All American Boy

by William J. Mann

  “And here I thought you were a vampire fan.”

  “Oh, no,” she says. “I’m not.”

  “The matinee is starting in a few minutes. Would you care to join me?”

  “No,” she says. “I’m going—going for lunch. I only have an hour.”

  “Well, as it happens, I’m quite hungry, too. May I walk you to Henry’s Diner?”

  Regina thinks it odd that the man would know Henry’s was her destination. But, after all, how many other lunch places are there on Main Street? She says nothing, just falls into step beside him as they make their way down the block.

  “Of course, there is the German version. Nosferatu. A silent picture. Have you seen that one, Miss—Miss—?”

  “Gunderson. Regina Gunderson.”

  He opens the door to Henry’s Diner. “After you, Miss Gunderson.”

  They sit at the counter. Regina prefers it to a booth. A booth would imply they’re eating lunch together, when they’re not. This man is a stranger to her.

  “I’m Stanley Kowalski,” he says, leaning in, then grinning. “No, not that Stanley Kowalski.”

  Regina keeps her eyes cast down as she gives Lois the waitress her order for a grilled cheese and cup of tea.

  “You seem nervous,” Mr. Kowalski offers.

  “No, no, it’s just that—” She pauses. “A man I knew just passed away. I’m a bit out of sorts.”

  “I’m so sorry. Was he a close friend?”

  She looks over at him. She can’t help herself. It just spills out. The whole story of Mr. Samuel Horowitz and the Russian vampire count. Stanley Kowalski listens with rapt interest, nodding his head, lifting his eyebrows. When she’s finished, he takes a long sip of his coffee, considering everything she’s said. “No,” he announces. “It’s not possible.”

  “Of course it’s not,” Regina agrees.

  “I’ll tell you why it’s not possible,” Mr. Kowalski says, setting his coffee cup back in its saucer. “For a vampire to create another in his image, he must first kill his victim. If what Mr. Horowitz says is true, this Russian count forgot about him, as vampires must do the majority of their victims, otherwise we’d be overrun with the creatures. The vampiric taint wears off, I assume. Think of the Dracula story, my dear. Mina Harker was not going to turn into a vampire when she died. Poor Miss Lucy, on the other hand—she became a creature of the night because the count sucked her dry, so to speak, and killed her.”

  Regina is shocked, and it shows on her face.

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Kowalski says at once. “Have I offended you?”

  “I suppose I brought it on myself,” she says, taking a breath. “I brought the horrible subject up.” She slides off her stool. “I’ve got to get back to work anyway.”

  “Let me pay for your lunch,” Stanley Kowalski offers.

  “No, no, absolutely not.” She hands two dollar bills across the counter to Lois. “Keep the change,” she says, anxious to be out of there. Lois waves without turning around from the cash register.

  “Think no more about it, my dear,” the man assures her. “I’m sure Mr. Horowitz is sleeping peacefully in his cold grave.”

  Regina rushes out the door.

  She had considered sitting shivah for Mr. Horowitz at the Hebrew Home, but something didn’t seem right about it. Not because she was a Christian, but because, deep down, she knew Mr. Horowitz wasn’t really dead. The corpse they had placed into the mausoleum was just waiting, waiting to live again. Three nights from now, it would claw its way through the satin lining of the coffin and break free of its prison.

  “Stop this nonsense,” Regina tells herself, and she places both her hands on the Formica top of the kitchen table and closes her eyes tightly. “Stop this nonsense right now, Regina Christina Gunderson.”

  When she opens them, she suddenly hears music: strange tinny music, as if from an old phonograph, somewhere in the building. It disturbs her, but she isn’t sure why. She’s just on edge because Rocky isn’t here.

  Poor Miss Lucy—she became a creature of the night because the count sucked her dry.

  The tinny music seems to be growing louder. Who could be playing it? It seems old, very old, as if it came from a Victrola—

  Her mind flashes on an image: Mr. Horowitz as a young boy in Russia, with the great noble Count Alexei Petrovich Guchkov bent over, kissing his hand, a Victrola in the back, playing this very same music.

  “Stop it!” she scolds herself.

  She heads into Rocky’s bedroom and sits down on her neatly made bed.

