by Susan Conley
I stood up. “I wish we would stop wasting time and join the party,” I said a little too loudly.
If Bécquer was surprised at my sudden change of the conversation, he hid it well, for he just smiled and, already on his feet, offered me his arm. “Of course, my lady. Your wish is my command.”
I took his arm.
Chapter Seven: The Party
Bécquer stopped by the wrought iron balustrade overlooking the ballroom and turned to me.
“Do you think you can take them?” he asked.
I looked down through the slits of the Venetian mask Bécquer had just adjusted for me. The room was big, bigger than I had thought when I spied it from the front door, and it was crowded.
Under the wheel-shaped chandelier hanging from a central beam, men dressed in suits of bygone eras and women in long evening gowns stood in small groups, gathered around the central island getting their drinks, or sat on the sofas that hugged the walls. But for the raised platform at the back of the room that supported the piano, there was no empty space on the whole floor.
My guess was that close to one hundred people were there. More than enough to send me into a frenzy any other day. But not today. For the first time ever I didn’t feel like fleeing because I could sense their minds — I sensed their hopes, their uncertainties and their fears — as if I stood at the edge of their awareness. And thus, I knew that the crowd was not, as I had often imagined, an all-powerful beast ready to devour me, but made of individual human beings as flawed as I was. As I used to be. Because right then, high on Bécquer’s immortal blood, I felt invincible.
I could take them, as Bécquer had put it. Even more, I was eager to meet them, to learn their stories and even discuss with them the ones I carried, still unfinished, in my mind.
An unbidden smile came to my lips. “Yes,” I said.
Bécquer bent his head toward me. “So you’re not mad at me anymore?” he whispered and, when I said I wasn’t, he took my arm again. “Let’s go, then.”
We were halfway down the wide staircase when I spotted Beatriz. I recognized her by the blue shawl that barely covered her naked shoulders. She was talking to a man with a trimmed mustache and a goatee that looked too out of style to be real. As I watched her, Beatriz raised her head and her eyes met mine. I felt the ice of her stare, almost a physical touch that halted my step.
Bécquer groaned and stopped by my side. “Sorry, Carla. I was hoping to blend in unnoticed. Too late now.”
As he spoke, Beatriz detached herself from the gentleman and brazenly pushed her way toward the stairs, the brouhaha of conversation ebbed in her wake, and heads turned to follow her, until everybody in the room was staring at us in expectant silence.
Basking in his guests’ recognition and with the ease of a medieval king certain of his subjects’ loyalty, Bécquer addressed the room.
“Dear friends, please help me welcome my new author, Carla Esteban.”
He waited for the applause to subside then led me downstairs.
I felt the soothing comfort that emanated from his mind, spreading like a wave over the crowd, urging them to mingle, so that by the time we reached the floor the party had resumed in earnest. But Beatriz did not move.
“Where have you been?” she asked of Bécquer, her sharp voice belying the smile that curled her lips. “The guests were getting impatient.”
“You honor me, Beatriz, to suggest anybody would notice my absence.”
Ignoring Bécquer’s beguiling smile, Beatriz looked up to the staircase behind us. “Where is Federico?” she asked. “He’s scheduled to play in five minutes.”
“Oh, yes! Federico. Right,” Bécquer said lightly. “I’m afraid he won’t be playing tonight.”
“Really, Gustavo,” Beatriz said, and by addressing him by his given name she suggested a familiarity that excluded me. “Couldn’t you have waited to antagonize Federico until the party was over?”
She produced a cell phone as she spoke and started punching numbers.
In a flash, Bécquer’s arm shot forward and the phone was in his hand.
“You can’t ask Matt to cover for him. He’s practicing now for his performance.”
There was such finality in his voice that Beatriz didn’t argue.
Still holding her phone out of her reach, Bécquer scanned the crowd. Soon a playful smile lit his face. “Ask Sheryl to play for us,” he told Beatriz. “I’m sure she won’t mind.”
