by Densie Webb
I’m still the madman roaming the streets of Paris. I’ve been arrogant to think otherwise.
Chapter 12
Andie
As he walks away I’m sinking—down, down, down—into someplace cold and empty. Someplace darkly familiar. His last words to me were “Forgive me.” For what this time? For getting a little rough? For declining my invitation? When he said ‘no,’ I fantasized pulling a me-Tarzan-you-Jane maneuver and dragging him upstairs and into my bed. How can I reconcile that fantasy with the fact that just a short time ago I thought he might be a demented stalker and I wanted to get away?
I can’t.
I’m still leaning against the building, where just moments before he had passionately pressed his body against mine. My rapid breathing is visible as each breath creates a plume of smoke in the frigid night air. Smoke signals that spell out Come Back. If he would only turn around and read my message.
He faltered as he walked away, but he never looked back, which only intensified my longing. The cold seeps in, adding to the unhinged feeling overtaking me. I pull the jacket closed against the chill. He forgot his jacket. I start to call out, but he’s out of sight. I buzz the door and Joseph lets me in. Vincent’s fragrant gift to me is still there, still darkly beautiful. I gather it along with the potted plant, thank Joseph, and take the elevator upstairs to the fourth floor and knock, hoping Mack is home.
“Yeah?” I hear the question in her voice.
“It’s me.”
She opens the door and before I have a chance to walk in and set the pot on the table, she zeroes in on the single orchid in my hand.
“Oh my God, a black orchid? A real black orchid? Did you get it from the florist shop I told you about?”
“Yeah, what do you know about black orchids?”
“You remember that “easy A” horticulture class I took at State? That’s the only thing I took away from it.
“It’s the national flower of Belize,” she recites. “Oh, and if I remember right, there was some sort of mythology about black orchids and blood-sucking vampires.” She makes an attempt to hum the Twilight Zone theme but stops mid-hum.
“Whoa! You look all hot and bothered! What have you been doing or should I say, who have you been doing?” she asks with a knowing grin.
My face is probably still flushed, my heart rate hasn’t yet returned to normal and my hair is even more wildly arranged than usual.
I tell her everything. How Vincent brought me the black orchid, how he took me for a drink, how he confessed his sincere belief that I’m his soul mate, his sudden passion, and the coup de grace, my desperate invitation, and his humiliating refusal. Everything except the 220 volts of electricity pulsating through my body as he kissed me and the hypnotic sounds he made.
“Well, Monsieur blue eyes is just full of surprises. Sort of goes from zero to sixty and back, doesn’t he?”
“I’m at a loss. I mean, he seemed totally into it, into me, and then as soon as I asked him to come up, it was like someone flipped a switch,” I say, snapping my fingers in the air. “And I really wasn’t ready to call it quits.”
“I can tell—at least by the looks of your hair!”
I laugh as I reach up to smooth it down.
“Men!” we chant in unison. I feel better already.
I hear a cough coming from Mack’s bedroom.
“Who’s in there?” I whisper.
“Chester. He must be awake. He was taking a nap.” She pauses. “No age jokes, please.”
“Do you think he heard?”
“I doubt it. He sleeps like the dead. So,” she says, deftly changing the subject, “did he say he would call or did he just walk away?”
I glance at her bedroom door and lower my voice. “He said he was sorry and walked away without another word.”
“He’s going to come back for more. He’ll call.”
I look down at my palms and shrug. “I’m not so sure.”
“Look, Andie.” She was about to lay it all out for me. “No man brings you exotic flowers, takes you out for a drink, declares that you’re his soul mate, and then shoves his tongue down your throat if he’s not interested.”
Her eyes widen and she points to his jacket.
“And then, of course, you do have his very expensive-looking leather jacket.”
She had a point. Several in fact.
“But, seriously, Mack, have you ever had a guy act like he was so into you and then when you gave him the green light, he just stopped mid-tongue thrust and walked away?”
