Kiddo

Originally written Wednesday, December 14, 2005

The phone woke me up this morning. It was Patrick. He’s been reading the blog and getting caught up, and he wanted to share his thoughts with me. I knew I’d chosen to work with this young man for a reason: he had more presence of mind today than I’ve apparently had since the end of Saturday evening. I met him for a late brunch at a vegetarian restaurant near his home. It boasts being the oldest vegetarian restaurant in the area (out of three—not the most stellar claim), and its menu reflects it. I don’t mean that as a compliment. The other two have discovered what a joy good vegetarian food can be—in the case of one, pricey but innovative, offering experimental combinations of ingredients both commonplace and rare, and in the case of the other, homey and warm, with the coziest of soups, salads, and sandwiches—but the one near Patrick’s house still seems stuck in the mold of dietary masochism that characterized 1970s vegetarianism. For someone like me who can remember when a meat-free palate wasn’t considered a fad for bohemian poseurs (a much longer time ago than most realize), that era was the only time I ever felt as if I were suffering from a lack of animal sacrifice. I was aware that it wasn’t actually from what I was or was not eating—after all, I could and did do most of my own cooking—but from how the natural foods culture made me feel about it, and I was aware that history changes rapidly… and so it did. Thank goodness.

So anyway, Patrick and I met for brunch, and immediately he asked for the charm. I took it off and handed it to him thinking he just wanted to take a look, but he bundled it away in his backpack with barely a glance.

“What are you doing?” I asked, confused.

“What were you doing the other night? With that?”

For a moment I was even more perplexed, but the moment I began to review the events, I felt my mind readjust its focus so subtly, so minutely, that a less well-attuned individual probably wouldn’t have noticed it happening at all. But as I went back over the course of the conversation, the use of the charm, I now came to realize that Moshe and Trudy were not the only ones who hadn’t entirely been in control of themselves once I’d set the charm in motion. “How did you know there was something wrong?” I quietly yet proudly asked my prodigy.

“Free will,” he replied. “I didn’t know for sure if there was something wrong, but when I read the part about you controlling them both and not caring, I thought I’d better check. So… I was right?”

“I think so. I mean, the difference is so fine that it could be my imagination.” It’s not like I felt like a power fiend with them under Bella’s spell, but “experimenting,” or whatever I called it that night wouldn’t normally have been an option for me. Only moments ago I had felt justified in my actions, and now I felt embarrassed. Of course, most of the embarrassment was for not figuring out what Patrick had deduced. “Wow, kiddo, you’re good.”

“And that thing must be powerful. It could have an agenda of its own.”

The reason Patrick used the concept of free will to reach his conclusion was that he knows how seriously I take others’ right to self-determination. I was gifted with the dearest kind of free will anyone could receive: the will to live and the will to die. While I do recognize that no one has full autonomy over everything in his or her life, including myself, and while I don’t believe that fate and free will can be as readily dichotomized as most philosophies suggest, I nonetheless value others’ agency to the point where even if I did have occasion and reason to use a magical voodoo charm to control the actions of others, I certainly wouldn’t take it for granted. I at least wouldn’t ordinarily be as casual about it as I was last night.

Patrick continued, “It was even controlling you. Or someone was, through it. How did it feel? How was it working?”

The events of this day to be continued...

The Good Stuff

Originally written Monday, December 12, 2005

I’ve been working with Patrick for the past couple of days. I told him what I learned from Moshe. It gave me the opportunity to go into the same kinds of lessons with him that I didn’t feel like elaborating on with the vampires the other night. Somehow, it didn’t make me so irritated to discuss it with Patrick, possibly because I knew he’s already familiar with many of the underlying concepts. I should confess that I’m never sure whether to talk about Grey Orchid philosophy regarding the “soul” in terms of what is true or in terms of what we believe is true (I don’t mean with Patrick, I mean with others). I don’t want to speak in a way that elevates our small sect’s views above more popular ontologies if it means turning people off to considering them, but the fact of the matter is, evidence for such metaphysical concepts is notoriously hard to come by, and we can offer more than can most. I myself am living proof that we know what we’re talking about: if there weren’t something to our understanding of the principles of reality, or at least the way we use what we believe, I’d have passed on centuries ago. And Moshe—he’s still practicing his religion. I wonder how he’ll reconcile the teachings of his old life with the reality of his new one. Good thing he doesn’t keep kosher.

