Le Remède

by Densie Webb

  “Yeah? Where from?”

  “Iowa.”

  “Ah, one those corn-infested States.”

  “Yes, I am one of the ‘children of the corn.’ You best be careful, lest I cast a spell upon thee.”

  “If I have a choice, I’d rather be a prince than a frog.”

  His voice carried the sweet melody of flirtation and I enthusiastically sang along. He started up the stairs, with me following close behind, and set the boxes in the entryway of the apartment. He took a deep breath and put his hands on his slender hips.

  “It’s a great building. Maintenance guy is good.”

  “Yeah, I think we were really lucky.”

  He leaned in and arched a single brow. “I’m thinking I might be the lucky one.”

  David was a broke writer, who rarely shaved, wore ripped T-shirts, baseball caps turned backwards, and his body was a blossoming canvas of colorful, if questionable, tattoos. He had a confidently breezy way about him that balanced out my poorly concealed certainty that doom and gloom were around every corner. He used to call me his Chicken Little, always waiting for the sky to fall.

  Two years later we were making wedding plans.

  My thoughts are interrupted by the bartender, a cute guy I’ve watched raise flirting with female customers to an art form. He sets two flutes of champagne on the bar, each with a strawberry at the bottom of the glass, bubbles frantically racing to the top.

  “Enjoy, ladies!” he says as he winks at Mackenna. They all wink at Mackenna. I know it, she knows it. But she’s such a great friend, I don’t mind. She flips her blond tresses over her shoulder and bestows him with a catnip smile.

  We clink glasses. “Salud!” she says, “To joining all the other miserable nine-to-fivers.”

  I tilt my glass to take a sip and I let my eyes wander as I check out the crowd for the first time since sitting down.

  “See anything interesting?” I ask Mack.

  “Nah.”

  The usual mix of Manhattan Upper West Siders—some good-looking guys, some likely aspiring actors, some Wall Street types, some creepers.

  It’s not that either of us is desperately searching for our “ever after” (fool me once, and all that), though I did go on Tinder once “just to see what would happen.” Thankfully, I had brought Mack along as backup and she hung back to monitor the situation. The guy looked normal enough, but after a few minutes of bland, get-to-know-you conversation, two other guys “just happened” to run into to him. It took all of thirty seconds for me to figure out what they had in mind.

  I gave Mack the signal (a right ear tug) that meant, “Get me the hell out of here.” It scared the bejesus out of me and I swore off online matchmaking for good. Right now, Mack and I are content in our singledom, but that doesn’t mean we’re not open to the possibility of a good-looking diversion.

  With that in mind, I glance down the other end of the bar, behind Mackenna, and the champagne bubbles invade my nose as I suck in air. She missed this one.

  His eyes. They’re intense, blue like warm Mediterranean waters. His skin is fair and smooth like an ocean stone, a stark contrast to the scruffy dark stubble on his face and fullish garnet lips—all topped off with a mane of unruly pitch-black hair. He’s—spectacular. A delicious mix of delicate and dangerous.

  That’s when it hits me—this exquisite creature is looking in my direction. I want to blink and do a double take, but I can’t stop staring. I have a vague notion of my gaping mouth and I quickly snap it shut. I finally lower my gaze, acting as casually as I can, given the extraordinary circumstances, and I do what any intelligent woman would do in this situation; I look down and begin brushing imaginary peanut crumbs off my lap.

  When I work up the nerve, and assume he’s gotten bored and looked away, I glance back. He’s still looking in my direction. No, not in my direction, at…me. And smiling an invitation. I think. He’s intense. Sexy. Creepy?

  I’m immediately embarrassed that I’ve allowed myself to entertain such an outrageous idea. In my dreams, sure, in my next life, maybe, but not in this life. No way.

  Half-panicked, I reach out and grab Mack’s arm.

  “Ow!”

