by Kater Cheek
“Yeah.” It would have been easy to lie and say it was at home or something, but then she’d just ask me again. It would take a lot to refuse that kind of money three times. Twice was going to be hard enough.
“You’re fine with the amount we agreed on?”
“Well, see, it’s like this. Uncle Fred wanted me to have this bindi. He gave it to me in his will.” The alley behind Ishmael’s was technically a loading zone, but my white van looked like it belonged there, and James claimed he cast spells on it to keep the meter maids at bay. When desperate, I trusted them.
“I’m sure he would have left you money instead, if he had money to give. He just didn’t have time to sell it before he died.” She walked with me to the alley, stacked leather heels clicking gently on the pavement.
“I’m not saying the money you’re offering isn’t generous, but he enclosed a letter in which he specifically asked me not to sell it to anyone.”
“I can offer you more, if you give me a few days to get a loan so the check won’t bounce.” She clutched my sleeve, trying to slow me down.
It was terribly tempting, but I shook my head anyway.
“You’re being unreasonable. I’m certain you can use the money more than a memento from an uncle you barely knew.”
The storm drain in the alley behind Ishmael’s was clogged with leaves, creating a small lake of rainwater between us and my van. No help for it but to splash ahead. “I really don’t think I can go against my uncle’s wishes like that.”
Monica had followed me into the puddle, evidently more interested in changing my mind than in preserving her boots. “I don’t think you know what this means to me.”
“I appreciate the offer, I really do, but I can’t. I made a promise. It just wouldn’t be right.”
She placed a hand on my arm to stop me, and with the other hand started to rummage in her bag, going for her checkbook. “Wait, I have something in here that might change your mind.”
I shook my head. “I’ve made up my mind.”
Monica pulled a gun out of her bag, and aimed it at my chest.
They say your whole life flashes before your eyes when you think you’re going to die. For me, my world became the icy muck that made my legs vanish, and the imagined feel of Lapsong Souchong leaves on my teeth. Tea leaves. Prophecy. Thief. James had foretold this.
Someone’s voice came out of my mouth. It didn’t sound like mine. “You’re right. I’ve changed my mind.”
“Give it to me,” she said. “I’m sorry it had to come to this, but you gave me no choice.”
Finding something tiny in the bottom of a full pocket is even harder in a dark alley with a gun pointed at your heart. The pockets of this jean jacket had served as a purse for the better part of three years. Three years of movie receipts, lint-covered pennies, half packs of gum, and scraps of once-vital pieces of paper. Somewhere in the bottom was the tiny felt and gold jewel that would buy me the rest of my life.
“Quit stalling!” Her hands were shaking.
“I’m looking for it!” Damn her. Damn James too, for making me refuse the money. I could have just sold it to her and been a lot richer. My fingers closed around a piece of felt. Shit. Was it one of the cheap ones from Heidi’s Bazaar? Please? No. That looked like the real one. The gold glinted in the dim light of the alley. It was all over. Sorry, Uncle Fred. “Here it is.”
She snatched it and pressed it against her forehead. It immediately slid off onto her sweater, and almost fell into the lake of rainwater before she caught it. “How do you get it to stay?”
“Not my problem, bitch.”
She lowered her gun to grab the jewel, which gave me enough time to wade through the lake and climb in my van. Monica remained distracted long enough for me to pull out of the alley and drive away. She didn’t even look up when the van’s tires splashed water against her skirt.
Damn it! Why? Why couldn’t I have sold it to her when I had the chance? Oh yeah, going into a dark alley with a stranger. That was bright. Real bright. Shit. I wanted to go punch something, a bag, or maybe Monica Delcourt’s tanning-booth cheekbones. This was worse than having my apartment broken into. This was personal. Maybe I could get it back somehow? How? Call the police? Yeah, right. Like there was any proof.
The bindi was gone.
Sometimes you just had to deal with what life gave you. Easy come, easy go. Maybe Rob would feel sorry for me and give me a comforting hug. No, he’s not the type of to believe in magic jewels. He’d believe a mugging, but not if he saw my wallet full of cash.