In the evening, I went to see Trudy. Even though I’m fairly certain, after I discovered what Bella’s charm can do, that Moshe’s not consciously behind his own erratic behavior, the evidence still suggests that he may have been manipulated into stealing the odds and ends from the museum, and I’m a tad more concerned about the missing items and Richard’s broken nose than I am about a little spying. Because of this, I don’t feel comfortable leaving the charm at home. Fortunately, it’s winter, so I can get away with wearing bulky clothing and, thus, the charm underneath them. I know it’s scarcely been weeks since I was bitching about the temperature and cursing the season, but there you go. Inconsistency is not hypocrisy.

As I was saying, I asked Trudy how she and Moshe fared after leaving my flat. She says they came back to her place, ate, and chatted for a while. When he left, she realized she’d been in the distraction zone since right before leaving me. When she asked if I’d felt it, too, I told her I did. This wasn’t true, of course, but she and Moshe are becoming pretty tight, and I can’t tell either of them about the charm yet. We wondered aloud to each other how and why the spell might have kicked in at that time, since Moshe certainly has no control over it.

As I should have predicted, she brought up the unpleasant line of conversation we had broken off when the spell started to take hold. I took a moment to try to avoid the confrontation again by holding my hand against the charm and instructing her not to worry about it, but nothing happened. It must be linked to Moshe in particular somehow, and I hoped I hadn’t set off his trigger inadvertently from long distance. Since I know so little about him, there could be any range of culprits controlling him, but I doubt it will hurt to see what we can find out about Little Miss Bite-and-Bail.

At any rate, I owed it to Trudy to provide some sort of elucidation for my aggressive line of questioning toward the end of the cogent portion of their visit. I explained that Thursday near 8:30 was the time Richard had said he’d encountered Moshe, so if she knew for certain that Moshe was with her at the time, then we were facing a new crop of unanswered questions. She seemed to have an easy rationalization:

“Your buddy’s lying.”

I’d be stupid if the possibility hadn’t crossed my mind, but it made no sense that he’d lie to me. We’ve known each other for ages. Also, I was fairly certain it was simply Trudy’s developing loyalty to Moshe that was talking, so I didn’t see the harm in letting her maintain that position. I told her Richard probably had the time wrong. “Why would he lie?” I challenged her.

“Dunno. Maybe he’s not lying. I don’t even know him. But he’s not telling the truth.”

As circular as that probably looks in print, it still made a sort of sense. I had one other possible explanation to run by her, though: “What if you were under that spell that keeps happening and he was at the museum at the time?”

“It would have taken him forever to get down there and come back. You really think I wouldn’t notice if I was missing such a big chunk of time? And anyway, he’s the one who forgets under the spell, not me. Or you. Or your pal.”

Uh huh. I figured as much. But it didn’t hurt to ask. I kept option number four to myself: that she was covering for him. Instead, I steered us onto a different course, suggesting that maybe the vampire who made Moshe is also the one controlling him. She sounded like she’d be on the sadistic side. Trudy was on the ball tonight, though.

“Why would she be doing that? We don’t even know why it happens. He goes blank sometimes, and sometimes he takes us with him. Except for when he makes us lose our focus too, I still think that multiple personality thing makes the most sense.”

I had to confess (although I didn’t do it out loud) that in the absence of any information about the charm, there was little reason to think there was any method behind Moshe’s madness. Trudy knew things had been stolen from the museum, but she had no cause at this point to think the burglary had anything to do with Moshe’s episodes.

“Still,” I said, “it doesn’t hurt to look into it. Is there anyone you can talk to? And we still never found out what Moshe was up to in Applewood. Mention it the next time you see him, huh?” Considering my lack of success the last time I tried wandering aimlessly down there, there seemed little point doing the same again. Besides, there was no reason to believe that just because he was there, there was anything of concern going on. He could have been doing anything. We don’t need to be examining everything the young man does on his own time.

“Yeah, I’ll tell him. And, um… the only people I can think of—it’s not like there’s this big underground network or anything—I can hit the Crypt this weekend. See if anyone’s there. Maybe the goth kids have seen someone who sounds like B ‘n’ B. Yeah, that’s a good idea. I can take the new kid with me. Maybe get ‘im his first taste of the good stuff.”

