bride cut the groom and tasted his blood.

  I fingered my bride’s tunic, remembering how Oswald had looked in his scarlet robe. Then I turned it inside out to see how I could cut it. Parallel to my original seams were neat rows of stitches that took in over an inch on each side. Bad, bad Cornelia.

  Edna and I visited whenever she was in town, but I was never able to talk about Oswald except in the most superficial ways. Once I said, “I miss the ranch the way it was…with all of us there. Those evenings we shared. They all blend together in my mind, but each was so wonderful. I was so happy.”

  “I know, Young Lady.”

  As the weeks went by, I found myself content to awake in the rosy light that came through the curtains of my pink loft. I looked forward to seeing my friends and I enjoyed my time alone writing, reading, or unraveling one of my knitting experiments.

  Sometimes I even went out to dinner or a movie with a man, but I always went home by myself.

  One night I walked to My Dive, as I did once or twice a week, enjoying the way the steam came up through the sidewalk grates. I watched a man changing the signage on a music hall and admired the gray cupola of City Hall against a dark blue sky. Mercedes had taken the lease on the little sandwich shop next door and installed Juanita’s son Freddie as cook and manager of My Dive Annex.

  I waved to Freddie as I walked past the doorway, but he was busy flirting with a California girl.

  Lenny, the club’s doorman, and I greeted each other with a hip bump. “Good show tonight,” he said.

  “It always is.”

  Mercedes was talking to the lighting guy on the balcony, so I helped the bar chick set up. As the house began filling up, I poure
d a cranberry and soda for myself and took a seat at a two-top.

  Someone pulled the other chair out, and a man said, “May I?”

  I looked up to see Ian Ducharme, but all the different things I could have said had a traffic jam in my throat. He sat, and instantly a waitress was there and he was ordering a bottle of wine.

  “So here we are again, Young Lady. Should I ask how you are?”

  “Please don’t. All of my friends treat me like an invalid,” I said. “But how are you and Ilena?”

  Ian gave a bitter smile. “Do you expect me to be satisfied with another woman? I am still waiting for you.”

  “Ian, may I ask you an odd question?”

  He smiled and said, “I hope you will.”

  “Are we married?”

  He laughed a full, unhindered laugh and said, “Only under vampire law, which has archaic provisions for plunder and captives. I briefly entertained the notion that I could object to your marriage on the grounds that we were already married.”

  “That’s quite flattering in a really insane way.”

  “I came to my senses,” he said. “You would have hated me.” He took my hand and my blood rose at the touch of his skin.

  “What is it that we have, Ian?”

  “We have our blood.”

  We didn’t watch the show. We went back to my loft and this time we were in no hurry, slowly undressing each other, building up agonizing tension as we kissed and caressed. He didn’t bring out the knife, so I was the one to ask, because I finally knew that I was my blood, and I knew that his blood was mine, too.

  Our bond was something I hadn’t asked for and didn’t understand, and yet it was undeniable. It was like a chrysalis that held me.

  Later, we opened the pink curtains and looked out on the lights of the city. I was sitting on my mattress and he was behind me, his arms around me. “Ian, I’m sorry about what happened to you with your parents. How they abused you.”

  He dropped his chin to my shoulder, and I leaned back against him. “Wherever did you get that idea?”

  “You don’t have to be embarrassed. Ms. Smith told me there were unfortunate circumstances and your sister admitted that your parents were blood addicts and used to bleed you for their own highs.”

  I felt the rumble of his laugh. “My parents’ greatest sin is that they are very irresponsible with our estate. They wouldn’t ever do such a mad thing.”

  “Why am I not surprised that Cornelia lied? She lied about wanting to see me happily married. I’m fairly sure she canceled my hotel reservation when I went to see the Council, and I know that she set up the ‘complimentary’ stay when I ran into you and Gigi.”

  “I’d wager Cornelia lied to appeal to your tender heart by painting me as a victim,” Ian said. “She does want to see you happily married. She’s told me so many times.” He reached over to his jacket and I saw a glint of something in his hand. He took my hand and slipped the beautiful red stone ring on my finger. It looked as if it belonged there, as if it had always belonged there.

  “What is it exactly you do for the Council, Ian?”

  “Perhaps someday, my own girl.”

  I took the ring off and handed it back to him. “Perhaps someday, Ian.” I felt the chrysalis around me yield a little.

  Epilogue

  I an was, as Ilena had said, always on the planes, and he wanted me to travel with him to whatever it was he did. I turned him down because I was busy with my own life. We established a relationship of sorts, seeing each other when he could make it to the City. We never used the word “love.”

  When I finished my story about Persephone, I printed it out, packed it up, and mailed it to the famous author I’d met on my trip east. I hoped he would like it, but if he didn’t, I’d try not to be discouraged. After all, my fauxoir had outsold all of his books together and there was talk of a biopic.

  I was taking a walk when I saw a brown dog with a grayish chest wandering by himself. He was skinny and dirty, but he waggled right up to me as if he knew me. After a bath and a week of food, his chest was as snowy white as Daisy’s, and his chocolate fur began to shine. I tried to find his owner, but no one ever claimed him. I applied for a license and took him to the vet for his shots and an exam.