I followed his stare and noticed a red-haired woman holding a glass in her ringed hand while listening attentively to a middle-aged man whose crazy hair and overgrown moustache reminded me of Mark Twain.
“Sheryl is busy right now,” Beatriz said. “You can’t expect her to entertain your guests.”
“Actually you will have her eternal gratitude if you were to interrupt her, for she would like nothing better than to get away from her present partner. She is only with him because her boss asked her to do so.”
Although nothing about the perfectly made-up face of the woman betrayed her annoyance, I knew, thanks to my new awareness, that Bécquer was right.
Bécquer caught my eye as I looked back and winked at me. Beatriz was not pleased. “What is it with you, Bécquer? Why is everything a joke to you?”
“My dear Beatriz, I assure you that is far from the case, but taking the world too seriously doesn’t make it a better place.”
With a flourish, Bécquer handed Beatriz back her phone. “And now, if you’ll excuse us. I must introduce Carla to Richard. Judging by his last e-mail, he’s very much interested in her novel.”
Beatriz glanced at me, her pale blue eyes cold and dismissive. I was glad for the mask that hid my features for I was certain my dislike of her was written on my face. I could read the hate on hers, as plainly as if I had sensed it in her mind. Which I hadn’t. For, unlike my experience with the woman Sheryl, I couldn’t read her mind. Federico hadn’t either. Why? I wondered. Why was Beatriz different?
“I agree he’s interested,” Beatriz was saying to Bécquer. “It’s with the subject of his interest I disagree.”
“Really, Beatriz. Who is the cynic now?”
“What is her problem?” I asked Bécquer as he led me through the crowd.
She’s jealous of you, Bécquer said, although he didn’t really, because at the same time he was talking with one of his guests, shaking a young man’s hand, bowing to a pretty woman with an ample bosom barely concealed by her low-cut dress, then moving past them, he complimented a tall gentleman on his attire, and kissed the gloved hand of his lady. So, really, he couldn’t be talking to me. Yet his voice was in my head explaining Beatriz was upset with him because she had noticed he liked me.
You like me? The question formed in my mind before I could stop it. Embarrassed, I turned my head away to hide my blushing.
Bécquer laughed but didn’t answer for just then we had reached the back of the room where a man in his thirties was leaning against the wall, a glass in his hand.
“Richard,” Bécquer said.
The man fixed his kohl-enhanced stare on Bécquer. “Bécquer, at last,” he said, his husky voice creating an intimacy that excluded everybody else. But Bécquer, his arm still on mine, nodded to him briefly and introduced me.
Limping slightly, Mr. Malick detached himself from the wall and bowed to me. “Enchanté,” he said.
“The pleasure is mine.”
“Getting into character, are we?” Bécquer asked him.
The man smiled, drinking Bécquer in with his stare. “Not everybody can pull Dorian Gray without make-up.”
“I meant the limp,” Bécquer said.
“Of course.” Mr. Malick turned to me. “Lord Byron,” he explained pointing at his flowing robes that consisted on the loose shirt and pants the Greek nationalists wore in the nineteenth cent
ury. “He had a congenital limp, the good lord. Mine is only temporary.”
Bécquer frowned. “You mean it’s real?”
“Quite so.”
“You should have told me. I would have gone to see you during the week. You didn’t have to stress yourself by coming here.”
“Nonsense.” Richard waved his hand to encompass the room. “I couldn’t possibly miss your party.”
“Let’s get you a seat.”
As Bécquer spoke, a couple sharing the sofa further along the wall got up.
A coincidence perhaps. Perhaps not, I thought as I remembered Federico’s conviction that Bécquer manipulated minds.
I do not. Again Bécquer’s voice was in my head as clear as if he had spoken aloud.
I glowered at him. Stop it.
Bécquer raised an eyebrow. Why? It’s quicker and precludes misunderstandings. Besides I like being in your mind.
I mean it.
He shrugged and continued his conversation with Richard, a conversation he had managed to maintain even while we were engaged in our silent one.