I was vaguely amused by her assumption that there is no underground network, since that’s exactly what some might consider us. As for her casual reference to the “good stuff,” at one time I might have had to remind myself not to be judgmental while feeling my stomach squirm, but I’ve become rather jaded about these things over the years. “Sure. I can just see all those little gothic chicks swarming for a nibble from him. You really think he’ll fit in there?”

“I dunno. We’ll see what a little Manic Panic and a trip to the fetish store will do for him. He’s gonna have to learn how to work that scene at some point. Might as well start him early. If I have to, I’ll just snag a little boy for myself and share.”

“Hey—safe, sane, and consensual!”

“Yeah, no prob, mom. I think enough of the regulars know my deal. Who knows—I bet we can find someone more than happy to bust his cherry.”

If, that is, his cherry actually needs busting. As I’ve said, I’m mostly convinced by his explanation. But there’s still the off-chance that he’s completely playing us on some of it, if not on the trance thing. Bringing him to a goth club where the wannabes think they’re trading half a pint for a head rush and another notch on the Anne Rice Bedpost™ could end up reflecting very poorly on Trudy on a social level (because of his general squareness, which rivals even my own) and/or leading to disaster on an oops-did-I-kill-that level (if he’s bluffing). Then again, he could have an oops moment at any time, with anyone…. as I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, I can tend toward the over-analytical.

“You know what? I’ll come with,” I offered. “When do you think you’re gonna go?”

“Uh… Friday? Maybe? We could go any night, but that’s when most of the people I know would be there. Biggest crowds on the weekends, obviously. But… really? You’d want to go?”

Not really, but now that I have a way to keep Moshe in check in a potentially dangerous situation, I was most certainly going to use it. “I’m adaptable,” I said. That much is true.

Distance & Distraction

Originally written Saturday, December 10, 2005

“Safe to tell me? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Making my voice stern and feeling like I was disciplining a child, I stared him straight in the eyes and said, “It means just leave it alone.”

Then something unexpected happened. As the words traveled from me to him, the complicated mix of emotions that had molded his visage suddenly began to disappear entirely, leaving his face as cold and blank as a corpse’s. I glanced over at Trudy, who didn’t appear to notice the change at all. Moshe’s eyes left mine, and he turned to face her. “I have to go,” he told her in an expressionless monotone.

“OK, see you tomorrow,” she answered as if he were acting perfectly normally. As Moshe turned from her and stood, giving me not so much as a parting nod, and moved toward the door, her eyes became unfocused and even seemed to swim a bit. She didn’t look vacant like he did; she appeared… distracted. I rose from my seat and headed after him.

Before he reached the front door, I put my hand on his shoulder and spoke his name. He stopped walking but made no other response. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“I have to go,” he repeated and started to take a step.

“No,” I ordered, and again he stopped in his tracks. I lifted my hand to the pendant and felt it deliberately through the knit of my sweater. It not only was giving off its own heat now but was also throbbing gently with its change in temperature, vacillating between warm and very warm. I took a moment to get in tune with my heartbeat, concentrating on the rhythms of my body. Yes: as I suspected, the charm’s pulse was keeping sync with mine. I tested briefly, deliberately accelerating my heartbeat and then bringing it back down. The charm kept time with me. “I think you should come back in now.” And, I wasn’t entirely surprised to find, he did.

Trudy was coming out of her daze as we entered the room, and she seemed about to make a comment about it, but I felt the need to experiment. “So Moshe,” I said, “when the weather gets warm again, do you want to play some tennis? We’ve got courts on campus that are open at night.”

As if nothing had happened—or were still happening—he turned into his amiable self, the one I’d conversed with last week at the dance. “Sure, I love tennis! I haven’t played in a few years, though. You’ll have to bear with me if I’m rusty.”

Trudy, too, jumped in. “You know, I never got into tennis. I used to like football. You know, watching, not playing. My high school team was region champs.”

For several minutes I watched the two carry on what would have seemed in other circumstances an extraordinarily commonplace conversation. I’d somehow set the scenario in motion with the charm, but I wasn’t sure how, nor did I know how to turn it off. Once Moshe was away from Trudy, she’d probably return to normal, but the nature of the magic or the voodoo or whatever it was meant that none of us had ever been present when Moshe snapped out of his trances. There were a few moments at the dance between returning from scraping my car and finding myself driving home when our discourse was as frank as it was earlier tonight, so isolating him could be the trick. However this worked, whatever it actually did, it was not an exact science. That much was clear. Magic and phenomena we refer to as magic rarely are, which is why it’s been rare since the Enlightenment to find anyone from the European traditions who are truly skilled at it. It would be difficult to explain in print what parts of my psyche I was channeling to bring out the energies I thought were the ones the charm was requesting from me, but suffice it to say they were corners of my mind that I haven’t used much in a while, at least not consciously.

