by P. N. Elrod
“Hem,” he said neutrally. “I know better than to offer you liquid refreshment. Do you mind if I indulge?”
“Go ahead. Just hold a glass under my shirt and I’ll squeeze some out for you.”
He declined with a polite but decisive head shake and smile, and went into the dining room. There was no dining table yet, just a stack of cardboard boxes that hadn’t been unpacked and a large glass-fronted cabinet on one wall holding a modest collection of bottles.
“Think I’ll go and change. It’s getting late,” I said.
“You’re welcome to use the bathtub if you like. The water heater is almost reliable now.”
“Thanks.” I left him pouring out a gin and tonic and trotted upstairs. I’d scrub my face and hands off, but total immersion in a tub of possibly cold water was an experience I could do without.
My clothes were in a narrow bedroom next to the bath. The bed was long gone, leaving some holes in the floor where it had been bolted down and some rub marks from the headboard on the once florid wallpaper. There was no closet; my stuff was draped over a spindly wooden chair and more unpacked boxes.
Now that I was alone and changing back into familiar things, I felt a delayed reaction from the shooting tonight. I could avoid death in that manner, he couldn’t. It didn’t seem to disturb him, but I’d been thoroughly frightened, and I was far less vulnerable. If Escott hadn’t been wearing that vest . . . Maybe he could treat the whole business casually, but not me. He hadn’t seen the gun swinging up in his face and the muzzle flash searing his eyes. I touched the spot where the lead slug had passed through; all trace of pain was gone, the flesh and bone were smooth and unmarked.
My hand was trembling as it came away: half in wonder of what I’d survived and half in fear of what I’d become. A small mirror still clung to one wall, reflecting only the empty room, and nothing more. I shivered the length of my spine, turned away from it, and finished dressing.
Respectable again, I joined Escott in his downstairs parlor, where he’d stretched out on the sofa. He looked tired.
“This should cheer you up.” I put the money on a low table next to his glass.
“What?” He turned his head just enough to see. “Oh, I’d forgotten.”
I dropped into a leather armchair. “How can you forget twenty-five hundred bucks?”
“Twelve hundred fifty. Half of it’s yours.”
“Come on, Charles, I didn’t do anything except get in the way.”
A faint smile twitched in one corner of his mouth. “As you insist. But whatever tonight’s outcome would or would not have been, you are still entitled to something for your services to the Escott Agency. I’d give you all of it, but thought you wouldn’t accept it.”
“Don’t be so certain.”
“I’ll fill out some kind of receipt later.”
“For tax purposes?”
“Of course. I have always been impressed by the manner in which the government finally managed to take care of Capone.”
“What’s that have to do with me?”
“With both of us, my dear fellow. Undeclared income and income without employment are things that are certain to be noticed sooner or later. A person with your particular condition should not call attention to himself.”
“Okay, I see what you mean. What about that bundle we picked up from the Paco gang?”
“I said then we should consider it the spoils of war, but I plan to declare my half. I wonder if there is some sort of penalty in padding one’s records in favor of the government?”
“In a bureaucracy do you think they’d notice? And it’s gotten a lot bigger and more complicated since Roosevelt got in.”
“I see, yes, what a ridiculous question. Still, I suppose the best thing is to store the lot in a mattress and declare it a little at a time over the years. Ah, well, here’s to crime.” He drained off his glass and grimaced.
“You all right?”
“Probably. I shall be stiff for a few days. Bad coincidence getting hit in the same spot.”
“Let’s have a look.”
He’d already taken off his suit vest. Now he shucked the shirt and I helped him ease out of the bulletproof vest underneath. On his left side just below the line of his ribs was a thin red scar about four inches long where a thug’s knife had cut him up not so long ago. He probed the area gently with his long fingers and winced a little.
“There, it caught me a bit lower than I thought. Nothing more than a bad bruise and some shock. Quite lucky, considering how close the gun was.”
“Charles, about all you had going for you tonight was luck. If her aim had been a little better or worse she could have taken your head off.”
“So you mentioned earlier.”
“I’m gonna mention it again. You scared the shit out of me tonight.”
“I truly appreciate your concern, but after all, nothing really happened, and I do intend to be more careful in the future.”
“You mean that?”
“Certainly. This was an isolated incident. Before I met you the most violent encounter I’d ever experienced was a director with a vile temper who tried to kill me with his blocking of a stage fight.”
I was verging on exasperation, but too curious to pass up the opening. He rarely spoke about his past. “What happened?”
“It was the difference between his opinion and my facts. The man had concocted some ridiculous fencing movement and I tried to point out something safer and more natural for the circumstance. Since I was only a very junior member of the company at the time, he got his way. On dress-rehearsal night I slipped in my felt costume shoes, fell into the orchestra pit, and broke the poor violinist’s collarbone and nearly my own neck when I landed on him. I was never able to convince that director I hadn’t done it on purpose just for spite.”