But at least he’d give me that smile again. One more chance to flirt. We’d chat, have a couple beers, try to keep him from getting in any fights. Going to see Rob again. Things could be worse.
Sharpe’s was packed full of cigarette smoke, noisy sports fans, and college students. The steady thumping of something vaguely recognizable as music could barely be heard above the din of conversation. This sucked. This wasn’t what I needed tonight. Screw them. Find a phone and call Rob’s cell and cancel. Yeah, and then what? Watch James’ television? Get suckered into helping out at the coffee shop until close?
Fenwick pushed through the crowd with a smile. “Hey Kit! What’s that on your hands?” He had to shout to be heard above the noise in the bar.
“Henna! Where’s Rob?” I shouted.
“He called and said he can’t make it tonight! Julie needed him to help her with something!”
“He’s not coming?” Great, now my evening was totally shot.
“No! He said he’d catch up with us later!”
“If Rob’s not coming, what the hell are we doing here? I hate this place!”
“Me too!” Fenwick shouted back.
As we walked outside, Fenwick pulled tufts of cotton out of his ears and stuffed them into his watch pocket. He caught me looking. “I have sensitive hearing. Smell too, but I couldn’t exactly plug my nose in there.”
I nodded, and stared at the ground. My ears were still ringing.
“What’s wrong? You look like someone ran over your cat.”
“I got mugged.”
“What?”
“For my bindi. The woman who offered me money for it took it at gunpoint when I said no.” I kicked a beer bottle. It rolled ahead of me into the street.
“Did you call the police?”
“Like they’d believe me.” I scooped the bottle out of the gutter with and kicked it again, harder.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.” I kicked the bottle against a nearby wall, where it shattered. Very satisfying.
“Anything I can do to cheer you up?”
I shrugged.
“Here’s a start.” He hugged me, leaning down so his shoulder was almost even with my head.
What a good friend. Why couldn’t Rob be as nice as Fenwick? Fenwick would never stand me up on a Friday night. Fenwick knew enough to cheer me up when I was obviously in a bad mood. He straightened, lifting my feet off the ground, then set me down again. “Better?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my lower back. “And now my spine’s adjusted. Thanks.”
“You in the mood for some Blues?”
“Blues?”
“I know a Blues bar downtown. I used to go there a lot after Denise dumped me. There’s usually a band, but it’s quieter than Sharpe’s. Cheaper too.”
“Sounds perfect.”
***
The sign said simply 5th Avenue, but Fenwick said that everyone called it the 5th Avenue Dive. The crowd was a strange mix of rich Pepperwood yuppies, slumming for an evening, and poorer downtown types, spending a night on the town. The inside was dark and smoky, lit only by neon signs. In the corner, a soulful trio of sax, bass, and husky contralto lamented how it felt to lose your baby. It was perfect.
Fenwick and I sat at the bar and ordered beers. He listened to the story about Monica. On my second beer he heard the rest about Madame R., and agreed with James that it was unethical to cheat her, which mad
e me feel better about having gone back there. The crowd was mellow, the music good, and by the time the bartender brought a third beer, life didn’t seem so bad.
“Kyle? What’s he doing here?” Fenwick half turned towards the back. A neon dolphin on the wall cast a blue glow over full tables, but it was too dark for me to recognize anyone.
“What? Kyle’s here?”
Fenwick nodded towards a table to the right of the stage. “Guess he needed another place to hang out since he got kicked out of the UPub.”
“He got kicked out of the UPub? Is that why we all had to do Chinese Thinkers?” I still couldn’t see him, but by this time his voice carried above the din. “He’s not picking a fight again, is he?”
“Sounds like it, and he’s being a racist dick. The guy’s trying to ignore him, but … he called him a ni—?” Fenwick cursed under his breath and got up from the bar stool fast enough that the legs scraped noisily. “That’s just not called for.”
