“You’re not just cold. You’re starving,” she said.
I nodded my head. I didn’t care that she knew what I was, I wasn’t concerned about how she knew. It was so good to feel safe. But she told me anyway.
“I grew up in Brooklyn,” she said. “I knew one of you when I was a teenager. He would visit me. He was . . . kind. At a time when no one else was.”
“He have a big ugly head?” I said, so quietly she must have barely heard me.
Off with her head!
She nodded, barely, not wanting to call him ugly. John Valentine. The one who turned Margaret, the one who burned up when his building fell down. The one who could ride a horse. The fact that he turned Margaret made him my grandfather, in a way. Now here was someone who knew family. This was Margaret’s wake, in a way, the only one she would get.
“I lost someone tonight,” I said.
“I’m sorry. Who?”
Never call me your mother again.
“My mother.”
She took my hand in hers and the warmth coming from her almost burned me.
“Your real mother?”
“Real as I got.”
She nodded.
“You have to eat. Don’t you?”
I looked at my feet. My ugly, veiny, pale feet. My sprint through Manhattan had abused them. New York is not made for bare feet; I had felt the dig of broken glass and the sting of pop tops, I had scraped their tops on curbs, even paused to unsheathe a hypodermic needle from my heel near Tompkins Park. This had all gone away almost as quickly as it had happened. But the worst thing was that I had tracked dog shit into her loft. Of all the things, just dog shit. She noticed, but didn’t care.
This woman, and I never found out her name, pulled her scarf away from her neck, pulled down her sweater.
“You have to promise,” she said.
“What?”
“You know what. Not too much.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Don’t make me . . . like you are. I don’t want that.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Go on,” she said.
I sat there, a drugged cat.
“Go on.”
* * *
She got the shakes after I fed, but they went away when she smoked a tight little joint; she really knew her way around rolling paper. Neither one of us talked much. I think she was wrestling with whether to ask me to stay, but I didn’t want to. Her huge windows faced east anyway, and the filmy March sun was going to come looking in every corner of that place. There was a bathroom, but it had a window, too, and no tub. The shower was just a hose and a hole. The toilet ran all the time. She gave me a pair of jeans that sagged in the butt and a shirt, I won’t call it a blouse, with tiny flowers on it like cute, curly weeds, fake pearl snaps for buttons. It was nothing Charles Bronson would wear, but it was better than the shredded, blood-stiff rags I had worn through her window. Clothes were the least of my worries. She went to get me a scarf, too, but I took off out the window while she fished in the closet. I suck at good-byes.
As I walked fast away from there, I stuck my hands in the pockets of my new droopy-ass jeans, felt paper. Three dollars. She must have got them off the dirty pile.
It was three A.M. or so; I didn’t have long to find a hidey-hole. The thought that I could die that way, just crisped by the sun, seemed tiresome to me after all I’d just been through, like somebody should have given me a pass just this once. I needed sleep, but I knew what I would dream about so the thought of closing my eyes made me shudder.
My feet took me home. Not to the subways, not down a manhole, but home. Before I even knew what I was doing, I was standing in front of the place I grew up, looking up at my old window as Margaret once had, throwing coins up at me. The streetlight was still there. I hadn’t been by in a good decade, and not at all before that. When you’re dead, you don’t want to see your folks. Somebody in my family might have still been there ten years ago when I had walked by as if on a dare, with a fedora on and my head down, but not now. They had changed the place into a café. Stubbed-out cigarette butts, all of them smoked to the filter, a few of them lipsticky, lay on the street and sidewalk; I could almost hear some long-haired schmuck playing guitar surrounded by NYU chicks in thrift-store leather coats. All of them eyeless, all of them blind rabbits, while above them a gorgon in the upstairs window was waiting for me to look at her, ready to turn me to stone. Or maybe I was waiting up there, fourteen years old again, no, more innocent, make it six years old, and if I just looked up and met my own gaze I would magically go back into my body. 1925. The stock market humming along on phantom cash, Vilma making paprikash or marzipan. It’s magic for me to walk around without a heartbeat, right? It’s magic for little kids to live hundreds of years and kill stacks of people, right? Why not something good for a change? Why not let me go?