  “Mackenna, don’t look,” I whisper. She immediately lifts herself up from the stool to look around. “Geez, I said don’t look. Check out the blue eyes over there.” I discreetly nod in his direction and then turn to check my reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

  She slowly turns and peers over her shoulder. When she turns back to face me, she’s expressionless. Not the reaction I’m expecting.

  “What?” she asks. “I don’t see anything, except that skinny guy with the neck tattoo.”

  I lean away to peer around Mack and he’s gone, replaced with an over-the-hill hipster in a black hoodie, oversized black framed glasses, sporting some interesting facial hair and a neck tattoo I can’t make out from here; he’s raising his glass in a come-hither toast.

  Did I imagine him?

  No, wait. He’s real all right. And he’s headed this way. He’s coming over to talk to me, buy me a drink. Not even in my wildest fantasies… I sit up straighter, flip my massive curls over my shoulder, take a deep breath, suck in my stomach, and turn toward him with a seductive smile.

  But he doesn’t so much as glance in my direction and I feel stupidly foolish. I turn my back and watch him in the mirror as he walks right past me to the door, a leggy brunette in purple stilettos hanging on his arm.

  Chapter 3

  Vincent

  I can’t stop thinking about the young woman from last night. Her amber eyes, the wild auburn hair—the hypnotizing beat of her heart. I had watched as she threw her head back and laughed, her alabaster neck naked, exposed. Even now, the image conjures up an overpowering desire, matched only by an unquenchable thirst. A deadly combination.

  She saw me looking at her. Saw me staring. Saw me leave with the girl in purple stilettos. As the girl entered my apartment, the sound of her heels clicked a happy, hopeful overture on the marble floor and before I had closed the door behind her, she offered herself to me completely. I took what she was offering, gave her what she wanted and sent her on her way.

  While I am grateful for the few moments of warmth and faux intimacy these encounters afford, she, like all the others, tamed my thirst, but did little to lessen the endless echo of loneliness in my chest. I push the curtain aside to look out my bedroom window onto Riverside Drive and spot her opening her umbrella as she runs to the curb to hail a cab. The cab stops, flips off his light. She jumps in and disappears into the fog and rain, just as the suggestion of sunlight appears.

  I lean my head against the glass and remember another cold, rainy night. It was Paris, 1890, dusk, misting rain. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a woman scurrying down the street, her parasol tilted in front of her, shielding her from the rain, likely desperate to arrive home before dark descended. At that time, the streets of Paris were safe for neither man nor woman after dark.

  A sudden gust of wind turned her parasol inside out and ripped it from her hands. She began chasing it down an empty side street. Her skirt flew up, exposing her white petticoat and, as she struggled to maintain her modesty, I swept in and I did what I always did—I looked into her arresting, cat-like eyes, as she blinked against the raindrops and melted into my arms. I said a prayer, something I did for each of my victims. A leftover ritual from when God listened. But what god listens to the prayers of the soulless? This young woman, like all that came before her, was on the losing end of an agreement she had no say in, silently fulfilling her end of the bargain.

  I had always held out as long as I could, believing my delay saved lives. But the thirst would eventually became an unbearable grip on my throat, threatening to send me down the torturous road to extinction. Despite my death wish, my survival instinct was stubborn and razor sharp.

  But this time was different; this time the agreement was broken by the sound of footsteps on cobblestone. “Release her
!” It was the panicked voice of a nearby shopkeeper who had stumbled upon the scene. I could have easily silenced him. What would one more death mean in the scheme of things? But I chose to run. Behind me, I heard her faint moaning and the shopkeeper asking, “Are you alright, mademoiselle?”

  Arriving at my makeshift home, I obsessively replayed the events of the evening until sunrise. I was sated, yet—she was alive. She was alive. I had unwittingly uncovered the fine line between satiation and gluttony, the line between life and death, the line between guilt and redemption. It was not a cure, not even a remission, but it was a way for me to cling to the remains of the man I used to be. If I could find it within myself to continue to straddle that line, I could thrive without taking even one more life. Death was no longer the non-negotiable price to be paid for my survival. My spirits lifted for the first time in decades.