He used the “N” word? In a Blues bar? Kyle was either three sheets to the wind or a lot dumber than we thought. Fenwick started walking towards the corner with me in his wake. When we got there, we found Kyle in his pre-fight warm-up. His drunken slur was nearly indecipherable, but the way he pointed his finger wasn’t.
Fenwick cleared his throat, and when Kyle didn’t respond, he grabbed the back of Kyle’s jacket and pulled. Kyle whipped around with a haymaker of a punch unwieldy enough to prove my ‘drunker than a skunk’ theory. Fenwick grabbed Kyle’s wrist in his hand instead of blocking. Kyle swung the other fist and Fenwick grabbed that as well. Kyle was struggling, jaw clenched and shoulders flexing, but Fenwick held him with no more effort than if Kyle had been a toddler.
By this time the bouncer came over to investigate. Fenwick smiled and addressed the bouncer, a baby-faced black guy almost as big as Fenwick, in a calm cheerful voice, “My friend here had too much to drink. I’m going to take him outside.”
The bouncer scowled. “I saw punches.”
“He’s leaving now. There won’t be a problem.” Fenwick whispered to Kyle. “Just come with me. Okay? We’ll pay your tab.”
Kyle was wavering, but Fenwick’s words sunk in and changed him from angry drunk to maudlin drunk. “You’ll pay my tab?”
“Yeah. Just go home. You didn’t drive, did you?”
“You’re a good guy, man.” Kyle slouched forward, and Fenwick carried him towards the door.
“You gonna pay his tab?” the bouncer asked me.
“Yeah, I’ll pay at the bar.” Loaning Kyle money was easier than doing more Chinese Thinkers.
The bartender took most of Madame R.’s stack of bills with a nod, not knowing how much it hurt to see it go.
“Hey, you dropped something,” she said.
There, in the small puddle of condensation, lay a red felt paisley. With trembling fingers and a pounding heart, I picked it up. Was it the real one? Could it be? It seemed too much to hope for. One way to find out. A drop of spirit gum on the back, press it to my forehead, and then find one of the otherfolk to look at.
As if on cue, Fenwick tapped me on the shoulder.
I spun around. “Hey, Fenwick, I think I found my bindi.”
But it wasn’t Fenwick, it was the guy Kyle had chosen for this unfortunate pas de deux. He was a middle-aged man, with short hair and a collared white shirt unbuttoned to reveal a ribbed cotton undershirt. He pulled out a bar stool and slid onto the red leather without looking at it. There was something odd about him. Who did he remind me of?
“I came to thank you for getting that guy out of my hair.”
“Yeah. That was shitty, what he called you. I’m sorry about that.”
The guy shrugged. “I’ve been called worse.” He blended into the darkness, as if he were a charcoal drawing on which someone had smudged the edges. The other people in the bar looked like brightly lit chiaroscuro paintings in comparison. “Palmer. Ted Palmer.” He extended his hand. He had a firm shake, and his skin felt chilly.
“I’m Kit. Kit Melbourne.” He seemed like a first-and-last-names kind of person. Maybe it was the sport coat slung over his shoulder.
“What’s that on your hands? Is that a tattoo?”
“It’s temporary.
The band ended their set, and while we clapped and waited for the cheering to die down, I figured it out. Jolene. He reminded me of Jolene. Whatever vampire mannerisms Jolene had, this guy had even more so.
“You’re a vampire.”
“A what?” He didn’t show his teeth, and his smile seemed faked because of it. But that had to be true. His darkness was like Jolene’s darkness, except that it lasted longer.
“You are, aren’t you?”
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“It’s a simple question. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” I glared at him, but my heart started pounding. Was he joking? Two death threats in one night?
At my expression, he smiled, a real smile, showing two sharp fangs where his eyeteeth should be. “Just kidding. You saw the fangs?”
“No. It’s that you move like Jole—like another person I know. Are you guys supposed to keep it secret?”
“We don’t advertise. Kind of surprised you noticed. Most people don’t believe in us, or they have the wrong idea.” He folded his hands and leaned forward. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What’s with the dot? Is that the new thing these days?”