I pulled my mouth shut to control the laugh. “Now you’re changing the subject—”
“But I have not. My point was that tonight was an unfortunate set of circumstances, nothing more. In all fairness, how could the director or I have known that the stage floor had just been waxed? How could you have known the young lady was so murderously and athletically inclined? Believe me, if any future jobs like this should come my way, there is no one else I would rather have to back me up. I know you have doubts now, but you’ve a quick, observant eye and with a little training . . .”
I shot him a suspicious look. “What have you got planned? A little extra paint on the office door saying Escott and Fleming, Private Agents?”
“That would be interesting, but not possible. It takes several years of training to qualify for a license, and then you have to show up for the exam—in daylight. No, in practical terms that’s quite out of the question for you.”
“Then what is in the question?”
“I’m only proposing the odd job now and then, like tonight. I know you really consider this as just doing me a favor, but there’s no reason why you can’t make something for yourself out of it.” He looked at the money and then at me.
“You trying to bribe me? Because it’s working.”
The faint smile appeared again in the same corner. “I had hoped you would consider it seriously. Of course one never knows what the future may bring; not all of my clients are as well off as Mr. Swafford, nor as easily bullied, but there should be enough coming in to keep gas in your car and so forth.”
I put my half of the cash in my wallet. “This should buy a lot of so forth.”
He smiled again at this obvious acceptance of his offer, briefly, this time in both corners.
2
IT was nearly three when I left Escott’s, but Bobbi would be awake. She may have left her job and her room at the Nightcrawler Club, but she still kept club hours. Her new home was a suite in a respectable hotel that provided maid service, meals, and a bribable house detective—everything a girl could want.
I crossed the marble-floored lobby, waving at the night clerk, who knew me by sight. The kid in the
elevator was sound asleep on his stool, so I charitably took the stairs up to the fourth floor. Her rooms were to the left of the stairs, taking up a corner block of windows that fronted the building. Light was showing under her door. I knocked softly, heard her bare feet patter close, and a single hazel eye peered through the peephole. I winked back and the door opened.
“Hello, stranger, I was beginning to think you’d never show up.” She pulled me inside and locked out the rest of the world.
“So you’re taking me for granted, huh?”
“Uh-huh, just like the laundry.”
“You dress up like that for the laundry?”
“This is dressing down; something informal, yet intimate.” She was wearing some baby-blue satin lounging pajamas that made it difficult for me to think straight. When she walked, her legs made a pleasant susurrus sound. Slightly hypnotized by the rhythm, I followed her into the living room and we curled up on the sofa. At least she curled—I stretched my legs out and hooked an arm around her shoulder.
“What kept you so long?” she asked.
“Charles needed some help tonight.”
“What did he do, drag you backward through a distillery?” She sniffed my hair critically.
“Just about. Thought I’d lost the atmosphere of the place when I’d changed.”
“Into what?”
“What do you mean ‘into what’?”
“A bat or a wolf—”
“What are you talking about?”
She pulled a thick book from under a pillow and tapped the lurid red letters of the title with one nail. “It says in here . . .”
Then I had to laugh and shake my head. “Bobbi, you nut, you can’t be taking that seriously.”
“Well, it’s the only book I knew of about vampires.”
“There are lots of others, but they’re not necessarily right, either. Why are you looking at that stuff? You’ve already got the real article.”
“I wanted to know more. According to this, you’ll be turning me into one any time now.” She said it like a joke, but I could see a real concern underneath. She waited for my reaction.
I took the book and flipped through until I found the right page. “There, read that part and try to ignore the scary language. Until we do this there is no chance of you ever turning into a vampire.” I waited, listening to her soft breathing as she read, my arm close around her shoulders. She finally let the book droop.
“That scene wasn’t in the movie.”
“Too erotic.”
“Erotic?” She sounded doubtful.
“Don’t let the description put you off until you’ve tried it.”
She looked speculative. “You want to do that?”
“Not unless you want to. It’s your decision.”
“What would happen?”
“One hell of a climax for both of us.”
“And that’s all? Not that there’s anything wrong with a great climax,” she quickly added.
“I’m glad you think so.”
“Come on, Jack. What else is it?”
I rubbed absently at that spot over my eye. “Okay, it’s got to do with reproduction . . .”
“You mean I could get pregnant?” That possibility alarmed her.
“No, I mean you could get like me. My taking from you is one thing, but if you should take any of my blood, there’s a remote chance you could be like me after you died.”
“Would it kill me?”
“No, of course not.”
“How remote a chance?”
“I don’t know. As I understand it, it almost never works because nearly everyone is immune. They’d have to be or there’d be more people like me around.”
“Maybe there are and you just haven’t noticed them. You don’t exactly look like a vampire, you know.”
“Not the Hollywood kind, anyway.”
“I mean you don’t stand out in a crowd.”
“Oh, thank you very much.”
She swatted my shoulder.