  “What’s his name?” the receptionist asked me.

  “Rosemary.”

  “Rosemary is a girl’s name.”

  “Rosemary is for remembrance,” I said.

  When I was walking the dog home, I said, “I’m going to tell you a story about an ordinary human chica who wanted to be a sincere and serious person and how she met a truly fabulous man and a nest of vampires who became her dear friends. This story has villains and heroes, madmen and con men, schemers and dreamers, urbanites and socialites. There is a beautiful and loyal dog named Daisy. There’s adventure and passion and danger and love and laughter, too. She made mistakes, some foolish and some terrible, but she also tried to make amends.

  “The story may be about transformation.”

  The dog looked up at me, and I said, “No, it’s not a tragedy. For though the girl wanted to be sincere and serious, she adored silliness, and luckily for her, tragedy has no interest in the silly. She’s going through a metamorphosis though. She doesn’t know if she loves a dangerous man, or wants to win back a fabulous one. A more practical girl would dispair, but our girl believes she’s ready for whatever adventures await her.”

  Reading Group Guide for

  The Bride of Casa Dracula by Marta Acosta

  Questions and Topics for Discussion

  1. Milagro describes her fiancй Oswald Grant as “a fabulous man.” How does Milagro’s attitude toward him change as she prepares for their wedding? How does Oswald’s attitude toward Milagro change during the course of the novel?

  2. Why is there tension between Oswald and Milagro about their careers? Is either of them asking too much of the other? What does Milagro discover about her own writing in the process of ghostwriting DonPedro’s memoir?

  3. Do you agree with Milagro’s reasons for objecting to take the Vampire Council’s loyalty oath? Do you agree with Mr. Nixon’s comment that she’ll never be accepted as an American? And why is it important to Oswald for Milagro to follow the Rules Committee’s requests?

  4. What compels Milagro to always “poke the bear” when it would be beneficial to acquiesce?

  5. Why do you think Milagro persists in calling herself a normal human chica when she possesses extraordinary abilities and a taste for blood? What does Milagro like about the vampires and what about them repels her?

  6. What does Ian Ducharme represent to Milagro? Why is she attracted to him when she loves her fiancй? Do you think Ian is the kind of man with whom Milagro could build a lifelong romantic relationship?

  7. Does Cornelia Ducharme function as a source of good or evil in the novel?

  8. What does espiritu de cockteles represent to Milagro? And why is it so important to her?

  9. Why does Milagro welcome the arrival of Pal, the new “dog” that appears at the ranch?

  10. Why is Milagro continually drawn to shady characters such as Pepper, Ian, Cornelia, and DonPedro? Is charm more important to her than moral behavior?

  11. Milagro’s two best friends, Nancy and Mercedes, are diametrically opposed characters. What does each friendship offer Milagro?

  12. Milagro has many wealthy friends-Nancy, Gigi Barton, the entire Grant family-but is she truly comfortable in upper-class circles?

  13. Which of the novel’s characters have the most insight into Milagro’s true nature? How does each of these characters view Milagro? Is there a disparity between the way Milagro sees herself and the way you see Milagro?

  14. Does Milagro make the right decision before the wedding scene?

  15. Discuss the novel’s ending. Were you surprised at the direction Milagro’s life takes? What instances in the story fore-shadowed the turn of events?

  A Conversation with Marta Acosta

&
nbsp; Is Milagro really you?

  As often as people ask if Milagro is based on me, they also tell me that they completely identify with her, which makes me feel absolutely wonderful.

  While Milagro and I share our ethnicity and a love of literature, she was a very conscious construct. I thought about the fictional characters I love and why I love them. I tried to give Milagro a little of Jane Eyre’s loneliness and spirit, Elizabeth Bennett’s sharp wit and good heart, and Bertie Wooster’s cheerful nature.

  It was also important to me to have a character who is a common type among real Latinas, but rarely represented by the media. Milagro is smart, affectionate, college-educated, funny, and devoted to her friends. She reminds me of all the fabulous young women I’ve known who are trying to figure out their place in the world.

  If Milagro is supposed to be so smart, how come she does some really stupid things?

  The blissfully clueless characters in Mark Twain’s and P. G. Wodehouse’s novels are hysterical. Milagro is gullible because she’s inexperienced and hopeful. She acts impulsively and makes mistakes, but she tries to amend her errors. The reasons for the misunderstandings are twofold. They set up comic situations and drama, as well as allowing Milagro to be unaware of information that I couldn’t otherwise convey to the reader.

  Besides, smart people aren’t exempt from fabulously stupid behavior. Just watch the news.

  Why vampires? Are you obsessed by the paranormal?

  I really enjoy paranormal stories, but I’m not obsessed! When you’re writing humor, you try to put seemingly disparate themes together to play upon expectations. I wanted to spoof the clichйs of vampires as rich, European smoothies and I also wanted to write a comedy-of-manners that deals with social class.