Otis has been sniffing the air, and now he is staring hypnotically at the drop of blood on Basil’s neck, and his pupils are dilated and his hands start shaking and suddenly there is a little bit of drool on his chin.
“Blood!” he whispers.
“Control yourself Otis,” I say sharply.
“Blood!” he repeats.
“You don’t know who he’s eaten lately, or what diseases they might have been carrying,” I say. “Just lean back and relax.”
“Blood!” he hisses, standing up abruptly.
“Otis,” I say, “this is as boring and one-sided a conversation as I have had in quite some time. Now you sit there and behave yourself or I’m going to get really annoyed with you—and don’t you dare turn into a bat! Do you know how hard it is to shave you when you’re hanging upside down from the ceiling?”
Otis starts pouting, feigns disinterest, and again buries his nose in the late edition’s obituary column. I return to taming Basil’s mane, but then the bell on my door rings and so I turn, expecting to greet another of my regulars. Instead, the unexpected walks in: a human.
“Hello,” I say. “Welcome to The Close Shave.”
“Good evening,” he says.
Morton fidgets, creaking slightly, while Basil growls softly under his breath.
“Do you need a trim?” I ask, not knowing what else to say—it has been years since a human required my services, especially at this time of night.
“No,” he says. “I am looking for a medusa.”
Harold looks up in surprise, his hair slithering around in excitement.
Then the man says the unthinkable—at least to me. “I want to die,” he states. “I heard that I could find you here. I require your assistance.”
“Why?” asks Morton gently.
“Death is overrated,” intones Otis morbidly. “Do you know how much harder it is to keep these teeth from decaying since I became undead?” he continues, displaying his fangs to Morton, who is still looking (can I say looking? What with him having no eyes and all) at the man in the doorway.
“Be quiet, Otis,” I say. I turn to the newcomer. “Why do you want to die?”
“Because life is not worth living,” he answers in a voice top heavy with self-pity.
Otis licks his lips somewhat seductively. “Well, if that’s the way you feel about it . . .”
“Otis,” I say, “how many times have I told you: you don’t bite the customers.”
“But he wants me to,” says Otis, almost keeping the whine out of his voice.
“No,” says the man. “I’ve tried that, and it didn’t work. Apparently vampires can’t drink my blood.”
“I view that as a personal challenge,” replies Otis.
“They can’t drink mine either,” pipes in Morton, always wanting to fit in.
Basil, no longer growling, speaks up. “Morton, you don’t have any blood.”
“We’re getting off topic,” Harold states suddenly. “The crux of the matter is, I’m a pacifist.” He shrugs. “I won’t kill anyone—with or without their permission.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” I complain, thinking of all those times I’d refused the money to wash his slimy hair for fear of hungry little teeth.
“I like to see you squirm,” he says, grinning as his hair slithers around him like a halo.
Well, the man has stayed quiet throughout this entire little exchange, but now he clears his throat. “You misunderstood me. I don’t expect you to kill me. I just want your permission to let one of your snake companions bite me.” He sighs heavily. “Maybe that will work.”
“Pick me!” “No, choose me!” “What about me?” is the chorus that instantly responds to his request as little snake heads jump up and down in childish enthusiasm.
“Oh, in that case, be my guest,” says Harold with another shrug. “I’m not responsible for their moral choices. I’m from Australia, so my snakes are amongst the most poisonous in the world, however—” he raises a hand, immediately stilling the writhing snakes—“I suggest you ask Cecil. He’s got the biggest fangs.”
The other snakes sigh and sink back down to float around Harold’s head in dejection as the man walks over and raises his wrist to Cecil. A dainty little head reaches out and sinks its teeth into the man—
—and a few seconds later the head pulls back, its slimy body wracked by sobs.
“He hurt me!” squeals Cecil. “He broke my fangs!”
“Is there such a thing as a dentist for snakes?” asks Otis, looking up from his newspaper to watch Harold trying to console his hair.
