He walked over to the coffin, dusted a spot with a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, and sat down. “Sit a spell, Jules. This might be a while. I usta run with a kid gang, see, back when I was alive. Picked the name Eldo Rado to be my tag. Eldo Rado. Something a kid would come up with, huh? Named myself after a car made by some white French guy come to America, who called his car some weird-ass Spanish word. When I became a vampire, that shit didn’t cut it no more. So one night I went to the video joint. Checked out every tape on vampires they had. Figured I’d pick a new name after I watched all the tapes.
“You white vampires are lucky, you know that? You got tons ofbad, I meanbad mothafuckin‘ bloodsuckahs to watch on the tube. You know? Christopher Lee. That dude isbad, man! And what doI have to watch? Fuckin’Blacula, man. You ever want topiss me thehell off, just try pinnin‘ that Blacula shit on me. So the tapes wasn’t no help at all. Then I got to thinkin’. Maybe I didn’t need a totally new name. Back in grade school, the teachers used to call me Malice, ‘cause it sounded close to my real name and I was a bad little dude. Malice. I liked the sound of that. And I didn’t need no Christian name anymore, ’cause as a vampire I sure wasn’t no Christian. So nowadays you can call me Malice X. Any more questions?”
Jules had remained standing, uncomfortably, throughout Malice X’s monologue. His knees were aching again. “Yeah. One more. Why the warning? If you got so many goons to watch where I go, how come you haven’t just rubbed me out?”
The black vampire stood and straightened the crease in his pants. “I owed somebody a favor. I just paid it by givin‘ you a heads-up. Actually, I didn’t lose nothin’. See, I figure you’re too stupid to listen. A week, maybe a month from now, you’ll gimme some excuse to come down on you. Hard. You know them big, fat white toadstools that grow on neutral grounds after a heavy rain? I always loved kickin‘ the shit outta them things. Stompin’ ‘em to pieces. Just like I’m gonna love stompin’ you.”
Jules’s repertoire of wiseass comebacks was dry as a drought-stricken riverbed. The bayou of sweat dripping down his back had swelled to a Mississippi.
“Hey, Jules? You said before you can do some neat tricks, right?” Malice X removed his jacket, folded it, and placed it over the back of a rusty chair. Then he removed his shoes, unbuttoned his shirt, and loosened his alligator-skin belt and the clasp on his pants. “Well, here’s a trick I just learned.”
The black vampire’s form shimmered and wavered like a reflection in a twisting fun house mirror. His limbs contracted, his face elongated, and his gray skin sprouted a dense, smooth coat of coal-black fur. Seconds later, a sleek, heavily fanged panther gracefully shook off Malice X’s clothes. The bloodred bow tie remained tied around its neck. The great cat loped lazily to Jules’s side of the room, moving like ball bearings on smooth ice. It rubbed its face, its neck, and its side against Jules’s thick legs, purring hypnotically. Jules didn’t dare breathe.
Then it trotted to the coffin and, before climbing the stairs, showered it with a steaming spray of pungent urine.
THREE
It had been ten long, sometimes lonely years since Jules had seen Maureen last. He’d stayed away a decade out of deference to her feelings, irrational though they might’ve been. Now he was about to step onto her turf again. He had no choice. Only she could tell him how to reach the High Krewe of Vlad Tepes. She’d just have to understand.
Jules rubbed his eyes and yawned. He’d had a lousy day’s sleep. No amount of scrubbing and bleach had been able to completely remove the stench of urine from his coffin.
He paused on the sidewalk in front of Jezebel’s Joy Room to stare at the photographs of the dancers. He wanted to be sure that Maureen still worked there before he committed himself to climbing the stairs. Jezebel’s was on Iberville between Royal and Chartres, a stretch of the upper Quarter that had managed to avoid the rampant gentrification that had pasteurized most of the rest of New Orleans’s central tourist zone. The club’s surroundings had changed very little since the early 1960s, when the last few legitimate burlesque houses had died off and been replaced by bump-and-grind joints. This was a block respectable tourists rushed by on their way to the House of Blues or Cafй du Monde, averting their eyes from the yellowing photographs of naked female torsos.
