The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance

by Trisha Telep

  The rain had stopped and the sky partly cleared. I saw at a distance the mime approaching. Her hair was covered by the hood of her cape and a man walked with her, carrying the stage and the torches. He too, I saw as they neared me, was alive, his skin as dark as sky. He set up the platform and lit the torches. I followed when he left, but he led me only to the same sedan that had picked her up before. He drove away before I could locate a taxi, but I could arrange for one by the time she left.

  Tonight, walking across the square towards the back, I perceived her audience. As on the other nights, men and a few couples had gathered. I stopped in the shadows behind her and watched their faces. Lust, as I had expected, and perverse thrill. Even the women present, who perhaps wanted to be her, wanted the vampire lover too. Only one face among them did not shine with desire. One nondescript man, brown hair, pale face, unremarkable clothing, watched with predatory anticipation. I thought he had been there the first night too, but I was not sure.

  He was not vampire either. Light reflected off his sweating face and, as I came nearer, alcohol breathed off him. I joined the small group and looked up at her, and her pose was off slightly, stiffened and just a bit forced. She too had noticed him and he worried her. And worried as I was also, I felt elation. Better than anyone else, better than her driver (or friend, partner, lover), I could protect her from this.

  People came and went. Not much money tonight. The hunter approached her too closely, offering a folded bill as he might to a lap dancer. She went to attack pose, admirable fangs bared, nails clawing. He laughed, but stepped back, and I closed with him, a sharp point pressed to his side.

  “Come with me,” I whispered, and pulled him away.

  Again she broke her pose enough to watch us pass into a shadowy street. Once away he turned to grapple with me and I bit him quickly, taking enough blood to render him unconscious. I took his wallet for good measure.

  By the time I had cleaned my face and hands and covered my shirt front, she was gone. Stand empty, torches out, as though she’d never been there at all. The familiar isolation washed over me.

  Letitia Condit, aged twenty-two, was making her move. Actually, her first move had been to go to college, even though her family, who didn’t have a nickel, couldn’t see the point. During the year she’d majored in theatre and gotten by on scholarships and part-time work, and during the summers, on top of a full-time job, she’d gone to what its students called the ‘University of Silence’, the mime school.

  Her mama had thought maybe she could do a cute little routine at the fair, at least until she had kids, or maybe be a clown for kiddie birthday parties. Her daddy had never had a clue what she was doing. Now she had graduated, it was time for the next step, which was professional experience. She’d always seen that her best choice was character parts, but they were more limited for women mimes. She’d avoided the sexy part like Lady Godiva (but you have the hair for it, her teacher said) or any other role that wasn’t dignified.

  She had made a perfect Virgin Queen as her final project, performing it three times, once at the school and twice in the Quarter. Payment produced regal gestures and a cynical smile, and no actress had ever done them better. But through the persona trance she’d heard the audience, what there was of it, wondering who she was supposed to be and making wrong guesses, or half-assed ones: ‘Maybe she’s that Queen – Elizabeth? Or was that Anne Boleyn?’ One had actually said, ‘Naw, I think it’s the Pope’.

  A sexier character, but not about sex per se, was required and so she had studied the Quarter and its hordes. And come up with the vampire. The sexual implication was there, but the power was hers, and she liked that balance. And the tour company had bought it as closure for their jaunt. They didn’t care if she went on longer, after their group had broken up. They even supplied the torches and the platform, and she called Kip on her cell phone when she was ready to leave. Kip was a tour guide, and too religious to approve of her persona, but he was reliable back-up.

  He was what made it possible, in fact, to face down the skankier or drunker men, and feel safe walking away with up to 100 dollars a night, on top of what the tour paid her. She was making a living with her art, and this satisfied her more than anything she’d ever done. Never mind that Kevin, the jerk, had broken up with her over it. What had she ever seen in Kevin? Well, he had been good in bed. But she performed better with her bed empty anyway, even if she was lonely afterwards, back in her tiny apartment.

  Some nights she was too restless to sleep afterwards, and some of those nights she concocted plans, because this was a summer gig. When the rains came, she needed another move altogether. It was possible to move the act into a bar, but that felt too close to other acts. She’d talked to a manager at one of the likelier places, but even he had suggested removing some clothing along the way.

  Some nights she went for a walk into the Garden District. She always walked to ST Charles and by Anne Rice’s house as a kind of talisman, sympathy for the vampire. Loners, they were, outcasts, some of whom hadn’t chosen their lot. All of it went into her performance. And that was where she’d first seen the guy, the one she thought of as ‘the Count’.

  He had drifted out of the tree shadow into streetlight and moonlight as effortlessly as a ghost. For a second she thought she had seen a ghost – Lafayette Cemetery was only blocks away. She drew back into a shadow herself, though she’d been convinced he knew she was there, even though he never looked her way. He’d been staring at the Rice house as though taking a personal picture. He stood there motionless while the usual carload of drunken kids piled out and struck what they thought were vamp poses while taking cell-phone pictures of each other and laughing hysterically. Then he seemed to be done, wheeled round and walked towards the trolley line in a brisk, human manner.

