I abruptly stopped and hovered near the end of the bridge. As weak as she’d been, Shelby couldn’t have walked far. Was Jack in this neighborhood?
I dropped lower as I flew, and a light tingle in my blood answered my question. Jack was nearby. His blood was calling to mine. Looking down at the buildings along the river below me, I saw a hundred places he could be.
I came down lightly in the shadows under the Manhattan Bridge. My blood sang. Jack was somewhere between here and the Brooklyn Bridge. Above my head, a subway train rumbled on its way to Manhattan. I rose up again and hovered just above the buildings. Depending on my blood sense to guide me, I moved slowly along Front Street to Prospect Street, where I landed in a bushy area beside the bridge.
I saw the footpath that led to Prospect, and suddenly, full-blown desire heated my blood. I knew Jack was very close. I crossed the street, rounded a corner, and walked alongside the anchorage, a part of the Brooklyn Bridge that Roebling had intended to be a place enjoyed by the public.
There was no one around me in the predawn chill. I approached the iron sculpture of the three Roeblings silhouetted in iron. It was the only art at Anchorage Plaza. It was closed after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. I couldn’t imagine this sad, lonely place as it once had been— the scene of community concerts and art shows.
My blood was practically bubbling as I moved around the building to the front. Looking up, I saw two sets of long, narrow windows sealed from the inside, making this a perfect place for a vampire’s lair. I slowly approached the first set of double metal doors. There was no budging them, although it was obvious the rusted locks had been moved and relocked.
Like all ancient vampires, Jack could move inanimate objects, so he could go wherever he wished. Since he made me vampire nearly four decades ago, I’d grown stronger, too. I knew I was ready to face him.
I braced to make a run at the door and then remembered my last encounter with Jack. I hit speed dial for Burke and heard his sleepy rumble on the other end.
“I think I’ve found Jack’s hidey-hole,” I said.
He was immediately awake. “Don’t do anything stupid. Wait until I get there with backup.”
“I’m at Anchorage Plaza, at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“Wait for me,” he shouted as I closed the cell phone.
I took a running leap and hit the door with both feet. It fell with a horrendous noise. Yanking out my gun, I slowly looked inside. There was nothing but blackness and a faint clinical smell.
Damn you, Jack, I thought bitterly, you’ve got another lab set up, just like when you took me.
While Metallica’s lyrics, “hunt you down without mercy,” raced through my mind, I stood just inside the door and listened, but heard nothing. I took a deep breath and stepped into the darkness.
The smell of the river and stale garbage mingled with the musty, old air inside the huge structure. At one point, Roebling thought this could be a great vault for the national treasury, and he was right. The high ceilings and stone walls were massive.
Moving silently under the huge arches, I saw a faint light in a back corner, and headed toward it. As I got nearer, I realized the buzzing in my head was someone humming, and immediately recognized the tune as “Brigg Fair,” Jack’s favorite old English folk song. That tune had haunted me for years.
Jack turned as I approached. Of course he knew it was me. Our blood connection was a stronger signal than the door bursting open.
“Hello, Alice. I’ve missed you,” he said, as he adjusted an IV line in a young girl’s arm.
“Hello, Jack. It’s time for you to visit your friendly neighborhood prison,” I said, with more bravado than I felt. “I’m here to rescue your hostage, and make you pay for what you’ve done.”
He turned to me. My body immediately responded. He was perfectly sculpted in tight black jeans and a molded T-shirt. His vibrant eyes danced with laughter. If I gave in to my body, I’d ravish him.
But that was the problem with Jack. He looked like he was made for loving women. Instead, he hated them passionately.
He sighed. “I knew there was a chance you’d find me if I let that last one live.” With a rueful chuckle, he added, “Maybe I wanted you to find me. What do you think?”
“This is the end, Jack.”
He cocked his head at the gun in my hand. “Alice,” he said reasonably. “Why don’t you put down that nasty, useless gun and help me? I think this young woman’s about to die, and I’m not finished with her yet. I’ve been trying some new methods, but I haven’t quite got the hang of them.”
“It’s not like you to try something new,” I said, hoping to distract him.
He frowned. “I know, and it’s not nearly as satisfactory as my traditional route.”