Jules quickly scanned the contents of Jezebel’s come-on display. It didn’t take long to find her.Yup; that’s Maureen, all right. None of the photos inside the roach-eaten display case showed any of the women’s faces. The picture of Maureen, however, was unmistakable. Unlike all the others, it was a charcoal sketch, almost Fauvist in its primitive vitality. The caption beneath the sketch announced in bold lettering,ROUND ROBIN-BIGGEST EROTIC ATTRACTION IN THE QUARTER-YOU WON’T BELIEVE YOUR EYES! Staring at her picture brought a flood of memories crashing down on his head. Some good, some not so good. The picture was wrinkled from the oppressive humidity, and its edges had begun peeling away from the cork backing of the display case. If the sketch were true to life at all, then Maureen’s torso had grown even more monumental than it’d been ten years ago.
Generic disco music blared from cheap speakers in the second-story room high above, making the heavy air throb around Jules’s blunt head. He gathered his courage and pulled open the front door. Jezebel’s was at a competitive disadvantage compared with the clubs located right at street level. It lacked the free and effective advertising of a front entrance, which displayed flashes of the goods inside to curious passersby every time the door swung open. Jules waddled into the landing. The stairs were steep and narrow, lit by a single naked lightbulb. His fleshy nostrils twitched. The aroma inside the foyer was a barroom classic-stale beer mingled with cigarette haze and a hint of drying urine. Lately, it seemed he couldn’t escape the scent of piss.
Three minutes later, a veritable eternity of agony for his joints, Jules reached the second-story landing. The pounding in his ears obliterated the soulless, mechanical music howling from the speakers above the gaudily lit stage. His knees felt like huge, swollen beefsteak tomatoes, bruised, squeezed, and pinched by hundreds of manic shoppers at some pre-Easter sale at Schwegmann’s Giant Super-Market. But when he caught sight of who was on stage, Jules immediately forgot all about his knees.
Beneath a glittering, revolving disco ball, Maureen danced like some fantastic vision from an antediluvian, pre-Weight Watchers world, a fertility goddess who’d be worshiped by a tribe of blue-eyed albinos. As she danced about the stage with almost supernatural grace, every part of her-her hips, thighs, belly, double-dimpled arms, buttocks, jowls, neck rolls-shimmied and gyrated in time with the music, an unceasing undulation of fleshy movement. It was hypnotic. Jules estimated that she had packed on at least two hundred additional pounds since he had last seen her.
He made his way, as quietly and unobtrusively as he could manage, to a table near the back of the club. He wasn’t as invisible as he’d hoped to be. When he was just halfway to his destination, Maureen’s eyes snapped open, as if from a trance. Her placid face dissolved into a mask of horror and abject humiliation, as Jules was treated, along with every other patron in the club, to the astounding spectacle of Maureen’s immense, chalk-white body turning scarlet red.
She stumbled out of her dance routine like a punch-drunk boxer, then ran as quickly as her doughy legs would carry her to the side of the stage and theEMPLOYEES ONLY exit, covering her face with her hands. Jules frowned. He hadn’t anticipated his presence having such a dramatic effect on her. What was it with women, anyway? Jules had figured she’d be surprised, maybe even shocked, by his sudden reappearance. But shouldn’t she be happy to see an old friend again?
Another dancer hurried onstage as someone fumbled with the tape player and two employees stripped the black curtains from the mirrors surrounding three sides of the dancing platform. Compared with Maureen, the new girl was decidedly ordinary, apart from silicone-enhanced breasts. Jules overheard a few of the other patrons mumble with disappointment; several got up to leave.
&n
bsp; Jules fidgeted for a few minutes while he tried to watch the new dancer. She wasn’t much good. Half the audience had cleared out since Maureen had made her abrupt exit.
The floorboards to the right of his table creaked. He heard a bemused, exasperated sigh, one he remembered all too well. “Hello, Jules.”
“Hey, Mo. Pull up a chair?”
“Sure. Long as I can find one that won’t bust when I sit down.”
She had dressed herself in a custom-made kimono, yards of black silk embroidered with green, purple, and gold dragons. Her long, frizzy blond hair was pulled back from her face by three glittery purple clips. Despite the forlorn, heavy sag of her alabaster jowls, Jules thought she was as beautiful as he’d ever seen her. As beautiful, even, as she’d looked the first night he’d met her, the last and only time he’d gazed at her with human eyes.
