by P. N. Elrod
“She’s doing what you’re hoping to do.” But Bobbi was much younger and more likely to get spotted.
“And I gotta do it faster or in a couple of years I’ll be in the same boat as Adelle: background chorus work or character parts playing the star’s mother.”
I’d heard it all before during our long talks in the dark when Bobbi told me of her dreams for the future. According to the movies, all women were either young and glamorous or old, overdressed biddies.
“I can help you there,” I said. More than once I’d offered to place my own talents at her service. “All I gotta do is have a quick word with Archy and you could be a regular on his show like Adelle.”
“I know.” The way she said it, so neutral, so closed off, made me lose step again.
“Or . . . I could go outside and jump in the lake. I’ve tried kicking myself, but it doesn’t work so good.”
“Oh, Jack, I appreciate you trying to help me with this, I really do—”
“But it’s not the way you want to win.”
“Exactly.”
“Look, it’s not that you won’t win on your own merits, all you need is to get in front of an audience for five minutes and let them fall in love with you. What I’m thinking is that I just fix it so you have the opportunity to get in front of them in the first place.” We’d had this talk time and time again. “It’s not cheating for me to hypnotize someone like Archy into giving you a real break. Cheating would be for me to hypnotize everyone in the audience into calling for more, and that’s something you do yourself.”
She opened and shut her mouth once or twice, then sighed and shook her head, caught halfway between exasperation and affection. “You’re a fast-talking nut, Jack, and I love you dearly, but no.”
I knew when to back off. “Well, the offer’s always there if you ever want to take it.”
“Thank you.”
“You won’t forget?”
“No, not if you’ll promise me something.”
“Name it.”
“That you won’t do anything like that and keep it from me.”
“But I’d never—”
“Promise?”
I could have gotten annoyed that she would think I’d do anything like that, but considering the guy she’d been with before, I couldn’t blame her for needing the reassurance. Besides, when she looked at me like that I’d have gone over Niagara in a leaky barrel full of bricks for her. “Cross my heart and hope to—”
“Oh, jeez, pick another!” She stopped cold, eyes wide. She’d spoken loud enough to draw attention, but had no mind for anyone staring at us.
“—not spit in the wind,” I finished lamely.
She stared for a second longer, then fought to relax. “I’m sorry. It’s crazy of me to be like this, but—”
“Don’t worry about it.” We’d each skated too close to death on a couple occasions for any light mention of it to be welcome to her. “You’re an artist and allowed to be a little bit crazy. Charles is the same way about that Shakespeare play.”
Mentioning his name brought some of her smile back. “Yes, I’ve heard him talking about it—or rather not talking about it.”
I pulled her close and whispered into her ear. “And I’m the one who’s sorry. I’ve said enough dumb things tonight to be drunk. I promise I won’t help you unless you ask me to. And I promise never to go behind your back.” It was easy enough to say, and being a basically honest person, I knew I’d stick to it.
She drew away just enough to look at me. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
“No,” she said, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “That happens later.”
“Ho-ho.” I pulled her close again and we kept on dancing even after the music stopped.
4
BOBBI had been too optimistic about more romancing that night—or rather that morning. It was after five by the time we reached her hotel, and she was nearly asleep on her feet. Maybe Dracula liked his women unconscious when courting, but not me. I got my girl out of her expensive gown, took her shoes and stockings off, and slipped her between the sheets, thoughtfully tucking her in. She was still in a very affectionate mood, though, and wrapped her arms around me.
“Wish you could stay,” she whispered, her eyes drooping shut. “I’d love to wake up next to you.”
Not during the day she wouldn’t, and we both knew that. Once the sun was up, I was literally dead to the world. I kissed her good morning, but she was already asleep. Nothing left to do but to close the curtains, let myself out, and drive home.
Though still full dark, the city was starting to wake itself, early risers making their sluggish way to diners and drugstores in search of a nickel’s worth of hot steaming resuscitation and maybe a plate of ham and eggs. Only the coffee still smelled good to me now, but then it was the one thing that had always smelled better than it tasted. I’d wondered about the possibility of mixing it with livestock blood, whether it would be drinkable or a disaster. Escott was of the opinion that the blood would coagulate when heated enough to percolate through a coffeepot. Ugh. And here I’d only thought of putting the two liquids together in a cup.
Lights still showed at the house when I parked in my usual spot. Escott had either left them on for me or was still up himself. As I came in the front door I heard him call a muted hello from the dining room.
We didn’t use it for dining. He’d turned it into a general work area for hobby projects. The big table that had come with the house was scarred but still sturdy. It was presently covered with newspapers, but some of the mess had spread to the floor. That was temporary. He was a fiend for neatness and always thoroughly cleaned up after himself.
“No sleep again?” I asked, slouching in and leaning against the archway that led to the front parlor. The radio there was on, but the music had given way to farm reports.
He grunted an affirmative. He’d wrapped his purple bathrobe over blue-striped pajamas and shoved his feet into brown leather slippers. Bobbi might have had something to say about his color sense, but the rest of the time he was nattily correct in his attire. His face was pale and drawn, with circles under his eyes. I felt bad for him. He looked tired to the bone and painfully sleepy, yet if he tried to surrender to it, nothing would happen. He said drinking booze never worked for him, and he’d sooner shoot himself in the foot than take a sleeping pill.