The young woman on the gurney groaned, and he smiled. There was lust in his eyes, and his fangs flashed as blood gushed from between her legs.
The desire that coursed through my body was suddenly replaced with cold fury. I was horrified that he expected me to help him do to this innocent creature what he had done to me. I put my gun on the floor.
“That’s a good girl,” he said quietly, and turned to take the girl’s pulse. “I think if we push the IV, we can recharge her so I can finish my project.”
Shelves lined one long wall, filled with little jars, each one holding a woman’s uterus. Jack’s preservation method was still the same. I knew the cards taped on the front of each one: the woman’s name, age, status in life, homemaker, career woman, prostitute, and the year he took her womanhood. Mine had to be among them.
While Jack studied his watch, I pulled up my trouser leg, and slipped the long, narrow stake out of its small holster. I rose and pivoted in one, fluid motion. I brought the stake up, and put all my weight and forty years of fury behind it.
Jack turned, a wicked sneer on his lips. Without stopping my forward motion, I pushed the stake in just under his heart and shoved with all my might.
Jack’s face was the picture of surprise.
He looked down at my hands on the stake, back up to my face, and smiled a horrible, sad smile.
“Murder is borne of love, and love attains the greatest intensity in murder,” he said, blood dripping down his chin. “Octave Mirbeau said that, Alice, and it’s true. I love you, too.”
I gave the stake one last shove and backed away.
Jack began to laugh, but quickly stopped as more blood bubbled up in his mouth. He dropped to his knees, and fell face forward. While I watched, Dr. Francis Tumblety became a crusty, blackened corpse, with my slender stake protruding from his back. Moments after that, he was a pile of ashes.
At long last, Jack the Ripper was dead.
“Goddamn it, Alice,” Burke yelled behind me. “I told you to wait for me.”
I turned to face him, feeling numb and dislocated. I pulled my badge off my belt and handed it to him and said, “I resign.”
I nodded toward the young girl bleeding on the gurney behind me. “She’s still alive. Get the EMTs.” I walked toward the door, headed for the darkness outside. It was less than an hour till dawn and I needed to get home.
“Alice!” Burke’s bellow fell flat against the stone walls. “Alice! Come back here!”
Some of the younger officers tried to stop me, but I shook them off like the silly, little flies they were. Once outside, I looked up into a clear, bright darkness that sparkled with stars and took off, leaving Jack behind me forever.
That night, I sat at Beth’s lavish dinner table and listened to her plans for a posh vampire resort in Alaska, a place for vampires to play and pamper themselves with endless night.
I realized she was right— it was time for a change.
REMEMBER YOU WILL DIE
Susan Chalfin
THE title of the Rubin Museum’s latest exhibit was Remember You Will Die. As if I could forget. It’s not the kind of thing that slips your mind when you have Stage Four liver cancer.
The exhibition compared Tibetan Buddhist and medieval Christian depictions of death. Both cultures, the brochure explained, used graphic images of death to remind us that life is fleeting and mortality inevitable. As I stood in the middle of the exhibit, I was surrounded by examples— sculptures of dancing skeletons, artifacts made of human bone, elaborately painted skulls. It was the perfect setting for my goodbye party.
The Rubin is a small jewel-box of a museum in lower Manhattan, its interior painted in vibrant shades of Chinese red and ocher and filled with Himalayan treasures. Rory O’Rourke, a Tibet expert I’d befriended after hearing him lecture at the museum, had helped me book the exhibit space. It cost a bundle to keep the place open after hours, but I wasn’t sweating the expense. You can’t take it with you, or so they tell me. I knew none of my invitees wanted to attend, but they had. It’s hard to blow off a man who’s about to be intimate with the Grim Reaper.
I watched my party guests examine the artworks. My first wife, Melissa, was studying a nineteenth-century Tibetan painting. It depicted yogis meditating in charnel grounds— fields where corpses were left to rot or be eaten by tigers and leopards. Rory, my guru on all things Tibetan, claimed that charnel ground meditation taught devotees to sever their attachment to life and accept mortality. “Yeah,” I’d said, “anyone who thinks it’s smart to meditate with feral felines will sure as shit sever their attachments.” Rory told me I should be more receptive to other cultures. Live and let live. Or, in this case, die and let die.