“I’m sorry for what I did to Margaret,” I said, closing my eyes hard. “I’m sorry I was such a rotten kid. I’ll do better. I swear. Just take it all back, okay?” I turned my head up and looked. No little Joey. Just black windows on the face of that house, one with a crack in it. The blindest of blind rabbits. I didn’t know who I was praying to, anyway. I was the property of the god of small places, and that god was deaf to everything said aboveground.
“What am I going to do?” I said.
Go back for Cvetko.
Run away.
Sit on a bench at Battery Park and wait for the sun.
Damned shame coins didn’t have three sides.
* * *
I didn’t feel like I had a whole lot to lose when I knocked at the Hessian’s door. I didn’t even know I was going there until I found myself looking up at the huge oak door with the carved acorns and oak leaves, little squirrels in the corners. Big mean old bastard like that and he had squirrels on his door. The knocker was more his speed, a big brass bear’s head, the coolest knocker I ever saw. I didn’t know what I was going to say until just before I knocked. I just grabbed the ring in the bear’s mouth like I was holding a subway strap and I hung there until I heard the words in my head: Hello, Mr. Messer. I know I haven’t seen you in a long time, it’s Joey Peacock, this isn’t my shirt, but I was wondering if you would be willing to help me. I want to get rid of these vampires that look like children, but they’re not children. They’re evil, but the big kind of evil, not like us. They told dirty lies about you and killed my friends. You’re reasonable, right? Margaret said you were a mercenary, which means you fight for money, no offense, or at least you did. I could pay you. Not a lot right now, but I could owe you. I’m a really good thief and I don’t mind trying something big. It would have to be big, like diamonds or a bank, because this won’t be easy. They’re dangerous. Really, really dangerous. And I don’t know what else to do.
Hopeless, right? But what the fuck.
Really, what the fuck.
I knocked.
The Luftwaffe-looking doorman must have known I was standing there rehearsing what I was going to say; I got the idea that they didn’t miss a lot in that house. Maybe they had cameras, but I didn’t see one. The door swung open quietly; you expect a creak out of a door like that.
“May I help you?” he said, looking at me in no particular way. Hard to tell if he remembered me. Servants always act like they don’t remember you.
“Do you remember me?” I said.
He blinked once, slowly, like a lizard, if they blink.
“Would it please you if I remembered you?”
“Sure. I guess.”
“Then of course I remember you.”
He was still standing half behind the door, making no move to open it wider or invite me in.
Damn, he was handsome. He wasn’t young anymore, but he had one of those faces. Weird watching people get old; you have to be old yourself to get it. I don’t like suddenl
y seeing regular people again after fifteen, twenty years, it’s depressing. He still looked good, but for how long? He was the night shift guy; you’d think Messer would have turned him.
“Is your . . . boss home?”
“I don’t think so.”
Still had that German accent, sounded like he was on Hogan’s Heroes.
We just stood there for a second. I looked at the bear on the door, then back at him.
“May I come in?”
Slow blink.
“I don’t think so.”
“Who is it?” a voice said behind him. Not Messer.
“A boy.”
“What boy?”
The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t tell if it was a guy or a girl.
“A boy I remember,” he said.
“Show me!” the voice said.
He opened the door a little more, stepped back, not to let me in but just so I would be visible to the owner of the voice. We saw each other. Christ, this was not my night. A tall woman with a cock. The one from Studio 54 that said I smelled like trains.
She laughed.
She kept laughing, covered her mouth with her hand.
The doorman didn’t even permit himself a smirk. Damn, he was good. He closed the door with the squirrels and the bear and the acorns at just the right speed. Not insultingly fast. Not awkwardly slow. Just right.