I touched the bindi, and decided to give him a white lie. Too many people knew Uncle Fred.
“Yeah, it’s kind of a fashion thing. They’re cheap, and you don’t have to get anything pierced to wear it.” Would he roll his eyes at my next question? Jolene had rolled her eyes, but that was her response to just about everything, so it was open to interpretation. “Can I, do you mind if I ask about vampires?”
“Okay, go ahead.”
“Yeah. Do you really, um…” I drew my finger along the lines of condensation, watching the red and purple and yellow neon reflections. “Do you kill people?”
He shook his head. “Can’t tell you how many people think that.”
“Well, in the movies they, that is you guys always do.”
Ted Palmer shook his head, frowning. “Everyone sees the movies and thinks we’re a bunch of serial killers. Really, this city isn’t a huge metropolis, even including Northridge and the Lake District. How many unexplained murders could you get away with before the police started noticing a trend?”
“Ummm …”
He went on. “In the movies they have each vampire kill maybe a person a night. If there were even one vampire like that here, there would be 365 unexplained murders a year.
“You know what the typical murder rate is per year for a town this size? Less than twenty people per year, on a national average. Twenty! And that’s everyone, not just the unexplained murders! Of course, there’s always the missing people, but even that wouldn’t go unnoticed.”
Sounded like he had made this speech before. I signaled for another beer.
“But do they address that in the movies? No, these movie vampires do a murder a night and never ever get in trouble with the law. They never worry about the cops showing up at their door wanting to ask them some questions every time there’s a kid missing because the non-custodial parent ran off with it.
“They never have to worry about losing their job because someone got a look at their teeth and got nervous. The movie vampires are always independently wealthy. They never have jobs even. Life is a lot harder for real vampires. Especially vamps that aren’t white.” Palmer took a swig from the beer bottle in his hand.
“So, you obviously don’t just drink blood.”
“Hell, no. Who would want to live forever if you could never have another beer?” He smiled, and his teeth reflected yellow and green from the neon Corona sign over the bar.
“You got a point there.” I laughed. “You do drink blood too
though, right? Where do you get it from?”
Palmer winked and chuckled. “Drinking blood is like sex.”
“How so?”
He grinned, and I realized I had fed him a straight line. “If you can’t get it for free, you can pay for it.”
“You can’t be telling me that vampires never kill their victims?”
The grin faded. “Not in this town.”
“So, what would happen if a vampire decided that he or she wanted to start killing people, drinking all of their blood instead of stopping at a polite pint or two?”
“The Guild puts down rogues. It’s wh—tell you later.”
Fenwick approached, and pulled up a bar stool next to me. “Sorry that took so long. Kyle was wasted, and the cabbie didn’t want to take him because he kept puking. I had to talk him around.”
I introduced him to the vampire. “This is my friend, Alan Fenwick.”
“Ted Palmer. Thanks for calming your friend down. I’m too old for bar fights anymore.”
“He’s not my friend, and you’re welcome.”
There was a small beeping sound, and Palmer reached into his pocket, retrieving a fancy cell phone. “Damn. Not another one.”
“A text?” I asked.
He nodded. “My wife gave me this blueberry thing for my birthday.”
I just about choked on my beer, but it was a bad idea to laugh at a vampire.
“I still can’t figure out how to open her messages. Guess I’m too old for new tricks.”
“I can help you with that,” Fenwick said. “I do tech support for these all the time. Do you mind if I take a look?”
“Be my guest.” The vampire handed over his phone.
Fenwick picked up the phone with the enthusiasm of a ten-year-old boy with his first Lego set. “Hey, this is the new one! Do you have one of the … sweet! Man, I wish I had one of these.”
“What does that mean?” Ted Palmer edged closer and peered into the little screen.
“You’ll want to change that. Oh, wait, you gotta see this.” Fenwick patiently explained how to use the gadget, and after about ten minutes Ted Palmer began to nod.