I knew Melissa was puzzled by my deathbed conversion to Tibetan mysticism. Throughout our married life, she’d nagged me about my work schedule and urged me to be more spiritual. She got furious when I reminded her that my soulless talent management business paid for her yoga and meditation classes. She was too busy being ascetic to earn a living herself. Now that I finally shared her interests, it just made her more hostile. She didn’t want me horning in on her territory.
A small crease formed between Melissa’s brows as she moved on to the next painting, which portrayed the female lama Machig Ladrön. The sign explained that in the eleventh century, Ms. Ladrön— it would be a woman— had originated a new form of charnel ground meditation known as Chod. In Chod practice, adepts imagine that they are severing their limbs and offering them up to all sentient beings. This is intended to help them “cut through psychological and emotional hindrances and obscurations.” As treatment goes, at least it was cheap. Unlike the fifteen years of Gestalt therapy I’d bought for Melissa, just so she could get self-actualized enough to hire her divorce lawyer, Perry the Piranha. I suppose I should be glad she hadn’t asked Perry to bite off my limbs. The only part of me Melissa wanted to sever was my balls.
After Rory told me about charnel grounds, I’d done a little online research on them. One article argued that the modern equivalent of the charnel ground experience was “situations of extreme desperation,” like the metaphorical charnel grounds of Hollywood, Madison Avenue, Wall Street and Washington, D.C. Funnily enough, those were the places where I’d amassed my fortune. “See, babe,” I wanted to tell Melissa, “I was a bodhisattva ahead of my time.” Not that Melissa was a babe any more. She’s my age, sixty-two, and her butt has grown considerably, despite all that yoga. Maybe she should try aerobics.
I realized I was having negative thoughts. I shook my head to clear them away. The point of this party was supposed to be forgiveness. I had to let go of my anger and embrace empathy and acceptance. It was important that I remember that.
Norman, my thirty-year-old son with Melissa, was ogling a fourteenth-century Tibetan sculpture of a yogi riding bareback on a female zombie. Trust Normie to go for the cheap thrill. Though I can’t really say Norm’s hobbies— Ecstasy, knocking up Russian models, and torturing small animals— are inexpensive. Like Melissa always says, I shouldn’t underestimate him. Melissa blames me for Norm’s personality quirks. She thinks I was too parsimonious with quality time during his childhood. Melissa won’t admit her heavy schedule of navel-gazing hadn’t left her much face time with little Normie either.
I stopped myself again. Tonight’s theme was absolution. I really had to stick with the program. I did a round of yogic breathing to calm myself. Breathe out red, breathe in blue. Breathe out anger, breathe in peace.
My second ex-wife, Lindsay, in her mid-forties and still icily hot, was scrutinizing a sculpture billed as “Lords of the Charnel Grounds.” It depicted a skeleton couple dancing together, their skins unfurling around them like streamers. My Tibetologist buddy, Rory, stood next to Lindsay, pontificating about the artworks and trying to hit on her. Rory was a skinny, fiftyish guy in Tibetan robes, with a silver ponytail and sharp, handsome features. A tool, but a useful one. Rory liked to lecture women on the Tibetan concept of Bardo, the intermediate state between one life and the next. Bardo, he’d tell them, also refers to “transitional states,” like sex or “poosy,” as Rory liked to call it. Rory was welcome to try tantric sex with ex Numero Dos. Lindsay, too, liked “poosy”— especially from the protégées she picked up at the shelter she’d started, and I’d funded, for runaway girls. Lindsay’s charity work was a triumph of efficiency. It got her into pubescent pudenda and Park Avenue parties simultaneously.
Tiffany, my lovely twenty-two-year-old daughter with Lindsay, stood at the other end of the room, as far away as possible from her mother. She was texting up a storm on her iPhone, no doubt lining up dates for the next few months. Tiff is more ecumenical in her tastes than her mom, though unlike her half-brother, she keeps away from rodents. Tiffany was named for her mom’s favorite store. You’d think Lindsay wouldn’t go for girly things like jewelry, but no such luck.