“Can’t say as I have, but this one is a little strange all around, don’t you think?”
I’m reluctantly nodding in agreement when Mack’s bedroom door opens and Chester appears. He’s taller than I remember from that night at Lizzie Borden’s, slimmer. He’s barefoot, his hair is the definition of bedhead, his T-shirt and jeans are ripped, and he has the de rigueur keychain clip hanging off his belt loop. Somehow, he looks younger. He smiles and lumbers over.
“Hey, Andie. So at last we meet.” His husky voice suits him. He slides over to Mack and without hesitation slings his arm, tattooed from wrist to sleeve, around her shoulders and pulls her close. I’ve never seen that particular expression on Mack’s face—part smitten kitten, part hungry wolf.
“Yeah,” I say, as I try to take in the scene, “it’s good to know who Mack’s been hanging out with.”
“I have to say, I’m glad you ignored me that night at Lizzie’s. Otherwise, I might never have met my girl here.”
His girl? Chester’s clearly smitten as well. I’m waiting for Mack to reprimand him for his unliberated endearment, but she’s grinning like a schoolgirl. Okay, this night just got weirder.
“I’m beat, guys. I think I’m going to crash. Nice to meet you, Chester.”
“Same.”
“G’nite, Andie,” Mack says. “Maybe it will make more sense to you in the morning.”
I retreat to my room, pondering Mack’s well-tattooed and bearded “beau” and reliving Vincent’s exceptional kiss before things took a disappointing turn, when my cell phone rings. I don’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
“Andie? This is Vincent.” He pauses. “Vincent Dubois.”
Like I have any number of men named Vincent with French accents ringing me up.
“I’m calling to see if you’re okay.”
Am I okay? Define “okay.”
“I know we’re just getting to know one another—I shouldn’t have been quite so aggressive. Did I hurt you?”
“No, not physically.”
He’s quiet for a few seconds, before he asks, “Have I offended you?”
“Not exactly. But, I, uh, when I asked if you wanted to come up, you left in such a hurry, I thought maybe I had misunderstood and I was… I am a bit confused.”
He doesn’t say anything right away. “I just think that perhaps next time, we should take it a bit more slowly.”
I’ve never been on this side of the conversation and I’m at a loss of what to say.
“Oh.”
“I was hoping we could do something tomorrow. Perhaps go to the Met and then for a walk in the park. The weather is supposed to be considerably warmer.”
Despite his baffling hot and cold behavior, I don’t need time to mull over his invitation. “I’d love to.”
“May I pick you up at eleven o’clock?”
“That’s perfect. I’ll see you then.”
I hang up and I feel my heart expanding, floating like a brightly colored hot air balloon headed for marshmallow clouds, leaving everything—Mack and Chester, my money worries, my new job, my hurtful memories of David—on terra firma. I open the door to the living room, where Mack is going over contracts and leases.
“Where’s Chester?”
“He had to go. Early day tomorrow.”
“You two seemed copacetic.”
She smiles. “But I really don’t want to talk about it; I don’t want to jinx i
t.”
“Okay. Change of subject. So, you’re not going to believe this,” I say, knowing she’ll revel in her rightness.
She lowers her red readers down on her nose, looks over them at me, and crosses her arms. “Let me guess. That was Vincent.”
“Yeah.” I feel a goofy grin taking over my face.
“I told you. He’s totally into you. Lucky girl.” She licks her lips. “Yum!”
Chapter 13
Vincent
After I speak with Andie, I go downstairs and wander the city for hours. The familiar bitter taste is building on my tongue, along with the suffocating feeling that my throat is lined with alum, but it doesn’t invoke panic as it did in the beginning. In fact, right now, I’m grateful for the distraction.
Like all major cities, New York never shuts down completely, but it’s calmer at two in the morning. Far fewer cars on the street, fewer people on the sidewalks to catch us in the act, fewer cell phones to capture it on video. Nicholas and I have noted where all the street cams are and avoid them. With each passing decade, the challenge to remain undetected grows in direct proportion to the advances in technology.