  He wore ordinary clothes, too: dark jacket, with a T-shirt beneath, and dark pants. He looked . . . Irish, actually, in that thin-faced, sad way, like a sexy mask of tragedy. He looked . . . unhappy. A touch of weariness, a bit of boredom and, most of all, loss of hope, of goals. A face that didn’t want to give up, on a person that had. Lettie knew herself an acute observer, as mimes must be. Because of all this, because of the night, and the place, and because he had a certain something about him, she thought of him as the real deal. The Count. Some nights his image had fuelled her performance.

  And now he’d turned up in her audience. Lettie had been disappointed, actually, to see the elegant, slim man on a vampire tour. Almost disappointed that he watched her. And when he turned up again, she thought he was just another guy ogling her boobs and not noticing her art. But again there was something. Maybe it was just her imagination, but his interest felt personal. More like a talent scout than a masher. Interested in her. She should be so lucky.

  Tonight though, the guy she thought of as the stalker was back. Lettie had talked with other female mimes about the attention you drew and how to deal with it. That’s why she’d insisted on Kip picking her up, which he was heartily sick of doing, but even he understood the reason. After a performance she was strung up but distracted at the same time. And this one guy, she could see in his face that he thought he owned her. He was around last week, and then she thought he’d quit, but tonight he was back. She put her anger into the poses and he didn’t even get it. He just came up in her face, trying to break her out of the pose and into just another money-hungry woman . . .

  . . . and the Count took hold of him, said something and pulled him right away. Neither of them came back. Lettie made one final pose and stepped down. She dumped the money in her bag, slung it across her chest, threw the cloak around her and walked in the direction the two men had disappeared.

  No one there. She looked down alleys and side streets. No sign of them. She was just about to speed-dial Kip when she saw to her left a body propped in a doorway. Lettie approached cautiously, but the figure didn’t stir. It was the jerk, the one who’d been after her, he was out cold. And on his neck and shirt there was blood.
She reached one finger out and touched it. Sticky blood. The feel of it ran through her veins like ice. She stood up and jogged away fast, back to the square, to the lights.

  There was her platform, her torches, as though nothing had occurred. She called Kip, who was already, he said, on the way. She walked down the most brightly lit side of the square, through a fog of beer and saltwater catch, towards the river. She shivered in the car, too sunk in speculation to notice the taxi that followed her. In her apartment, she locked herself in, no thought of walking the district tonight. She did not see the man with well-cut clothing and the distinguished white at his temples alight from his taxi and take note of her name and address on the bell. But later, when he dialled the number he had obtained via the concierge, her message machine recorded his voice.

  When Lettie played back the message, she couldn’t help being intrigued. It wasn’t the talent-scout break she’d been hoping for, but a freelance journalist who might get her a feature story – with pictures – was nothing to sneeze at. And besides, he had the most gorgeous voice, deep and resonant, that made every word he said pack extra meaning. He wasn’t from here. He sounded like New England, maybe, but not in awhile. When he said, “I believe it might benefit your career,” she believed it would, and so she called back.

  After some phone tag late in the day, she agreed to meet him after her performance for a very late supper. In his favour, the restaurant he named was not a bar or a gumbo palace but a reputable bistro that people went to for the cuisine more than the ambiance. And he had said he would come to the performance; she felt better meeting him first, though it might be safer to meet him at the restaurant, entirely on her own. You couldn’t be too careful, no matter how terrific his voice sounded.

  The appointment gave some extra fire to her performance that night. No let-down going home alone, no nervous wandering in the dark. She was making her move towards the professional future she wanted the way a vampire wanted blood. Lettie ran the whole range of poses she’d developed, flowing from seductive lover to sinister embrace to bared fangs, the crouch over a body, cowering back as from a cross, turning at bay, and back to a come-on glance over one shoulder with just the hint of fang showing. Maybe because she was pumped or maybe because it was Friday night and the tour was full, she had her best crowd in awhile and the collection box filled up nicely.

  And the Count was there. Standing as he had other nights at the back of the group, applauding when others did, smiling with pleasure at each pose, though he had seen them all before. Maybe she ought to be afraid of him too, but she just wasn’t. He kept his distance, anyway. The man who’d crowded her last night wasn’t there and she’d seen no mention of a murder in the Times-Picayune. The jerk had gotten into a fight, most likely. She hoped he wouldn’t be back.

  By the time she finished and stepped down, her jaw ached from the fitted fangs and from holding the positions, but she knew she had done it flawlessly. She took out the teeth and pulled her hair back, part of the ritual. And when she turned, there was the man she called the Count. Lettie was tall herself, but he was taller, and he still moved like water. When he spoke, she realized immediately that he was her supper date.

  And that put her in a quandary. Of course she knew he had seen her perform before. But the Count had been there three nights running and last seen in the company of the jerk who ended up bleeding in a doorway.

  She said, “Aren’t you a little old for a journalist?” All her doubt went into it.

  “I believe writers are all ages, but for me it’s a second career.” He shifted so that the light shine on his face. A pale face, which inspected her caution. “I can meet you at the restaurant – or somewhere else if you prefer.”