My thoughts had strayed from my party theme again, I realized. Perhaps I should steer clear of family, always an overemotional topic. Maybe I’d get myself in a better mind-frame if I concentrated on the colleagues and friends I’d invited. Like my favorite client, Ted Hawks, a golden boy from the deep South.
A soft smile played over Ted’s handsome mouth as he examined a ritual trumpet fashioned from a human shinbone. It was used by Tibetan monks to remind them, yet again, of You Know What. Ted was the first big client I hooked after I morphed from entertainment lawyer to talent agent. I’d helped Ted transition from modeling to acting, tripling his income and my fees. A beautiful friendship— until he decided he was too upscale for me and moved to The Talent Atelier. When I bought up TTA a few years later, I saw to it that Ted got fewer phone calls than a Trappist monk. I’ll say this for Teddy, he’s mastered the art of the strategic grovel. He was so stressed he managed to appear genuinely contrite— the first competent acting job of his life. I like to help my clients stretch themselves artistically.
A few feet away from Ted, my former partner, Steve Glass, was earnestly examining a diagram of the six Buddhist realms of reincarnation— the kingdoms of Gods, Demigods, Humans, Animals, Hungry Ghosts and Hell. Realm-wise, Steve would fit in well with the Hungry Ghosts. He had tried to steal five scripts, eight clients, and Erkka, our multi-talented, Finnish receptionist, when he broke away from me. Too bad that hadn’t worked out for him.
Standing next to Steve was Liza Merck, another ex-employee. I’d congratulated myself on my professional attitude towards Liza. Despite her good looks, I’d only hit on her once. Liza had viewed my restraint as an insult, and chosen to follow Steve to his new gig. I’d also invited some colleagues from my former law firm. I’d forgiven them for spilling their guts to the state ethics commission. Jealousy makes people act ugly sometimes.
I was getting negative again. I took a deep breath. It was time for Rory to start the ceremony. The rite we had planned would improve my mood. Rory clapped his hands together.
“Family, friends, and colleagues of Leo Mack. Please take your seats. It’s time for us to commence our Ceremony of Celebration.” He pointed to the rows of folding chairs I’d had the museum set up. Behind them was a long table, covered with bottles of champagne and boxes of fine chocolates. My gu
ests obediently sat, and Rory began his speech.
“As you can see from this wonderful exhibit, Tibetans believe a crucial task for the living is preparing for death. Tibetan Buddhists believe that, after physical death, consciousness lingers for forty-nine days, during which one hundred symbolic deities— both peaceful and wrathful— appear to the departed. If the deceased is able to recognize that these visions are illusions, he or she will obtain nirvana. If not, the cycle of reincarnation continues.
“The Tibetans have developed a guide to this intermediate state between death and rebirth, called the Bardo Thodrol. In the West, we translate those words as ‘The Book of the Dead.’ A more accurate rendition is ‘The Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Intermediate State.’ Tibetans read the Bardo Thodrol to the deceased to guide them through their journey after death.
“A dear friend of mine called me last year to tell me his father was critically ill. He asked me to read to his father from the Book of the Dead. I told my friend that would be meaningless, unless his father had practiced Buddhism during his life. Instead, we should perform a ritual that would have real significance. I asked him what his dad most enjoyed, and he said ‘Jerry Lewis movies.’ So my friend and I sat by his father for five days and watched Jerry Lewis with him, and he went calmly and happily on his journey. I told this tale to another dear friend, Leo Mack. When Leo learned he had Stage Four cancer, he remembered my story. Leo is one of the few Westerners I know who faces death with open eyes and without flinching.”
I bowed my head modestly at this tribute.
“Leo asked me to work with him to devise a dying ritual that would best celebrate his life. Leo and I decided to bring together all the people Leo is most fond of— his family, his friends, and his colleagues. We put that together with Leo’s new hobby, Tibetan art, and some of his old enthusiasms, champagne and chocolate, and that’s how this party came to be. Leo’s picked out special vintage champagnes to share with all of you. He has a special treat for the ladies, a lovely, vintage, pink champagne. Dom Pérignon Rosé, 1993. He hasn’t neglected the boys either. You gentlemen are getting the remarkable Joseph Perrier Josephine, 1990.”
Fresh Slices Page 17