  “Just three days,” she whispers to herself, staring at her reflection in the mirror. “Just three nights,” she hears another voice say, inside her. And in the glass, she sees old Mr. Horowitz, chalk white face and bloodred lips, rising up from behind her on the bed.

  She screams. Even as she turns and sees nothing there, she can’t stop screaming. She has to cover her mouth with both of her hands to stifle the sound.

  The next day, Regina helps the other aides pack up the dead man’s belongings. There is no family. Some of his personal items will be distributed among the other residents. The rest will be discarded.

  “You look tired, Regina,” says Mavis, a colored aide. “No sleep last night?”

  She sighs, lifting a small icon of the Virgin Mary from Mr. Horowitz’s jewelry box. How odd that Mr. Horowitz should have it. Beside it rests a silver Star of David. Regina pricks herself on one of its sharp points. “Ow,” she says, instinctively drawing the wounded finger to her mouth.

  “Let me have the Virgin,” Mavis is saying, looking over her shoulder. “No one here will want it.”

  Regina isn’t sure. “We should ask Mrs. Newberg.”

  Mavis makes a face. “She’ll say no. Come on, Regina. Who’ll care?”

  She says nothing, just hands over the icon to Mavis. That leaves the Star of David. Regina stares down at it for a few moments. Then she slips it into her pocket. Who’ll care?

  The sun edges the horizon.

  Two more nights.

  She prays she’ll sleep better tonight. It’s quiet now, no music. Usually Regina likes the quiet, because it’s so different from what she was used to when Papa was alive. Papa always played the radio very loud, ball games and big band music. After he died, Regina threw out his radio and they’ve never had one since. Out went all of Papa’s cigar ashes and bottle tops, swept by Regina’s furious broom. She turned the place into a tidy little home for herself and Rocky.

  It was good at first. Regina made dinner, pot roast and boiled potatoes, or sometimes cheese rarebit, often lighting candles to make the flat look extra pretty. On Friday nights the sisters would sometimes walk to Main Street to see a picture, the way they had as children, or maybe they’d head down to Miss Wright’s to watch her television set. Miss Wright had been the first in the building to buy one, and Regina would laugh at Milton Berle and Sid Caesar. Yes, it was a good couple of years. They didn’t even talk about the city anymore, or what had happened there.

  But the very week Rocky turned twenty-one she met Chase Worthington. Chase was a rich boy from one of the big white houses up on the hill. He came into the bowling alley where Rocky worked, hooting and hollering with his college friends, and Rocky had tried to toss him out. Instead, she ended up going on a date with him, and Chase has been an almost nightly presence ever since.

  Once again Regina is sitting on her sister’s bed. The stillness of the place seems to swallow her whole. She draws a pillow close to her—the one Chase had slept on just two nights before. She wants to push that pillow into her face and inhale, but she dares not.

  Suddenly, the music again. The same tinny music, coming from somewhere—not above, not below. Then from where? What song does it play?

  She flings the pillow to the floor and stands. She should go to sleep now. She has to be at the Hebrew Home by seven. Tomorrow is Thursday. Tomorrow she must pay the paper boy. And leave the money out for Mr. Otfinowski.

  A bang.
She jumps. Something scratches at the window.

  “Oh!” Regina cries.

  Three long scratches scar the frost, scratches like fingernails.

  “A squirrel,” she says. “A squirrel.”

  It can’t be anything else. It can’t be the vampire. It’s only been two nights.

  “And besides,” Regina says out loud, “Mr. Kowalski said the taint must have disappeared from his blood long ago.”

  She hurries to her room and undresses in front of her mirror. Standing there only in her bra and slip, Regina touches her face. She’s so fair that at first glance it would appear she has no eyebrows or eyelashes. Rocky darkens hers with a pencil and mascara, but Regina wears no makeup.

  She crawls into bed.

  The music keeps playing. She tries to pretend it’s not there but she can’t manage the charade for long. She lies there picturing the Jewish cemetery out near Devil’s Hopyard, that strange field where scaly hops grow yellow in the summer, where the Indians first heard unaccountable noises centuries ago, where the early English settlers had pronounced the land the devil’s own. The noises, scientists would later say, were merely the rumblings of a minor fault far beneath the surface of the earth: but might they not be coming from hell? Or from the stark Jewish cemetery, where Mr. Horowitz’s body lies in the mausoleum, waiting to live again?