“Okay, okay, I know what you meant.”
She settled in again. “This kind of reproduction . . . is that why we don’t make love the usual way?”
“Yes,” I said shortly.
“Hey, don’t clam up on me, I was just asking.”
“I know, honey.”
I tried to relax and succeeded to some extent. She’d hit a sore spot, but it wasn’t an unexpected blow. I wasn’t—to put it delicately—fertile in the way that men are usually fertile with women. The pleasure centers and how they operated had drastically shifted. Oddly enough, I did not feel deprived, physically or mentally; I just felt that I should feel deprived, or that maybe Bobbi was losing out on things. There was no justification for it, so far our relationship was as mutually satisfying as anyone could wish for.
She snuggled closer under my arm. “If you want to know, I really prefer it your way.”
“You mean that?”
She lifted my hand and pressed it against the soft, warm skin of her throat. “When you do it this way, it just goes on and on. . . .”
That was how it felt to me. As a breathing man, I’d had some great experiences, but they were hardly an adequate comparison to what I now enjoyed.
“Sometimes I think I’ll go crazy from it,” she murmured, kissing my hand.
My lips lightly brushed her temple, the small vein pulsed beneath them. Of their own will, my hands began to undo her buttons. “You sure you like it this way?”
“Yes, and for another good reason: I don’t have to worry about getting pregnant.”
“Hmmm.”
She sat up straight, her top open almost to the waist and her perfect red lips curled into a sleepy, roguish smile. She nodded her head once toward the bedroom. “Come on, let’s go get more comfortable.”
Bobbi made a contented growl in the back of her throat, turned on her side, and burrowed close with her back to me, our bodies fitting together like two spoons. I draped an arm over her, and if my hand happened to end up cupping her left breast, nobody minded. We were in a lazy post-lovemaking afterglow and life was good.
“It’s funny how you can get used to things,” she said.
“I’m boring you?”
“I didn’t mean it that way, and no, I’m anything but bored with you.”
“Thanks for the reassurance. What is it you’re used to?”
“I was remembering the time when I first noticed you didn’t always breathe. It bothered me and now it doesn’t. I just thought it was a funny thing to think of as normal.”
“For me it is normal.”
“Oh, I know that now.”
“What else are you used to?”
“Umm . . . the no-heartbeat thing. But if you live on blood, how does it get through your body?”
“Beats me. Charles is speculating it’s some kind of osmosis.”
“What’s that?”
I’d asked Escott the same question and tried to repeat his answer to her. It must have been garbled—laboratory biology and chemistry had never been my best studies—but she took in enough to understand.
“It sounds like the way a root draws water up into a plant,” she suggested.
“Maybe so, just as long as it works.”
“What about mirrors? Have you figured out why you don’t show up?”
“Nope.”
“Let me know when you do, ’cause I’m not used to that, yet.”
“If it’s any comfort, neither am I.”
“You mean you can’t even see yourself?”
“Nope.”
“Do you know you need a haircut?”
“Hum a few bars.”
She groaned. “That stunk.”
“It’s old enough. Anything else?”
“That’s it for now.”
“Until you can think of something else to analyze?”
“If you want deep intellect, go to bed with a philosopher.”
“Thank you, no.”
“I thought
you’d say that.” She was quiet for a while, resting her head comfortably on my extended arm. I nosed into the platinum silk she had for hair and began kissing the nape of her neck. She squirmed. “You want to go again?”
“It might not be good for you. Your body has to adjust gradually, even to a small blood loss. Too often . . .”
“But you don’t take much.”
“Neither did those doctors who killed a king from too much bloodletting.”
“I heard of that, I think he was English. But this is different and I’m very healthy.” She twisted up on one elbow to look at me. The satin sheet slipped down quite a bit.
“Yes . . . I can see that.”
She made a face. “I’m serious. I’ve been eating liver like crazy, and I hate liver.”
“I had no idea.”
“So do you want to go again?”
“It’s very tempting, but better for you if we wait.”
She thought about it, decided not to push the issue, and wiggled back into my arms again. “Who taught you all this restraint?”
I pretended it was a rhetorical question and resumed nuzzling her hair. It smelled lightly of roses.
She went on. “I can’t help but be curious about her. I won’t ask anymore if you don’t want me to.”
“But you’ll still wonder.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Her name was Maureen.” The words dropped out like lead, as always when I talked of her in the past tense.
“I can tell you loved her a lot. It’s the way you look when you think about her.”
“It’s that obvious?”
“Sometimes. You’ll be looking at me and then I’m not there for you, and I know you’re seeing her instead.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right. Are we much alike?”
“Her hair was dark and she was shorter.”
“I didn’t mean like that.”
“She needed love,” I said lamely.
“Everyone does.”
“She needed it like . . . I don’t know. It was all that mattered to her.”
“And you loved each other a lot.”
“God, yes. But I didn’t realize how much until—we were both happy, a long time ago.”