“How did the opening go?” he asked, without looking up from his work.
“Just great. You were right about a lousy rehearsal making for a great show. You gotta come see it. Bobbi was fantastic. She says thank you for the orchid. It really meant a lot to her.”
“I’m very glad. It was my pleasure.”
“And Archy Grant was in the audience. He wants Bobbi to do a song on his show this week.”
“Who?”
“Archy Grant, the singer-comedian. You’ve heard his Variety Hour; I listen to it most every Tuesday. He’s really famous.”
“Indeed? I’ll take your word for it.”
Escott wasn’t much for light entertainment unless he was an active participant in creating it, and that hadn’t happened since he’d retired from the stage. His favorite shows were along the lines of The March of Time, though he usually listened to the Mercury Theater with me if I thought to turn it on. I think it was only so he could criticize the shortcomings of their literary adaptations afterward.
“What’s the project this time?” I asked. He’d brought in two floor lamps from other parts of the house to give him plenty of light as he concentrated on his close work.
“As you see.” His hands were busy, so he nodded. The tabletop was an almighty mess, covered with wood shavings, tools, sawdust, and a hot plate gently heating a disgusting-looking brown substance in an old, scoured-out paint can. When I bothered to sniff, the whole place smelled like a glue factory.
Before him were several crossbows, from a small model that shot little darts, to a granddaddy that hurled foot-long bolts. O
n the night he first introduced himself to me he’d had that one concealed under a newspaper on his office desk. He’d figured out that I was a vampire and had had it ready in case I proved to be an unfriendly master of the undead. The wood shaft of the bolt was the one item in his line of defense that could have harmed me. As for the cross and garlic cloves he’d had standing by . . . well, I’m not evil, and I don’t need to breathe regularly, so folklore failed him there, and just as well for us both.
“Repair work, huh?”
“Yes. Those hooligans that invaded the house did some serious damage to some of my little treasures, so I thought I’d make a start on restoring them. This one’s ready for target practice.” He was working on the granddaddy, rubbing the walnut stock with lemon oil.
During his days with an acting company he developed a talent for prop making and weaponry and kept them well supplied for their historical productions. Anyone else would have just made something that looked like a crossbow, but not Escott; his props had to actually work.
“Looks like you’re pretty much finished with all of them. You been at this all night?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
I used to know what it was like to lie in the dark, toss and turn, give up, and put on a light hoping to read myself drowsy or take a few shots of booze to knock me out, or both. I’d done my share of pacing, cursing, and praying for sleep that would not come. “Jeez, Charles, I’ve got an excuse to be up, but you don’t. You should see a doctor about this insomnia.”
“It’ll clear itself soon enough. It usually does.”
And he was pretty much correct. He’d go for weeks sleeping soundly, and then hit a patch where all he could do was pace the hall or read or work on stuff like fixing crossbows. Even from my bricked-up sanctuary in the basement I could hear his restless meanderings far into the night. Early on when we started rooming together, I’d offered to hypnotize him into slumber, but he only thanked me and politely refused. When I asked why, he just waved it off like it wasn’t important. Bobbi thought it was because once he was asleep he had nightmares. His reaction when I once tried to draw him out on the subject made me think she’d pegged it square.
“Well, try to catch a nap during the day, okay?”
“I’ll try. It would make a poor impression on a client telling me his troubles if I nodded off in the middle of things.”
“You got plans for the Sommerfeld case tomorrow?”
“Actually, it already is tomorrow, and I’ve nothing at the moment. That may be changed by the time you’re up and around, so be prepared for some evening work.”
“It’s the only kind I know.”
I pushed away from the arch and trudged upstairs to shuck my clothes onto hangers or into the laundry basket. I used to just drop stuff on the furniture, but now that I was buying classy goods I took better care of things. Some of Escott’s passion for neatness must have rubbed off on me. I put on some pajama bottoms so as to be decent in case of a fire, then went invisible and slipped down through the floors to the basement.
My hiding place was just under the kitchen. It was an alcove bricked off from the rest of the basement; access to it for anyone who wasn’t a vampire was through a well-concealed trapdoor under the kitchen table. Escott had built it all himself, and only he, myself, and Bobbi knew the trick of opening it. Most of the time it was covered by a throw rug. I never used the trap, it was easier to just filter down through the creaks in the joints as I did now.
I’d left a light burning to spare me from materializing in total darkness. Without any openings to the outside except for a narrow air shaft, my night-sensitive eyes were as useless as anyone’s in this pit.
Actually, calling it a pit was unfair, for it was a rather comfortable refuge, and, despite my precaution with the pajama pants, fireproofed. For my daylight comas I had a sturdy cot topped with clean linen; beneath the bedding was a layer of my home earth between protective sheets of heavy oilcloth. Maybe it wasn’t the Ritz, but since I was completely unconscious a real bed and mattress weren’t a necessity to me.