Out of the corner of my eye I see the man sink into one of my barber chairs, despair written all over his face. “I can’t even die properly,” he laments.
“Why do you want to die at all?” asks Basil.
“I’m tired,” says the man.
“That seems a little severe,” says Basil. “Whenever I’m tired I take a nap.”
“I have been tired for two thousand years,” says the man.
Everybody allows that two thousand years is a long time to be tired, and even fifteen hundred is no picnic if push comes to shove.
“Have you got a name?” I ask.
He kind of half smiles and half snorts. “I’ve had one hundred thirty-four of them.”
“I knew a Juan Domingo Pedro Jesus Riccardo Jose Felipe Sanchez,” I say. “He could grow a beard while he was signing his name. But I never met anyone with one hundred thirty-four names.”
“I haven’t had them all at once,” he explains. “I meant that I’ve had one hundred thirty-four over the centuries.”
“Who are you?” I ask.
“I’m the guy who should have kept his mouth shut on Golgotha,” he says.
“Golgotha?” asks Morton. “Isn’t that out by Des Moines?”
“No,” says Basil. “I think it’s on the California coast, just south of San Jose.”
Cecil slithers down to the vicinity of Harold’s ear. “You want to tell them, or should I?”
“Golgotha is where Jesus was crucified,” says Harold. He stares at the man. “Only one person who was there should still be around. Gentlemen, say hello to the Wandering Jew.”
“Really?” asks Morton.
The man nods his head.
“No wonder you’re tired,” continues Morton. “That’s a lot of wandering.” He stares at the man. “So do we call you Wandering or Jew?”
“I change my name to fit in with my surroundings,” he answers. “This is twenty-first-century New York. Call me Goldberg.”
“Okay, Goldberg,” says Basil, starting to look a shade more human as the moon goes behind a cloud. “So you want to kill yourself. Tell us about it.”
“It’s not as easy as you would think,” says Goldberg, frowning.
“Telling us?”
“Killing myself.”
“Sure it is,” says Basil. “A silver bullet to the heart will do it every time.”
Goldberg shakes his head. “Not mine. It’s been tried.”
“Don’t listen to him,” interjects Otis. “What does a dumb animal know, meaning no offense. If you want to die, get someone to drive a wooden stake through your heart.”
Goldberg looks even more unhappy. “It doesn’t work.”
“All right, then,” says Otis. “Go out to the beach in a thong at high noon.”
“I don’t burn,” says Goldberg miserably. “Or react to poison.” He looks at Cecil. “Or get sick. Or get cut. No matter how creative I get, I just can’t die.”
“How creative do you get?” asks Morton.
“King Arthur tried to stab me with Excalibur once,” begins Goldberg. “He couldn’t pierce my skin. Robespierre sentenced me to the guillotine; the blade broke on my neck. Tamerlaine spurred his favorite horse and tried to run me down; the horse bounced off and was never the same again.” Goldberg shakes his head sadly. “So I figure if one man can’t bring me eternal peace, maybe a bunch can. I show
up, ready to be sliced to ribbons, at Rosebud River—and Custer makes his last stand at the Little Big Horn fifteen miles upstream that same afternoon. I intercept a message that the D-Day invasion is set for Pas-de-Calais, and I’m there with the Nazi army ready to be blown sky-high—and it turns out that the message was supposed to be intercepted, and the invasion takes place at Normandy.” He signed deeply. “It’s been like that for centuries.”
“I still say just take a long nap,” says Basil. “Whenever I’m bored that’s what I do.”
“Have you been bored for centuries?” asks Goldberg.
“Ten minutes is usually my limit,” admits Basil.
“Maybe you should travel the world and see the sights,” suggests Harold.
“I’ve been traveling the world for two thousand years,” answers Goldberg. “I’m the Wandering Jew, remember?”
“You must have seen some fascinating things,” offers Morton. “Notre Dame, the Taj Mahal, the Forbidden City . . .”
Goldberg shrugged. “Common. Pedestrian.”