For all the situation’s oddness, it occurred to me that it could actually be to my advantage. Both had forgotten that not long ago they were upset at me for continuing to hold Moshe in suspicion and for keeping my reasons to myself. Although I would have liked to experiment further, removing one and then the other from my presence and each other’s, giving Moshe different instructions, and so forth, I decided there was no rush. Besides, sending them home could be a means of gathering information, as well. I broke into their discourse on the merits of grass versus Astroturf to say, “It’s getting late for me. You two should head out. I want to talk to you soon, though.” And they did precisely that, chattering their way to the door together, wishing me a good night, and driving off in Moshe’s Subaru.

This is an amazing piece, this strange chunk of coral. I’m not sure exactly what I did, or how, but if I’d known 160-odd years ago what it was capable of doing, I might have become expert at its use by now. As I’ve mentioned, its real power is supposed to come when it’s assembled with its two other pieces. After this evening’s events—or, rather, last evening’s, as I’ve spent most of the night detailing them and the sun will actually be up soon—I’m farther from knowing who may be collecting them, but I’m nearer to knowing why.

And now I really have to hit the sack. Fortunately, tomorrow is Sunday, the quarter is almost over, and I can sleep late.

Alibis

Originally written Saturday, December 10, 2005

Recognizing this moment as an opportunity to break the tension that had grown around the Very Serious Saga Moshe had conveyed to us, Trudy started chuckling. She’d have known that there was no joke in what I said, but the context did make the sudden expression of arrogance somewhat amusing, and I managed a more humble smile, too. Moshe simply smiled and lowered his eyes. “So, Trudy,” I said energetically, completing the atmospheric transition, “what did you think I could help with?”

“Uh, well, to explain the soul thing, for one thing. You do it better than me. It’s like, I know how it works, and I’ve seen it happen, but I don’t have the words for it. Even though like you said I was fine not knowing how it worked before I met you, it just kinda feels helpful to have an explanation. And I wanted you to hear his side of the story because of all of what’s been going on. I thought just knowing you would be good for him. And for us, in case he spaces out and starts spying again.”

“Oh, yeah,” I almost gasped. I’d forgotten about what had been my primary concern only ten minutes prior. “Moshe, what do you remember about Thursday night?”

“Thursday night? I was hunting with Trudy. Or, OK, more like learning how to hunt. There’s really not a lot out there in the winter. We ended up actually going to the pet store and buying live rats.”

Trudy giggled and poked him in the ribs. “The kid is chicken-shit. He got real squeamish when I said we should check my mousetraps in the sewer. And then he got all torn up about his friggin’ rat.”

“Hey! It was my first time, you know… biting into something alive. The sewer thing kind of grossed me out. And the rat was, um, kind of cute. I felt really bad about it.”

The whole conversation was so comically morbid, I couldn’t hold in a sort of laugh-snort. “Oh God, I know what you’re talking about,” I sympathized. “I used to have a pet snake. I had to feed her rats all the time. It took me a long time to get used to it. They really are just darling animals. But, um, you know, if you’re not into the live prey thing yet, and since you have money to spend anyway… Trudy, remember from Thanksgiving….”

“Butcher shop, yeah. Pig’s blood. I took a mental note of it, too.” Let no one say that life doesn’t imitate art. “But we both agreed he should get the killing thing out of the way. Get over the wussiness. And it turned out OK, right?”

“Sure beats the meat.” It only took him a moment to add, “Ooh, I didn’t mean to say that…” but by that time, we were near tears, we were laughing so hard. Nevertheless, I had to reel the conversation back in.

“So you two were together all evening?”

“All night, actually. From the time I got off work until almost four in the morning,” he estimated while Trudy nodded in affirmation. “It was so great to talk to someone I could be honest with.”

“So… no memory gaps.”

“None.”

“And what time would you say you got to Trudy’s?”