She settled herself uncomfortably on an armless chair, which protested but did not give way. “So what’ve you been doing with yourself?”
“Oh, y’know, the usual. Livin‘ the life.”
“The afterlife, you mean.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
Her hard, cold stare unnerved him. He looked away, forcing himself to watch the clumsy, plastic-boobed dancer still trying to make a go of it. When he glanced back, Maureen was still staring at him. “I felt you come in, you know,” she said. “When I first started dancing, I felt a little tingle behind my eyes, in my sinuses, like the start of a headache. So I knew you were downstairs, pacing back and forth in front of that sketch of me, trying to decide whether or not to come up. That damn tingle got worse with each step you climbed. I kept hoping I was wrong. But I wasn’t. I can always sense when the ones I made are around. I’m like a bitch with her goddamn puppies.”
Jules tried to think of something to say. He stared at his fingers, splayed on the table like white cigars. He’d always hated the way Maureen could nail him with a look, making thirty seconds feel like a century of deafening silence.
“Goddamn it to hell, Jules,” Maureen whispered fiercely after a few seconds of deadly quiet. “Didn’t I tell you never to come see me again? Didn’t I?”
Jules finally found his voice. He wished he could still drink whiskey; his throat could use it. “Mo, that was ten years ago. I thought, y’know, maybe you’d changed your mind by now. Lord almighty, I’m practically the only relation you got in the whole world. Why’re you holding this heavy grudge against me, baby? What’s so awful about seeing me once every ten years?”
Maureen remained quiet for a few long seconds, smiling ruefully. “You just don’t get it, do you? Naww. Of course you don’t. You’re a goddamnman.” She sighed heavily. “I’ll try to explain. Look at that stage, Jules. What do you see? Aside from a drug-addled bimbo with thousand-dollar tits, I mean.”
Jules considered all possible answers before replying. He really didn’t want to make her any more angry than she already was, not if he could possibly avoid it. “Uh, I dunno. Mirrors?”
Maureen smiled and slowly nodded her head, like she was trying to teach a retarded child the alphabet. “That’s right, Jules. Mirrors. But when I’m dancing on that stage, do you see the mirrors?”
“No. They cover them up with velvet.”
“And why do they do that?”
“ ‘Cause it’s part of your act. You insist on it.”
Maureen waved her pudgy hand in a brisk, circular motion. “Andwhy do I insist on that?”
“Uh, ‘cause it’d freak out the clientele to not see you reflected in any of those mirrors, right?”
“Yes, Jules. Very good. And guess what? If none of the clientele can see my reflection, neither can I. I haven’t been able to look at myself in a mirror or a photograph for more than a hundred years. But you know what? That’s been a good thing. A very good thing. Especially during the last five decades or so. I feelblessed that I can’t look at myself in the mirror. I am the luckiest fat woman on earth, Jules. But you come waltzing in here, after ten years, and you know what you are to me? You know what you are?”
Jules had figured it out. But he didn’t want to say it.
Maureen sighed again. No exasperation this time. Just sadness, a sadness weightier than the two of them put together. “Amirror, Jules. You’re my goddamn mirror.”
She took a deep breath, and her eyes moistened and seemed to soften. She reached across the table and took his fleshy paw between her hands. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “You were abeautiful man. Such a beautiful man. You know that? When I saw you that night, standing in front of the French Opera House on Canal Street, I knew immediately that you were the one. The one I wanted to give eternal unlife to. So I could spend the rest of eternity looking at beautiful, gorgeous you.”
Whoa!Maureen had never talked to him this way before. Not even back in the days when they were first together. What in hell could he say to that? “You were beautiful, too, Mo,” Jules said, a little haltingly. “Baby, you’restill beautiful.”
Maureen let his hand drop to the table. “Don’t bullshit me, Jules. I know exactly what I look like. I look at you, add some frizzy blond hair, make the tits and hips a little bigger, and there I am.” Her scowl melted into a melancholy frown, and she touched his hand again. “Jesus. It breaks my heart, honey, to see what you’ve done to yourself. It really does. If I had known, eighty years ago, what would become of you, I wouldn’t have bitten you. I would’ve just let you be.”