* * *
So here’s the part where it’s four A.M. and I charm some schmuck to let me into his nice, dark apartment and I feed on him and tie him up or peel him and sleep in his bathtub, get a fresh start tomorrow night, right? I did peek in several apartments, but every place I looked in, I came up with a reason why I shouldn’t bother the people there. Truth is, I did feed one more time; I had to. I couldn’t take all I needed from she-who-paints-cats without killing her. So I started scoping, thinking I should choose well in case it was my last meal. I hadn’t entirely ruled out greeting the sunrise at Battery Park. The only guy on Christopher Street flagged down the only cab on Christopher Street, and I walked up just as the cabbie asked him where he was going. He hadn’t stopped yet, just slowed down and asked through the window so the guy couldn’t open the door in case he failed the audition.
I walked up, poured on some charm, said through the cracked window,
You must pull their heads off!
“We’re going to Idlewild.”
“You mean the airport? JFK?”
I think he was a Sikh, he had the turban. When he said airport he pushed his eyebrows together over his nose like affectionate caterpillars.
“I’m not with him! I’m going to . . .”
“Shut up, Dad,” I said, and he shut up.
I said,
You must hold them down and shock them on the bad rail!
“Yeah, JFK, I forgot, the airport.”
The Sikh rolled off to “seek” another passenger. I knew from the way he asked the guy he was only looking for Manhattan fares.
The Dad guy glared at me angrily but wouldn’t speak because I had commanded him to shut up. I told him to come in the alley with me and I would give him a dollar. Turned out I lied. I didn’t give him a dollar. But I did have a secret to tell him, if he’d lean down close. And I did take the money out of his wallet just in case I decided against sunbathing.
Cvetko
First I ran away from my problem, headed west. By four thirty A.M. I had made it up by the old dockyards, the crumbling piers where the gays sunbathed in the summer, whole packs of them. Nobody was around now. Too dark, too cold, unless maybe people came here to hook up in hidden places. There were lots of hidden places in this rusted-out set of piers. As long as I looked out for Coney Island Whitefish, I could maybe stay here, cover up in a trash bag, tuck myself into a rusted cargo container. But no. I might surprise some gays, I didn’t want to see any of that. Or maybe I did, just a little bit, which was why I kept drifting near places like this. Maybe I didn’t want to suck a guy off or anything but I wanted to watch somebody else do that, maybe I secretly liked it when queers hit on me so I could feel attractive but also act superior, like, “Thanks anyway, gay guy, but I’m normal.” Normal, right. I like pussy. I’m a Capricorn. Oh, and I drink blood and don’t get older. Why was I thinking about this now? Maybe it was easier to think uncomfortable thoughts than horrifying, bewildering ones.
Maybe you want to know who you are before you die.
I stood near the water, looking west, where night was running away from me. It was windy, blowing my hair around. A seagull did that thing where he flew against a draft and hovered in one place, he was looking at me like maybe he hadn’t smelled me and was surprised to find one of us bread-and-sometimes-Alka-Seltzer-throwers so close to him suddenly. I swear this bird was looking me right in the face. He called out twice.
“Cvetko! Cvetko!” I said back to him, imitating him. He flew off.
“Yeah, I know.”
I went east.
I went back underground.
THE GOD OF SMALL PLACES
I meant to look for Cvets immediately, but I was so exhausted I sleepwalked into the growing crowd of predawn commuters making their way through Grand Central Station; I went through a door I know that led down. Then I went through a couple of doors and a passageway I didn’t know until I ended up in an unfamiliar service tunnel, where I wedged myself up high between a pipe and the roof. A lot of bugs crawled around; there must have been food nearby. I plugged my nostrils with dollar bills and went to sleep. Once I heard transit cops walk under me, saw their flashlights bobbing. I guessed it was going to get hot for a while because of Union Station, however they put it together. But these guys weren’t serious. They weren’t talking about accidents or bombings. They were talking about Leon Spinks.