  Regina begins to cry.

  “I feel very foolish,” Regina tells Stanley Kowalski.

  “Please don’t.”

  They’re back at Henry’s Diner. Regina had called him, having found his name in the phone book. Mr. Kowalski was only too happy to meet her for lunch. This time they got a booth. Regina ordered a grilled cheese. “The usual,” Lois smiled, scribbling onto her pad. Mr. Kowalski ordered a steak burger with onions, very rare.

  “I must get this out of my head,” Regina tells him.

  “After tonight, the fear will be gone.”

  “I certainly hope so. I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

  “Even if Mr. Horowitz really is a vampire, and even if tonight he does rise,” says Mr. Kowalski, “there’s no reason to believe he would come for you. And even if he did, vampires must first be invited into a home before they can enter. You are perfectly safe, Miss Gunderson.”

  “There was something connecting us,” Regina says. “He picked up on that. I was different, he said. I would believe.”

  “And do you?”

  She hesitates. Lois brings over the grilled cheese, burned around the edges and a thin wedge of pickle on the side. “Your steak burger will be out in a minute,” she tells Mr. Kowalski.

  “Thank you.”

  Regina takes a bite, then remembers it’s impolite to eat before the other person is served.

  “Go ahead,” Mr. Kowalski offers, but she shakes her head no.

  “I’m not sure what I believe,” Regina says. “I just wish my sister wasn’t away. This wouldn’t be happening if she were here.”

  “Is your sister some sort of magic talisman?”

  “My sister wouldn’t let anything bad happen. She’s very strong.”

  “And you?”

  “Here’s your steak burger,” Lois interjects, thrusting the bloody flesh between them on a plate. “With extra onions. Will there be anything else?”

  “No,” Mr. Kowalski says, looking over at Regina. “There will be nothing else.”

  After lunch, Regina calls the Hebrew Home to say she has a headache, that she won’t be back. She isn’t lying.

  “Come with me,” Stanley Kowalski says. “My house is just over this way. I want to give you something.”

  She shouldn’t go; she should just head home. Get this crazy notion out of her head. She shouldn’t go to a strange man’s house. But she follows.

  Stanley Kowalski lives on Walnut Street, two blocks past Regina’s own street. The Friendly Barber Shop is on the corner. As they pass, Stanley waves to the barber, who’s inside sharpening his razors.

  It’s a cold day. The wind is whipping, and Regina’s cheeks grow red and hard. She’s misplaced her gloves, so she shoves her hands deep down into the pockets of her coat. The sky is dark gray. Snow beckons.

  “Here it is,” Stanley says, opening his door. “My humble abode.”

  His flat smells like bananas. A parakeet in a wire cage chirps a greeting. “Hello, Mrs. Tennyson,” Stanley says.

  Regina stands in his little foyer, unsure of whether she should proceed.

  “Ah, Miss Gunderson, don’t be afraid. Please. Sit down.”

  “I shouldn’t stay.”

  “But I must give you what we came here for.”

  Stanley Kowalski disappears down the hall. Regina gazes around the room, at the newspapers on the floor, the plate full of crumbs and empty Coke bottles next to the frayed overstuffed chair. Mrs. Tennyson squawks a couple of times at her. On the wall hangs a calendar: Jayne Mansfield, her enormous breasts bared, in a tiny fur-trimmed skirt and boots, shivering atop the hood of a car.

  “Here we are,” Mr. Kowalski says, coming back down the hall. He holds something in his hand. “You take this, Miss Gunderson. Wear it around your neck. This will protect you.”

  It’s a crucifix, a large wooden one on a silver chain.

  “That will do no good,” Regina protests.

  “Buy why not?”

  “He was Jewish,” Regina says plainly.

  “Ah,” Mr. Kowalski says, nodding.

  “But this,” Regina says, eyes lighting at the thought as she reaches into her pocket, “this will work.” She produces the Star of David. “May I take the chain?”

  “But of course. Oh, this is splendid.”