  “Junkanoo,” Lettie said. “On Toulouse. In half an hour – I want to change first.”

  He knew where it was and walked away to secure a table. Lettie made her way to a nearby poor-boy place with spacious women’s facilities. There she changed into pants and took off her theatrical make-up in favour of natural lips and just a little powder and eye liner. She folded away her persona and looked at herself. Still a bit flushed from the performance and from her hopes for publicity too. And from the fact that it was the Count, be honest. It was exciting to find out about the mystery man. She repacked her costume in her large shoulder bag, along with the folder of publicity stills she’d brought along, and walked to the restaurant.

  ‘JUNKANOO, ALWAYS CARNIVAL’ the sign read. Spicy Caribbean food, anf the walls hung with costumes, photos, and masks. A lot of the masks had horns. The journalist – Nathan Court – had got one of the window tables. These were visible, but quieter and more private in terms of sound, at least. Old-fashioned manners – he got up to pull out her chair – but he asked her what was good here instead of taking command. They ordered glasses of red wine, a plate of calamari and a bowl of stew for Lettie. She regarded him across the small table. If she stretched out her arm, she could touch his long fingered hand.

  “So, you’re a freelance, you said – does that mean you don’t know where a story about me might appear?” She asked it just to show she was no innocent.

  “It means I’m not working on assignment, yes. But there are editors I’ve written for before and I queried the subject as soon as I knew you’d talk to me. I’ve written for the airline magazine Great Southern. They like the New Orleans angle, but the appeal is broad enough too.”

  The wine arrived and Lettie took a sip. “Well, OK. What do you want to know?”

  How one became a mime, where she’d studied. Predictable background. Over the calamari and gumbo, though, he asked, “Why a vampire? Is it just the Anne Rice influence?”

  So she explained, even though the food cooled, about personas and the difficulty of dignified ones for women mimes.

  “Vampires are dignified?”

  “Sure, think of Count Dracula. Never a hair or a gesture out of place.” And she explained the power angle. “The vampire’s not a really inviting role, when you come down to it. Not the way I do it, anyway.”

  “Yes, the way you do it. I see the dignity. I see the danger. And the isolation of mime feeds those, doesn’t it? When you’re up there, I mean, you are apart.”

  He stared at her eyes, not her chest, and stared so intently that he ate hardly anything, but then he was also taking notes. They discussed the isolation of mimes, feeding the crowd’s response not into reaction but into the strength of the poses.

  “And where did you get your poses? I’m just curious. They aren’t the standard movie vampires – unless you go back to Dracula. Not the camp ones, certainly.”

  Lettie finished her wine and refused the waiter’s offer of another glass while she though how to put it. “I saw certain movies. Daughter of Dracula – have you seen that one? She’s so deadly, but vulnerable too. And an early version of Carmilla. But mostly I read.”

  “Dracula?”

  “Sure. And Carmilla, who’s the first female vampire. She wanted her victims willing – at least some of them. Wanted them to be a little in love with her. And also Mina Harker in The League –”

  “Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Peta Wilson was excellent at showing the power subtly. That moment when she turns, wiping blood off her mouth –”

  “Yes, that’s one. I actually tried to work up a pose from it, but it’s not clear what’s going on out of context and I didn’t want to fool with fake blood.”

  “When I first saw you,” he said. “I almost thought you could be vampire.”

  Not a vampire, she noted. He must read too. “I’m a temporary vampire,” Lettie said and he laughed with her. “When I first saw you,” she said, “I thought you were a ghost.”

  He was all attention. “When did you first see me? Where?”

  “One night by the Rice house,” she said. “At least I think it was you. You sort of floated over to it, and watched awhile, then left.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I do go for walks. Like yourself, perhaps? And then I write.”
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  “A night person,” Lettie said, studying him. “And you live here, in the city?”

  “I live many places,” he said, and Lettie heard the bitter undertone. “I’ve been here for a few weeks.”

  The waiter had brought the bill, and the room was far more subdued. Nathan Court insisted on paying it and had just begun to make an appointment to go over the draft article with her. Lettie was hoping he’d be here a few more weeks, at least. They both had grown accustomed to people passing near the bay window, and did not immediately react when a body appeared in peripheral vision, but this one stopped inches away.

  Nathan looked up and froze, and then Letitia looked. The jerk from last night, dressed like a vampire or an undertaker in stark black, turned his glare from Nathan to her, and smiled gloatingly.

  And then he was gone. “That’s the guy – what did you do to him last night?”

  Nathan looked disturbed, but kept his voice even. “I told him to back off, to leave you alone.”

  “And I saw him later, unconscious in a doorway, with blood on him.”

  “I’m not surprised. He’s a violent type.”

  “And you – are you a violent type?”

  “Letitia –”

  She got up, rummaging in her bag for the cell phone. “Do the article – do whatever you want, but leave me out of the rest.”

  She was out on the street, leaving him to deal with the bill. She punched speed-dial for a cab, and almost ran for the next main street. There was a large black car parked at the corner and, as she hurried past, the driver’s door opened so fast it hit her. She stumbled back against the balcony post, and he was on her, hands around her neck, hot breath in her face. “You monster’s whore –”