I spot a young woman, dressed for a night out in high-heeled boots and a red cashmere sweater, drunkenly zigzagging the sidewalk. Alone. I rush to her and pull her into a dark corner. I look into her eyes to calm her. She may be strong-willed, successful, self-confident, smart, but right now, she is under my spell—mentally paralyzed.
This cannibalistic ritual I must repeat ad nauseam both thrills and disgusts me. I know that when I am done, she will walk away unharmed, but right now that knowledge offers no consolation. She pulls her long hair back and exposes her satin neck. My mouth waters, my reticence evaporates and I take what I must.
Once home, I sit, staring out the window into the dark, impatiently waiting for the sun to rise, the traffic to gather momentum, and the Hudson River to come into view with its sluggish tugboats and barges slicing through still waters.
For my time with Andie today, I will be the besotted suitor, vying for her attentions, asking her questions about her life, her plans for the future. Plans that I will eventually put asunder. Each time I envision telling her what I am, I imagine her face—repulsed, horrified, disbelieving. I want to turn away from the image.
Our pairing gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “opposites attract.” Our two worlds exist in parallel to one another. Her kind is oblivious to our existence, what we are, what we do, while we are acutely aware of theirs, completely dependent on their vulnerabilities, and their ubiquitous presence.
But I want to believe Andie will be attracted to the remaining human part of me, the persistent part that has endured, the part that I have tenaciously held onto, the part that I now long to reclaim for good.
Gus said he would be in touch. For the first time in so long, I am impatient.
“Did you get any?” Nicholas asks as soon as he walks in, interrupting my mental maelstrom.
“Yes, I am sated.”
He strides over, places his hand firmly on my shoulder and looks me in the eye.
“Vincent. I’m talking about Andie.”
“Did I bed her?”
He shakes his head. “Let me put it this way, will she be walking funny for the next couple of days or is she going to be Borough-hopping with us for the next couple of centuries?”
“Neither. She is just as I found her and I didn’t trust myself to lay with her.”
“Oh my God, Vincent! You didn’t trust yourself to fuck her.”
“Nicholas…”
“Shag her?”
“Don’t be vulgar.”
“Get a leg over?”
“Enough, Nicholas.”
“I hate to break it to you, mate,” he chuckles, “but this isn’t a Jane Austen novel we’re living.”
Not only is Nicholas several years younger than me in human years, his change was less than a century ago and I believe that has made it easier for him to keep up with popular culture, with the vernacular, to keep up with the times. Or maybe I’d be terribly old fashioned no matter what century I was born in.
I’m done with this particular conversation. I grab a book from the shelf and retreat to the sofa.
“You really need to lighten up, Vincent. It’ll make forever go by a lot faster.”
When we met, Nicholas had no sense of humor, no sense of self, only desperation. I was the one who coached him on how to reconnect with the remaining strands of his humanity. I showed him there was a different way, a better way to survive without the loss of human life.
****
It was an unseasonably chilly evening in Berlin, 1925. I spotted Nicholas slumped against a stone wall in the dark corner of an alley. His ripped, bloodstained shirt hung loosely on his shoulders and he was mumbling incoherently. As I approached, he shrunk back against the wall. “No need for a row. If this is your territory. I’ll move along straight away.”
“I claim no ‘territory.’ ”
His assessing gaze lasted mere seconds.
“You can’t help me and why the bloody hell would you want to?”
That was the first time I witnessed Nicholas’ ability to intuit my thoughts. “What makes you think I want to help you?”
“Isn’t that what you were thinking?”
I so clearly saw myself in this tortured Kindred. He wasn’t looking for a fight; he wasn’t reveling in his latest kill. Misery emanated from him like steam rising from a hot spring. But misery loves company and I sensed Nicholas desperately needed my company.
I squatted next to him to look him in the eye. “Have you a place to stay?”
He pulled back. “No.”
“You are welcome to stay with me, if you wish.”