“Oh?” says Harold. “What has impressed you?”
Goldberg thinks for a minute. “There was a town hall in the mountains of Tibet. Held about eighty people. Very pretty.” He frowns. “Destroyed in a landslide in, let me see, 582 AD—or was it 583?”
“Still, if you’ve been wandering for a couple of thousand years, give or take, you must have seen a lot of things,” allows Morton. “What was the most interesting sight you ever saw?”
Goldberg gets a faraway look on his face, but he doesn’t answer.
We stare at him for a minute, and then Basil says, “You go into catatonic trances a lot, do you?”
“I was just remembering,” says Goldberg.
“The most interesting sight?”
“The most beautiful.”
“What was it?”
“She wasn’t an it,” says Goldberg. “At least I don’t think so.”
“She?” repeats Basil. “This just became a lot more interesting.”
“It’s tragic,” replies Goldberg, a tear trickling down his cheek. “She’s the real reason I want to kill myself.”
“That’s funny,” says Basil. “I almost never want to kill myself when I see a beautiful woman. I just want to kill all the guys in the vicinity.” He turns to Otis. “How about you?”
“I can’t kill myself,” answers Otis. “I’m already dead.”
“We’re getting away from the subject here,” says Harold.
“What was the subject?” asks Otis.
“The most beautiful woman Goldberg ever saw.”
“That’s right,” says Otis. He turns to Goldberg. “So tell us about her.”
“She was the most beautiful, the sexiest, the most exquisite creature in the history of the human race,” says Goldberg, and everyone perks up when he uses the word “creature.” “And I should know. I’ve been here for enough of its history.”
“I’m sure glad you don’t speak in superlatives,” I say.
“She was absolute perfection,” continues Goldberg.
“You say ‘was’ and not ‘is,’” notes Basil.
“Well, he did meet her centuries ago,” chimes in Harold.
“Millennia,” Goldberg corrects him.
“How did she die?” asks Otis, who has a professional fascination with such things.
“I don’t know if she is dead,” says Goldberg.
“Not a lot of women make it past their two thousandth birthday,” I say.
“She is not a lot of women,” says Goldberg. “She is the most perfect woman who ever lived, with a face that could launch twice as many ships as Helen’s, and a body that would be the envy of every Playmate.”
“A woman that perfect should be pretty famous by now,” suggests Basil.
“The two don’t necessarily go together,” said Goldberg. “The Mona Lisa was a frump. No one ever heard of her good-looking kid sister.”
“So has this perfect female got a name?”
“Of course she does,” says Goldberg.
“You gonna tell us, or do we have to guess?” I say.
“Her name is Salome.”
“Like, as danced before the king?” asks Harold.
Goldberg nods his head.
“I’ve always wanted to see the Dance of the Seven Veils,” says Basil. “How was it?”
“Heavenly!” sighs Goldberg. “And it was the Dance of the Five Veils. They cleaned it up for the history books.”
“I don’t recall reading anything about Salome after the dance,” continues Basil. “Maybe she died back then.”
Goldberg shakes his head. “I saw her again in Rome, and then Athens, but I never got close enough to talk to her.”
“Then why haven’t we heard about her, if she’s all that sexy and beautiful, and a good dancer to boot?”
“You have,” says Goldberg. “H. Rider Haggard wrote her up as Ayesha, Edgar Rice Burroughs disguised her as La of Opar, Kurt Weill put her in a musical as Venus, John Cleland named her Fanny Hill and described her perfectly. . . . She has appeared many times, thinly disguised, down through the ages.”
“And just as thinly dressed,” notes Harold.
“I saw her briefly, from afar, in Persia in the fifth century,” continues Goldberg. “Then I spotted her in Mecca in the eleventh century, Greece in the twelfth, India in the fourteenth, China in the sixteenth, but I could never get close enough to speak to her. Since then I’ve seen her in Tahiti, Kenya, England, Russia, Brazil, New Zealand, and Passaic, New Jersey.”
“Well, it does explain your wandering,” says Morton.