Jules felt his stomach do a double somersault with a half twist. If Maureen pissed off was bad, then Maureen on the verge of tears was a million times worse. “Mo. It’s gonna be different. You’ll see. I’m going on a diet. That’s, uh, that’s one a the things I came here to tell you.”
Silence. Deafening silence. Maureen stared at him as if he had just sung a Chinese opera. “This is ajoke, right? You tried, in your pathetic little way, to cheer me up. A joke. Right?”
“No, baby. I’m dead serious. I made up my mind last night. I’m gonna come back here six months from now, and you won’t recognize me. I’ll behalf the man I am now.”
“Oh. Youare being serious. You crazy, predictable, baboon’sass. How many times have I heard this shit from you, Jules? Do you have anyidea how many times I’ve listened to your identical bullshit?”
“Aww, Maureen-”
“Don’tyou ‘Aww Maureen’me. I’mwise to you, Jules Duchon. Why do you think I put you out on your ear ten years ago? You never change.This is the reason you came up here tonight?This is the reason you’ve trashed my routine, got me docked a night’s pay, and probably loused up my whole week? To repeat your sorry old ‘I’m-going-on-a-diet’ bullshit?”
Jules took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly through his nose. “Well, actually, I came to ask you, uh, a little favor, see… but it’s not bullshit, what I just said. I’m at the end of my rope, baby. I think I might be getting diabetes, or maybe something worse.”
Maureen tried pushing herself away from the table, but instead her chair remained firmly planted and she shoved the table into Jules’s gut. She rose awkwardly from her chair and smoothed the wrinkles from her kimono. “I think you’d better leave now. I can’t continue this conversation any more. It’s hazardous to my mental well-being.”
A waitress in a spangled bikini hovered expectantly over Jules’s shoulder. “Set’s almost over, dearie,” she said to him. A gold tooth in the middle of her false smile reflected the glare of the stage lights. “You gotta buy at least one drink. House rules.”
Maureen glowered at her coworker. “Samantha, can’t you see we’re in the middle of a conversation here?”
The waitress placed her tiny fists on her not-so-tiny hips. “Well, it looked to me like you was leavin‘, Maureen. Ex-cusea girl trying to make a living. You make your rent by wiggling around onstage an hour a night. Me, I don’t move the drinks, I’m out on my ass faster than you’d sunburn on Panama City Beach.”
Maureen jammed her bosom into the waitress’s tray, s
pilling a shot of bourbon onto a pile of cocktail napkins. “Get the hell out of my face, Samantha. I’ll pay for his drink later.Okay? ”
Samantha cast an appalled look at the spilled drink and backed away. “Ohh-kay, Maureen. Whatever you say. You’re the big-assstar around here. But you don’t have to be such abitch about it.” She stalked back to the bar.
Jules eyed the empty space on the table, next to his right hand, which would ordinarily be occupied by a cup of thick, steaming coffee. “Hey. Maybe I wanted to order a joe.”
Maureen redirected her withering glare on him. “I don’t give a flyingshit about your caffeine addiction-” Her tirade stopped in midsentence, like a wildfire suddenly deprived of oxygen. She sank back into her chair and wearily rested her forehead on her palms. “You said there was something else, didn’t you? Something you had to ask me. A favor.”
“Uh, yeah. Alittle favor.”
She sighed. “You’re like a crotch itch, you know? You show up at the worst times, and you won’t go away until you’re thoroughly scratched. Spill it. You’ve got two minutes, max.”
“I need some information, okay? That’s all. I need to get in touch with those vampires you used to live with before you went solo. The ones with the big compound somewhere near the parish line.”
Maureen’s thick makeup crinkled with surprise. “The High Krewe of Vlad Tepes? What the hell do you need to see those highfalutin assholes for?”
Now it was Jules’s turn to sigh. “To get a rogue off my back.”
“A rogue?”
The story began spilling out of him like a flash flood. “He was waitin‘ for me at my house last night. Busted up my door somethin’ awful. He threatened me. Threatenedme, in my own house! Wants to push me outta town. He pissed all over my coffin, and now I can’t get the damn stink out-”
Fat White Vampire Blues Page 4