“Why? What do you want from me?”
“I want nothing from you—?”
“Nicholas,” he said, after a long pause. “Nicholas Edwards.” His willingness to offer this bit of himself, told me he might be willing to listen to what I had to say.
“Nicholas, I have temporary shelter in an abandoned barn in the countryside. You are welcome to join me. I would venture a guess that we have something in common.”
“And what would that be?” he asked, cocking his head and wiping the blood from his lips with his torn sleeve.
“Hatred for what we must do to survive.”
With those words, his shoulders unclenched.
Most Kindred embraced the darkness, reveled in the power and felt nothing but undiluted pleasure when a life was snuffed out. A few, like myself, were tormented by the misdeeds required for survival. I sensed that Nicholas was one of the latter.
“When was the last time you fed?”
He nodded toward the end of the alley and a stack of wooden crates. I peered over the teetering piles. Curled in the corner, as if in slumber, was the body of a young woman, her mouth agape. A part of me expected her to stir, to open her eyes, to wake up, but he had ripped the flesh from her neck.
“Here, take my jacket.”
He looked at me, questioning.
“To hide the blood.”
Vulnerability and trust are not Kindred traits, but he acquiesced and followed me to the outskirts of Berlin to my hovel. As we walked, he opened up, surprising me with his desperate need to share. He had graduated Oxford University and was engaged to be married when he was recruited to this exclusive club that no one wants to belong to.
He was only twenty-one, at a soiree to celebrate his engagement to one Miss Sarah Turner. He pulled the neatly folded, but distressed, discolored newspaper clipping, from his pocket. It announced his engagement, the engagement that would never culminate in marriage.
“In the midst of the celebration,” he continued, “I kissed Sarah’s hand, stepped outside alone for a breath of fresh air and as I wandered the grounds, I was lost in thoughts of the life ahead—my soon-to-be-wife, the print shop I had just opened, our future children, the land her father had offered as a wedding present, wh
en something approached from behind.
“I remember only the searing pain and the grotesque sounds this creature made as the grip on my neck became ever tighter. I awoke under a rose bush, believing my confusion to be the result of too much drink and a vivid nightmare. But as I stumbled over to the garden pond to splash water on my face, I caught my altered reflection in the moonlight. I had given no heed to rumors of the existence of Kindred. But my image in the water was confirmation.
“I heard light footsteps coming my way and Sarah’s frantic voice, “Nicholas! Nicholas!” I wanted her, but not as before, not for her warm embrace. No, this was an animal-like craving, a brutal hunger I didn’t understand. So I ran.”
He had been unable to assimilate. Incapable of embracing the hunt and the love of the kill, he abandoned his fellow Kindred in London and set out on his own. When I explained to him how I existed, how I had taught myself to rein in my need, monitor it, ration it, and to take what I needed without killing, he laughed uproariously. “Bollocks! You’re bloody mad!”
He had been running and killing for at least a decade; though he seemed confused as to exactly how much time had passed. My unbearable loneliness fueled my desire to aid him, to share this existence, to foment a friendship, to forge a future—whatever that might look like. No matter how many times he faltered, I refused to give up on him.
We were two desolate souls bound by solitude and self-loathing.
But sometimes, like now, it feels as if the student has become the teacher. Nicholas has found a way to accept his fate, to come to terms with his dark history, which like me, includes a staggering body count. His advice to me has always been the same: “You can’t change what’s already happened. You just can’t. You have to move on. Let it go.” He didn’t want to go back. He simply wanted to move forward. “Vincent,” he’s said to me more than once, “not everything in this life is meant to be understood."
Chapter 14
Andie
It’s still dark outside when I wake up and rub my eyes, smearing last night’s mascara, creating a raccoon effect. My first conscious thought—I’m still fully clothed, wearing Vincent’s jacket. I wish I could just roll over on my side and his head would be resting on my pillow, his dark curls creating a startling contrast to my bright yellow pillowcase.