“I can’t go on. Two thousand years, and I still haven’t gotten close enough to meet her or touch her. It’s been one hundred seven years since I last saw her just across the river in Jersey, the perfect woman—and a capricious Fate hasn’t let me get within fifty feet of her in two millennia. She’s lost to me, and I want to end it all.” Another tear rolls down his cheek as Cecil and the other snakes watch in fascination. “If I can’t kill myself, maybe I’ll just destroy the world.”
“Can you?” I ask.
“You think blowing up the world is the sole province of jihadists?” he shoots back. “Every mad scientist and rejected suitor wants to at one time or another.”
“With the whole world to wander, what are you doing here in New York?” I ask. “Are you following some lead?”
“No,” he answers miserably.
“Then why?” I persist.
“Your delis make the best blintzes and knishes,” says Goldberg.
“Makes sense,” Basil chimes in. “If you’re going to be miserable, at least be well-fed and miserable.”
“He should let the yenta I married cook for him,” I say. “That’ll take ten years off of anyone’s life.”
“Yeah, marriage is a death sentence for any man,” agrees Harold, grinning.
“A death sentence just isn’t what it used to be in the good old days,” notes Otis.
Just as he says it, a bearded old man who knows a little something about death sentences enters the shop, dressed in a black robe and carrying a sickle. “That’s hardly my fault,” he says. “I keep taking them. It’s you who keeps bringing them back.”
“Who are you?” asks Basil.
“The sickle doesn’t give it away?” says the old man.
“You’re the Grim Reaper?” continues Basil.
The old man nods.
“That’s a hell of a moniker to be stuck with,” offers Harold.
“I enjoy my work,” he says, “but even I don’t think I’d care to be known as the Jolly Reaper.”
“You’re really him?” asks Goldberg, who’s been staring at him since he entered the shop.
“I’m really him,” answers the Grim Reaper. “Sam will vouch for me. I often come here on my break. It’s the one place in town where I can avoid temptation. I’ll be leaving in a few minutes.”
“Take me with you!” shouts Goldberg.
“Can’t you try?”
“If I get any closer to you than I am right now, I get a migraine like you wouldn’t believe, plus an attack of nausea. You’ve been cursed, pal.”
“Maybe it’s worn off,” suggests Goldberg hopefully. “When’s the last time you tried to take me?”
“Sumatra, 1749 AD,” answers the Grim Reaper. “Took me a whole week to recover, and it was close to a century before I could eat blowfish again.”
“Won’t you try once more?” says Goldberg. “Please?”
“It’s not going to work.”
“Please?” repeats Goldberg more desperately.
The Grim Reaper shrugs. “What the hell.” He begins approaching Goldberg. Then, suddenly, he grabs his stomach. “I’m gonna be sick! Sam, where’s your bathroom?”
I point to the back room, and he makes a beeline toward it.
“Some Grim Reaper!” snorts Otis.
“You heard him,” I say. “Goldberg is cursed.”
“My wife isn’t,” complains Otis. “She’s uncursed and undead.”
“Then why do you always complain about her?” asks Basil.
“Because she’s also unforgiving,” answers Otis. “I mean, it’s not as if I can walk into a restaurant and order a quart of blood. So of course I find nourishment in nubile young women. Their skin is softer, their blood is richer, their screams are more exciting. And they don’t make demands on me.” A pause, coupled with a frown. “I should never have bitten her that third time . . . but I was so hungry. Now I can’t get rid of her.” He turns to the back room and raises his voice. “And some people are no damned help at all!”
“You weren’t listening,” notes Morton. “He took her. You took her back.”
“Details, details!” mutters Otis.
“If she bothers you that much, kill her again,” suggests Basil. “I’ll bet if you run a wooden stake through her heart, the Reaper will accept her.”
Suddenly Otis’s entire demeanor changes. “I’m kind of used to her,” he says. “And she tastes so good.”
“Well, then?”
Blood Lite II: Overbite Page 29