Against the wall was a desk I’d set up for my writing, working down here so as not to disturb Escott in the wee hours. It held my battered traveling typewriter along with stacks of paper, pencil stubs, and a collection of rejection slips that increased every time one of my stories came back. I’d been a pretty good reporter, but the rules for fiction were very different, and I was still trying to figure them out. Some nights I felt like I was reinventing the wheel while everyone else raced along in new Cadillacs.
Escott had once suggested I write what I knew, that I should write a story about a vampire. I suggested, as politely as possible, that he try his hand at scribbling a detective yarn. He shot me a sour look that meant I’d made my point, and thereafter kept his brainstorms to himself. I suppose I could have made an effort, but it just wasn’t a topic I wanted to tackle. My tastes ran more along the lines of The Shadow and Doc Savage . I’d sent proposals to the publishers of those magazines, but never heard back from them. I had a friend in the business who told me that becoming a house writer was anything but easy, but I was anxious to get something—anything—published.
Well, I had been anxious. After going through the wringer a couple of months ago a lot of the creative juice had been squeezed right out of me. I’d been threatened by, come close to, and even delivered death in a very short span of time, and the importance I’d once attached to my literary efforts had been seriously diminished by a brutal reality I still sometimes shuddered over. The anxious fire inside had either gone out or was buried deep under the ashes, and I was too tired to dig for it or light it anew. And maybe too rich. With the dough I had stashed away in Escott’s safe I had no real need to write for extra cash; I was having too good a time spending the stuff I had. It helped me forget about the wringer.
As I lay back on the cot all the familiar excuses for why I’d not put any work in on the typewriter bubbled up inside all over again. I was too busy right now; I didn’t feel inspired; Bobbi needed me; Escott had a job for me, and so forth. A litany of laziness—or so nagged an all-too-pragmatic voice in my head.
To hell with it. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.
My last thought as the sun came up and stole away consciousness.
THE fault-finding litany was also my first thought the following night, reinforced by opening my eyes on the unchanged room. It was almost as though I’d not slept at all, which was true in a way. What swept over me wasn’t normal human slumber; anyone finding me would find a dead man until the sun went down. I was always physically restored, but mental rest was trickier to achieve. Unless something especially disruptive intruded, whatever was eating at me when I conked out would still be gnawing away upon waking.
At least now I could escape the reminders of my failure for the time being. I vanished and floated up to the kitchen, leaving my typewriter and its stack of clean, unmarred paper behind to collect a little more dust and guilt. Come morning I’d face it again with another pang of conscience, but until then I could ignore it.
Escott wasn’t home, but he left a note on the kitchen table asking me to come by his office. I phoned there to see if he was still in. He was.
“What’s cooking for tonight?” I asked.
“Just a little reconnoitering at a certain gentleman’s abode.”
“The kissing bandit from the other night?”
“Exactly.”
Out of habit he was usually pretty cagey over the phone on the off chance that it might be tapped. That had happened once. We hadn’t liked it much. “Working clothes?”
“Yes, by all means.”
Which meant no tuxedo. I rang off and went up for a quick bath and shave and pawed through my closet for appropriate attire. I found a black shirt that used to go with a snow-white tie, but Bobbi said they made me look like a cheap movie gangster. I thought I’d looked pretty sharp, but since I was handicapped when it came to mirrors, I usually took her advice on clothing. The tie got
a bloodstain on it—I’d been careless feeding once—and I had to throw it out anyway. The shirt came in handy for jobs like the one ahead tonight. I pulled on some black pants and a wool pea jacket, leather gloves, a cloth hat, and my gum-soled shoes. Any cop worth his salt would look twice at me while I was in this suspicious getup, but I always took care never to be seen.
I locked the house, hopped in my Buick, and drove toward the office, taking a route that passed by the Stockyards. I could comfortably go two nights between feedings, three in a pinch, and four if absolutely forced to, but rarely pushed things that far. Every other night kept me sated and happy, and a lot less likely to make mistakes with people. I’d nearly gone over the edge once for lack of self-control. Never again.
Bloodsmell everywhere on the cold wind when I parked. You couldn’t escape it any more than you could escape the perpetual stench of manure and churned-up mud. The nation had to eat and this was the place that turned Bossy into dinner. Though I kept clear of the processing areas, I knew it was basic, brutal, and organized into mechanical efficiency. If people had to actually see the procedures that brought a steak or pork chop to their table, they’d probably quit and eat Cornflakes instead.
I did what everyone did, though, and consciously ignored the smells and din and made my way to one of the holding pens. There I would always find a cow docile enough to stand still while I bit through its tough flesh, opening up a leg vein. If the animal was restive, my acquired talent for hypnosis usually worked to calm it down. The only time I had real trouble was during thunderstorms, but if the weather was rough I just skipped going that night.
Escott thought I should keep a bottle of blood in the refrigerator for emergencies, and I’d tried, but it wasn’t too practical to acquire, and the stuff went bad pretty fast. It was drinkable, but not all that satisfying. I preferred it hot and living from the animal, not siphoned off through a needle and rubber hose into a spare milk bottle.