When we reached the sofa and, after he had helped Richard to sit and asked me what I wanted to drink, Bécquer excused himself and disappeared into the crowd.
“Charming, isn’t he?” Richard said, the longing so strong in his mind that it flooded mine. “You’re lucky he’s your agent.”
“Indeed,” I said, somehow insulted at the implication that it would be Bécquer’s charisma and not the strength of my writing what would get me a contract.
I felt confusion in his mind, then embarrassment. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he rushed to apologize. “I respect Bécquer’s judgment tremendously. If he has signed you, you must be seriously talented.”
I laughed. His overuse of qualifiers reminded me of Madison, who couldn’t leave a noun alone or use one adverb when she could use two.
“Seriously.” I smiled. “I’m guessing, by your words, that, contrary to Bécquer’s belief, you’ve not read my manuscript.”
His fingers tapping nervously on his glass betrayed his embarrassment. “I may have given him that impression in my last e-mail. I promise I will read it as soon as I get home.”
“Any time in the next four months would be all right,” I teased him, to put him at ease, for I could sense how much he would hate Bécquer to catch his lie. “Querying is a long process. I’ve learned to be patient.”
“A week only. And that is a promise.”
“A week?” Bécquer repeated joining us.
“For my contract,” I joked.
Bécquer passed me the glass of Riesling I had requested and raised his. “I’ll drink to that,” he said.
And we all drank.
Another of Bécquer’s authors stopped by soon afterward, eager to share with Mr. Malick an idea she had just had for a horror story. She seemed surprised because she hated the genre, she explained, and all her novels so far had been realistic fiction. Bécquer encouraged her and used her presence to excuse himself and take me with him.
“You gave her the ‘idea,’” I told Bécquer once we were far enough for them not to hear.
“And why would I do that?” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “To be with you?”
“Certainly not. I — ”
“Actually I did,” he said setting his glass — still full, I noticed — on the tray of one of the waiters passing by. “I wanted you to meet other people, and didn’t want to leave him alone. Is that a crime?”
I didn’t argue.
Over the following hour or so, I met many of Bécquer’s authors, and several editors who requested my manuscript. Bécquer came and went freely. But whether he was there or not, the conversations flew with ease, driven by a common love of books and writing, and my enhanced ability to sense people’s emotions.
It was a strange feeling being able to do so. Disturbing, yet exhilarating, for knowing how people felt, I soon realized, gave me power over them. I found it increasingly difficult, as the evening wore on, not to use it to my advantage.
Apparently, Beatriz had been successful in asking Sheryl to perform, because she had been playing for some time now. Her choices, classical piano pieces, Chopin and Beethoven mainly, blended with the discussions, never too loud to cover the voices, yet audible enough to fill awkward silences.
After each piece, all conversation ceased as a round of applause recognized her efforts, and provided an excuse, if needed, for the guests to part and regroup. I had just taken advantage of one of those breaks to take my leave from my last partner — a mystery writer I had always admired, but who, in person, had turned out to be most boring — when I spotted Bécquer.
He was helping a young woman to one of the sofas. His gesture, paternalistic and condescending as it was, was also annoyingly touching.
Bécquer looked up and his eyes met mine over the tiara the woman wore with the easy grace of a young queen. Embarrassed at being caught watching, I stumbled back and hit somebody.
A firm hand steadied me.
“Thanks,” I said and turned.
Beatriz stood by my side, a glass of red wine in her hand, her eyes intent on the couple.
“Her name is Sarah,” she said. “She is one of Bécquer’s readers and, as far as I know, his latest lover.”
“Lover?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“No. But I thought he — ”
It wasn’t that he had a lover what surprised me. Federico had made it clear that Bécquer had had many over the years. What surprised me was that, as Bécquer moved to take his seat by the woman’s side, I had seen by the bump her Empire-style gown couldn’t totally conceal that she was pregnant.