  Now, as willing as the women always are and as detached as I have become, I have set clear boundaries and established strict rules, cultivated and refined over time: Never intentionally hurt anyone, take only what I need, make certain they leave unharmed and that their memories of me are irretrievable.

  No harm, no foul, no future.

  Nicholas walks into my apartment, shaking me free from my thoughts. “We’ve got a delivery coming in today and I was about to leave. You coming?”

  I don’t want to go; I want to stay and think. About the girl I left behind at the bar. About the effect her presence had on me. But that would be masochistic. “Certainly. Just let me change.”

  I want to talk to him about my disquieting feelings. About last night. About the girl. But he had scoffed when I shared a legend I had heard long before we met, stories that had circulated in the community of Kindred in France. The tale was that if, over the centuries, you were fortunate enough to find your mate, the mutual attraction would be like a gravitational pull, and you would be fated to spend eternity together.

  According to Kindred murmurings, it was, for most, little more than a sexual partner, a killing partner for all eternity. I had held out an invisible thread of hope that if it happened for me, it would be different, that I would once again, find love, companionship and understanding—someone to go through time with. That it would soothe my grief, ease the pain of what I had become, and assuage my guilt for the horrid things I had done, that I was doing. But that would have taken a tremendous turn of luck, and luck and I haven’t been on speaking terms in well over a century.

  And the stories never once told of such an implausible pairing—a Kindred with a flesh-and-blood mortal. Anyway, Nicholas doesn’t believe in fate. “It’s just you and me, mate. I’m telling you, the sooner you accept that, the better off you’ll be.”

  He’s right. I know that. I do. But that knowledge doesn’t erase the sound of her fluttering heartbeat, the aura of kindness that surrounded her, the feel of her deep disappointment as I did my best to ignore her—and the impossible feelings boiling inside me.

  Chapter 4

  Andie

  A man is stalking me, shadowing me wherever I go. I’m moving down streets I know well but seem unfamiliar in the red-tinged fog swirling around me. I duck into a bookstore and crouch behind the door, trying to make myself small, hoping he doesn’t see me. Everyone in the store is staring. I have to get the hell out of here, escape the scrutiny.

  The balding man behind the cash register pushes his glasses down his nose and looks at me over wire rims. He bears an uncanny resemblance to my father. He’s moving his lips, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. For an instant I feel saved, but he turns his back and sadness crowds out my fear. I slowly open the front door. I swallow hard as I look both ways. No sign of him.

  The fog has lifted, but now it’s dark. I step outside and the silence fills with the echo of approaching footsteps. Panicked, I turn to go back in the store, but the door is locked; it’s dark inside. I bang my fists on the glass door, but no one answers. I try to run away, but my feet are as heavy as cinder blocks. I’m stuck. I can’t walk. I can’t run. I can’t breathe. No one notices as the man inches ever closer. I open my mouth in a silent scream.

  I feel his icy breath on my neck. He steps around in front of me and takes my face in his hands. He’s beautiful, dressed completely in black, a stark contrast to his pale skin and he smells of roses—no, orchids. My fear is now mixed with desire. I close my eyes in anticipation, but I open them as he pulls back. His eyes are lifeless—cold, blue marbles. He leans in to kiss me, his lips touch mine…I bolt upright in bed, gasping for air, my heart pounding. I’m drenched in sweat. The sun is peeking through the blinds and Mack is banging on my bedroom door.

  “Andie, you okay?”

  “It’s unlocked,” I mumble, still trying to leave the awful dream behind.

  She’s frowning as she opens the door. “Geez, Andie, from the sound of it, I thought you were being attacked.”

  “Sorry, did I wake you?”

  “Nah, I was up.”

  I blink, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. “It was just a bad dream. A really bad dream. It felt way too real.”

  “I have dreams like that sometimes.”

  I’m thinking, no actually, you don’t, so I try my best to explain. I need her to understand how bizarre it was.

  “Yeah,” she says with an exaggerated shiver, “that’s creepy.”