I knew I was beginning to sound Joe Fridayish, and I didn’t blame him for growing defensive again when he said, “I took off from the mall early. Told them I wasn’t feeling well. I got to her around 7:30 or so. What’s this about?”

I ignored him for the moment and asked Trudy, “You can confirm that?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “What’s going on?”

“I’d rather not say just now. There are some pieces not fitting together at the moment; I’m just not sure which ones.” Just when things were starting to fall in line—I hadn’t yet decided whether to believe Moshe’s story or not, but it at least had internal cohesion despite the remaining mystery behind his memory lapses and whatnot—this was a new concern. Supposedly, he had been at the museum around 8:30 or shortly before. Either Richard was mistaken about the time, Trudy was covering for Moshe, or Moshe was up to his old mind control tricks with her again. One way or another, I suppose I had let the cryptic, poker-faced thing go on too long. Trudy felt obligated to call me on it.

“Marya,” she scolded more in frustration than anger, “What’s up with you? Did you take an extra shot of superiority complex today? I know you weren’t planning on believing him no matter what he said, but you don’t have to actually be rude. If you’ve got something on your mind, let’s have it.”

Moshe chimed in, “I don’t mean any disrespect” (his humility made me feel a little smug and probably didn’t help his case any), “but I’m glad she said that. I’ve felt like I’ve had to defend myself against something ever since I walked in here, and I don’t even know against what. I think I deserve to know.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I started. I seldom apologize for my own behavior, and neither was I doing that here, you’ll notice. Also as is typical of me when I do remember to express empathy, I provided a visual aid, bringing my hand to my breast as I continued, “But I have my reasons for playing this hand close to my chest. I’ll tell you when I think it’s safe to tell you.” My hand rested on the charm under my sweater accidentally. I’d forgotten it was there, and now I felt its delicate temperature rise slightly through my shirt.

The events of this day to be continued (just one more time!)

Unless

Originally written Saturday, December 10, 2005 (continued)

“What were you eating?” I asked.

“Meat. A lot of it. Raw whenever possible,” he responded. “I’ve been trying to follow my instincts. I’ve really only had folklore and movies to go on, and I don’t know how much is true and how much is just embellishment.” I’m sure he’s learned by now that the “instincts” take time to develop. There’s an important period of transition that one really needs a guide for. Fortunately, Trudy seemed to be taking up that mantle. Also fortunately, much of the folklore does apply to reality, and the embellishment isn’t likely to hurt: for instance, if he felt like going out and getting a coffin to sleep in, the only loss would be to his interior décor.

“Makes sense, but when wasn’t raw possible? Just out of curiosity.”

“Like when I’m with my family.”

This wasn’t a wow moment with quite the impact of the one he’d already given me, but it was nonetheless a key piece to the puzzle that was Moshe, or at least the version of himself he was peddling. I elicited a wordless oh, jeez, what next? response, which I suppose is what prompted him to explain:

“My parents live across town. I see them every week or so.” He sighed, and his forehead pinched up into a bundle of creases between his eyebrows. “It’s not like I can tell them what’s been happening to me. But I can’t just disappear on them, either.”

“And you’re not worried that ten, fifteen years down the road, they’re gonna start wondering why they only see you at night, or in your own house with the blinds drawn, not to mention why you still look exactly the same as you did at… how old are you?”

“Thirty-two. I figured I’d worry about that when the time came. By that time they’ll have been seeing vampire me for fifteen years and know it’s OK.”

“Unless, of course…” I said, using the phrase without planning on having to finish it. There’s always an unless involved when young vampires plan for the future. The rest can go without saying because it’s universally understood. However, all rules have exceptions, and I was getting used to Moshe being the exception to more than a few. And when I failed to see the slightest glimmer of comprehension in his face and realized he was simply waiting for me to continue, I asked Trudy, “You haven’t told him?”

There was a little irritation in my voice that Trudy picked up on, and she became defensive. “God, Marya, I only learned all this about him two days ago. I kinda thought getting him off the junk food was first on the to do list. It’s not like I was gonna make like Little Miss Bite-and-Bail” (There we go again with adopting my less admirable phrases. I need to remember not to be witty in front of her.) “and leave him to figure it out on his own.” She finished tauntingly, “I mean… unless.”

His patience had turned to mild anxiety. “Unless what? What is it?”

Feeling a little like an oncologist delivering an unfortunate diagnosis, I said, “You’re gonna change.”