“You thought he was the perfect gentleman?” Beatriz finished for me. “Well. Sorry to disappoint you, but he has had many lovers. They don’t last long, though. At the end, he always comes back to me.”
I had disliked Beatriz from the moment I first met her. Just then, I plain hated her. I hated the patronizing innuendo in her voice. I hated the way she pronounced the words with the harsh edge of her foreign background that gave them the opposite meaning. And, even though I didn’t want to admit it, I hated her, because she had confessed to being Bécquer’s constant lover and, although I didn’t care for him, or so I told myself, she seemed to think I did and she had meant to hurt me.
“Bécquer’s personal life is none of my business,” I said. “Why should I care whether he has a lover?”
“Why indeed?”
The sarcasm in her voice grated at my nerves. Especially because her disbelief was justifiable. Even in my ears, the harshness in my voice had belied my words.
I took a deep breath, and turned to go. Once again, my eyes fell on Bécquer and his supposed lover. She was talking and he smiled as she took his hand and set it gently on her protruding belly. I remembered then, what I’d meant to ask before Beatriz interrupted me: not whether the girl and Bécquer were lovers but whether the baby was his. For if Bécquer could have children of his own, why had he gone through the trouble of contacting and befriending Ryan?
“Is the baby his?” I blurted, my desire to know outweighing my profound dislike of Beatriz.
Beatriz laughed. “No. Of course not.” There was contempt in her voice as she added. “So you don’t know?”
“Know what? That he is immortal!”
Beatriz’s grabbed my arm. “What else did Bécquer tell you?”
“Let me go!”
I yanked my arm, but her grip was strong and held. Beatriz pulled me closer, and as her eyes bore into mine, I felt a pressure in my mind, like a migraine about to happen. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the pressure disappeared. But her grip did not.
“You’re protected.” A deep frown creased her forehead. “But h
ow … ?” Her eyes widened. “He gave you his blood,” she finished, her voice dripping contempt. “You pathetic little human. Have you any idea of what you have started?”
Again I felt the pressure in my mind, followed this time by a stream of images, disconnected and confusing, like a movie trailer in fast forward. Images of Bécquer, his eyes glowing red, his lips curled into a snarl to reveal his canines, sharp and longer than they should be. Then as his face grew closer, unfocused, I felt the pain of his sharp teeth piercing my neck, followed by a sudden jolt of perfect bliss. By the time he pulled away, his eyes had lost their glow and were just two dark wells of sated desire. There was blood on his lips that his tongue was playfully licking.
“Beatriz!”
Shattered by the harsh intrusion of Bécquer’s voice, the images disappeared, and I was back in the ballroom. But now Bécquer was before me, holding Beatriz from me.
“You liar!” Beatriz screamed.
The room had grown eerily silent, even the piano had stopped playing, and Beatriz’s voice resonated hollowly against the walls. But when I looked around, expecting to find everybody staring at us, I realized time had stopped, as it had that morning in Café Vienna and the people, frozen as they were, could not hear us.
“Enough, Beatriz!” Bécquer roared. “You have no right to question me.”
“You told me she was of no importance,” Beatriz yelled back, seemingly impervious to the threat of his tone. “Yet you gave her your blood. When were you going to tell me I was dispensable, before or after your first feed?”
“You’re mistaken. Carla is not to take your place as my blood giver.”
“Isn’t she? Then why? Why have you revealed yourself to her?”
“I owe you no explanation.”
“I won’t go easily, I warn you. I deserve to be made an immortal. You as much as promised.”
Bécquer let go of Beatriz and took a step back as if distancing himself from her. “I promised nothing.”
“You never denied it either. You knew it was the only reason I let you feed on me.”
Bécquer laughed.
Too stunned to intervene, I had followed their conversation hoping perhaps that Bécquer would deny what I had seen in Beatriz’s mind. But he hadn’t. Without a trace of guilt or remorse, he had admitted it was true that he had taken her blood and had laughed at her for expecting to be made an immortal in return.