  Regina feels better already. Why hadn’t she thought of this before?

  Mr. Kowalski pulls the chain off the crucifix and proceeds to thread it through the small ring at the top of the star. “This was meant to be worn,” he says. “May I put it on you?”

  “Yes, please,” Regina says, turning her back to him.

  Mr. Kowalski slips the star around Regina’s neck. “There,” he says, and without warning he drops his arms around Regina, pulling her in, nuzzling her neck with his lips.

  “Mr. Kowalski!”

  “Oh, come, my dear,” he soothes. “You came willingly.”

  “No,” she says, but Mr. Kowalski’s arms only tighten around her. Regina can’t see his face, only hear his words and feel his lips pressing against her ear.

  “Foolish child, to think that vampires can be stopped by silly little trinkets, that they only walk about by night,” Stanley Kowalski says, and now his hands, his cold hands, are inside Regina’s coat, unbuttoning the front of her blouse.

  “No,” she says again, but more meekly this time. “No, please.”

  Stanley Kowalski’s cold hands touch Regina’s skin. “Such a dear girl,” he purrs. “Such a sweet, innocent child—”

  “No,” Regina says dreamily. “Not innocent …”

  Mr. Kowalski laughs.

  “No man would want me … no man …”

  “Hush, dear girl,” Mr. Kowalski says. “There shall be no more men. Only me.”

  And with that, he bites Regina Gunderson upon her neck.

  It’s started to snow.

  “It’s true,” Regina says, walking out onto the sidewalk, her voice calm and full of wonder as she watches the fragile flakes accumulate on the black wool of her coat. “No two snowflakes are exactly the same.”

  Back at the flat, in the last slanting golden rays of the day, she puts on a pot of tea and contemplates dinner. “Rocky will want stew,” she says out loud. She opens the freezer and looks down into it. No stew meat.

  “Oh, dear,” she says to herself, and then the sunlight is gone.

  Rocky’s away, Regina remembers.

  And it’s the third night.

  The Star of David still hangs around her neck. She clutches it and breathes.

  “What should I do?” she whispers, pressing her nose up against the cold windowpane, looking ou
t across the rooftops in the direction of Devil’s Hopyard, where she can see, in her mind, the great stone door of the mausoleum in the Jewish cemetery sliding back, the demons of the hopyard dancing in strange homage to the risen Samuel Horowitz …

  The teakettle is whistling, a piercing sound. But more, too: the tinny music, the sound of a Victrola at the Russian Imperial Court, or the sound of the radio Papa used to play, over and over, as he sat there drinking, drinking until his face became purple, drinking until he forgot the two young girls in the other room were his daughters.

  Leave her alone, Papa. Leave Regina alone!

  A knock at the door.

  Regina tenses. For a moment she thinks she should hide, but then decides against it. The knock comes again. She takes a deep breath and walks over to the door, peering through the peephole.

  It’s Dicky. The paper boy. She had forgotten.

  “Good ev’nin’, Miss Gunderson,” the boy says. His face looks bloated and distorted through the peephole.

  She opens the door, stepping aside to let him enter.

  Dicky seems unsure, but he comes inside. He’s a tall youth, with long legs and a blonde crew cut. He can’t be more than fifteen.

  “Now where is that envelope?” Regina asks. Her voice is different: lighter, higher. “I know my sister left it around here for you somewhere.”

  Dicky shifts his weight from his left foot to his right.

  Regina suddenly stops her search and looks over at the boy, a broad smile crossing her face. “Dicky, would you like a cup of tea?”

  The boy looks off toward the whistling kettle. “Um, no, thanks. I’ve got to finish my route.”

  “It’s snowing outside. And so very cold. Are you sure?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Regina smiles. “Of course not. How silly of me. Boys don’t drink tea.” She touches the boy’s cold hard cheeks with each of her forefingers. “I could make some hot cocoa,” she tempts.

  “No, thank you, Miss Gunderson.”

  She watches him for several seconds. Then the place between her legs starts to hurt again, and she remembers what happened there. She thrusts the envelope at him. “Go,” she. says hoarsely. “Get out of here. This place is not safe. He’s coming for me. Run. Save yourself.”