  She plops down on the end of the bed and starts filing her thumbnail with a purple emery board she grabs from my nightstand and hands me my glasses. “Got big plans for the day?”

  “Just errands. And I was thinking I might get something for Meghan.”

  “Meghan?”

  “I told you about her. She was the fact checker while I was at Sushi Today and she works at New York Life now. She was the one who passed my name along. You?”

  “I’m having brunch with the guy with the neck tattoo.” She smiles and I shake my head.

  “His name is Chester and he’s sweet. So, he’s a little older. Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.” And with that, she pockets my emery board and stands up. “Hey, can you do me a huge favor while you’re out and check out that florist—the one with the fancy window dressing? It’s called…” She stops to think. “‘The Black Orchid.’ It’s only about five blocks from here and it looks awesome. I’m always looking for gifts to shower upon my deep-pocketed clients,” she says, rubbing her fingers together and smiling.

  Turns out, Mack’s outsized personality was a perfect fit for the real estate business in New York. She got her license, dove in and has been banking ever since, while I’ve mostly been making do with crappy temp jobs. My last real job at Sushi Today, a small trade publication, wasn’t the job I had envisioned when I was majoring in journalism, but at least I was editor at a magazine. I had hoped it would be my foothold into the publishing industry and that it would lead to bigger and better things—that is, until they were bought out by a huge publishing conglomerate that decided the magazine—and me—were dispensable. I’ve been back at occasional temp jobs, sending out resumes, and, since my savings ran out three months ago, reluctantly depending on Mack to fill in the financial blanks.

  I crawl out of bed, pull on my thick, fleecy robe, stumble over to my bedroom window, which looks out onto West End Avenue, and pull the poplin curtains open—the ones I ordered when I still had a paycheck. The catalogue said toasted cinnamon, but they’re more like rusted metal. Not the look I was going for. It’s still early and West End Avenue looks peaceful as always. No buses are allowed on West End, no trucks. The only movement comes from cabs traversing the city; the jogging fools for whom neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet will keep them from their appointed rounds; the Wall Street maniacs, espressos in hand, getting to the office to deal with the overseas markets; and the early birds, who just want to get the day started and beat the crowds.

  I love this street. I love this apartment. I love the architecture of the prewar buildings that line the block. And I really love having a doorman, who calls me “Ms. Rogé
.” Makes me feel so—adult. Mack’s inside intel as a real estate agent is the only way we were able to snag the place. It’s rent controlled. And cheap, by New York standards. But I have this nagging fear that the landlord is going to knock on the door any day now and tell us there’s been a mistake and we must vacate the premises ASAP.

  Mack sticks her head back in my room. “I forgot to tell you, that genealogy material you’ve been waiting for came in the mail yesterday.”

  “Finally.”

  “I still don’t get why you don’t just go to DNA.com or whatever they’re called.”

  “I don’t trust those things. They could tell me I’m a descendant of Joan of Arc and how would I know the difference?”

  “Maybe you are. Sister Joan.” She laughs. “I gotta go. Later,” she says, as she leaves to meet “neck tattoo” guy and, if I know Mack like I think I do, for an early morning quickie.

  I step into my ruby red slippers. Covered in sequins, they’re the closest thing to Dorothy’s shoes I could find. I appreciate how they glitter and sparkle in the pool of light dripping through the blinds. I almost believe they could make my wishes come true. I would close my eyes, click my heels together three times and whisper fervently, “There’s no place like home.” And there we’d be, just the three of us in the kitchen, my mother, my father and me, my mother’s herb roast in the oven, the aroma making my mouth water, and my father sitting at the table with the newspaper, his reading glasses perched on his nose, the sound of paper rustling as he recited the headlines out loud.

  And then he’d deliver his line, “Andie Pandie, get your old dad a beer. I need to drink away the troubles of the world.” He never drank more than a single light beer, but it was a little father-daughter ritual we knew well. And my mother always played her part. “Douglas, really. Why do you insist on ruining your appetite? I’ve been in the kitchen for the last hour making dinner.”