I went back to sleep.
* * *
I woke up to find that one of my nose dollars had fallen out and sure enough I now had a snootful of bugs, small ones; goddamn, I hated sleeping without a box. I blew them out without much trouble. I knew in my bones that it was sunset. I remembered where I was, in a service tunnel under Grand Central.
I took the 6 down; they had just gotten it running again, it was packed. We didn’t stop at Union Square. The station was closed for repairs. I didn’t look out the window when we passed, but everyone around me put down their papers, papers with headlines like 4 TRAIN DERAILS! and, you gotta love the Post, GOOD SAMARITANS FRIED! I plugged my ears because I didn’t want to hear people talking about it like it was theirs, like they had a right to it. Instead I got a dumbshow of craning necks, ladies putting hands over mouths, one guy taking a picture like he came this way on purpose. It seemed like everybody around me had to stick an elbow in my cheek or an ass in my face while I sat with my hands over my ears, not looking through the permanent marker squiggles on the glass to see how the cleanup was going. I didn’t look because I didn’t want to see where my friends died. But I also didn’t look because I was still scared.
I had to find Cvets.
We had to get out of here.
I had a hunch about where he might be.
* * *
I didn’t find Cvetko in the beautiful old abandoned City Hall station. But I did find a note from him. He had stuck it in one of his hooker-red envelopes from Valentine’s Day and put it through the bars of an old ticket window. The outside said Joseph H. Peacock. How do you like that? Even with the apocalypse upon us this guy took time to write out my whole name, except for the Hiram.
The envelope was heavy.
When I opened it, I saw why.
I pulled on a tiny gold chain to reveal the piece of jewelry attached to it. I found myself staring straight at the coral pendant I slipped into Margaret’s purse all those years ago. Medusa stared back at me.
Then I read the note.
Dearest Joseph,
I am writing this
letter in some haste, so please forgive me if it is difficult to read. I have deduced the nature of our small friends and I believe our situation is hopeless. Peter, Alfred, and Camilla are quite old, and quite vicious, and they are working with outside assistance. They are coming for us and they mean to kill us and claim these tunnels as their own. I have tried to convince Margaret to flee, but there is more of Boudica than Moses about her, which is to say that she would rather die in her chariot than wander in the wilderness. I have determined to leave these tunnels and would like it very much if you and I should travel together; provided, of course, that your previous statements about finding my company tedious were, as I dearly hope, meant in jest.
I shall return here at midnight for the next three evenings, tonight being 24 March. If you come too late, do not seek me in Manhattan, but let us resolve to enquire after one another wherever we may go. I suggest Boston. If I do not come to meet you here, it means I have died the death.
In that event, please know that I have great affection for you, and that I have tried to serve you in some small way as I would have served my own child had I been blessed with one. I think the closest any of us may come to lasting happiness is in seeing to the needs of others; I think the same may be true for those who go in sunlight, though their lives are so short that many will not discover this in time.
Meet me here, Joey, and I shall take you to my wife.
I have left your fine clothes and your dirty magazines with the girlfriend you thought I never knew about.
I enclose a small gift so you will know my heart in this matter.
Yours sincerely,
C.S.
All right, I wasn’t the shiniest knife in the drawer, I knew that. I would never be some super-genius egghead like Cvetko; I sucked at crossword puzzles and would have sucked worse at chess, which is why I never bothered. But hanging out with him had rubbed off on me a little bit—I could almost hear him whispering in my ear, Think, Joey, think—what does this mean?
His wife was dead. She died in the war, killed by mixed-up guerrillas who thought he was ratting them out to Italians who were like pint-sized Germans you could actually beat sometimes. Anyway, she was dead. Meet me here and I shall take you to my wife meant I would die. He was telling me to get the hell out of here!
The Lesser Dead Page 27