“I already did.”

“You’re nowhere near finished. Your body is permanent now, but your soul’s still temporary, or parts of it are. It’ll cohere for a while, but eventually, without a living body to support it, it’s going to deteriorate.” I think I was annoyed that Trudy hadn’t gotten around to mentioning this yet more because I hate giving people the short version almost as much as I hate hearing others give misinformation. The full explanation is more complicated than anything I felt like getting into at the time and extends well beyond vampire ontology. It challenges most people’s prior understandings of how “souls” work (the word itself irks me; I only use it as a compromise between the Judeo-Christian concept and the Grey Orchid one, and even I—out of laziness—use it in a couple of different ways with different contextual meanings), and that means either starting from square one with the epistemological reprogramming or trying to piece the important parts together into a confusing collage. So I did what any good academic does when she needs to be selective about her thesis. If you can’t explain, disclaim. “I mean, of course, that’s kind of a simplistic way to put it. If you want to sit down and get the full run-down sometime, I’m game, but most vampires get by just fine not even knowing the details. For now, the important thing is that the internal you is essentially the same as it was when you died, but at some point pieces of it are gonna start to disperse. For most, the soul lasts about as long as a normal human lifespan, since that’s what it was designed for in the first place. But you never know. It could just as easily start to go tomorrow.”

“You said parts of it? What parts?”

“Generally, the ones that give you a sense of connection with others around you. Moral agency, responsibility… pretty much everything except for stark self-interest. Which means if it happens during your parents’ lifetimes and they’re not expecting it, you could end up hurting them a lot more at that point than you’ll worry or scare or confuse them by coming clean now. The one who did you is probably a perfect example.” By this time, I’d entered full educator mode and had forgotten to perform empathy. In fact, I was bordering on the clinical, and he seemed to have noticed. In particular, when I used phrases like “without a living body” and “when you died,” the creases in his face grew just a wee bit deeper. I doubted whether that aspect of his predicament had really hit home yet.

“You said you weren’t a vampire.”

“I’m not.”

“This just seems so crazy that you know so much more about me than I do.”

I love it when they say that. I knew (but didn’t care) that I was smirking when I said, “I know much more about many things than most people do. You’ll get used to it.”

The events of this day to be continued...

A Fatal Flaw

Originally written Saturday, December 10, 2005 (continued)

Both of them looked like they had a lot to say but no easy way to say it. They glanced at each other, then at the floor and windows, their jaws hung open and then snapped shut. “Please. Will one of you just tell me why you’re here?”

I’d learn in a few minutes that Moshe was probably silent because he didn’t know which parts of his story would concern me. So again Trudy spoke for him. “Moshe was made a vampire like a month and a half ago. And then the woman who did it disappeared.”

“The old bite and bail?” I said, making it sound like a common practical joke. In fact, it was very rare, and very much not a joke. Vampires, like all old souls, have incredible egos. To turn a human and then not stick around to mold and shape and mentor one’s creation is comparable to young mothers abandoning children, albeit somewhat less scandalous. In fact, it’s probably much less common, since unwanted pregnancies are not unheard of, whereas it would be rather difficult to make a vampire by accident.

“Heh,” snorted Trudy, sounding like she was trying not to laugh too loudly and hurt his feelings. “I like that. Bite and bail. Um, yeah. I guess. Yeah. And he’s been trying to live his human life like nothing happened. Going to work, seeing friends. Going to, uh, what is it? A temple? Synagogue?”

“Temple. But, um, only the evening meetings.” A second after he said it, he seemed to realize it probably went without saying.

I looked at him. “So, how did it happen? What do you remember about her?”

He sighed as if it helped him collect his thoughts. “She was at the mall one night. She said she liked my playing and asked to take me out for a drink. So we did, and when we were saying goodbye, she said she was a vampire and she could make me one, too. I thought she was joking. She swore she was serious and said she could prove it to me. And I, um… I dared her. And I actually did think she was joking. Even when I felt her bite me I thought she was just one of those kids who wear fangs and stuff. I didn’t see them but I thought she must have put them in.” By this time he’d know the optical illusion of vampire teeth, but at the time he wouldn’t have. “I was a little buzzed, so I felt light-headed but I thought it was the martinis. So when she cut her own arm and gave it to me to drink, I was just playing along.”

“And then, after several minutes of excruciating pain throughout your internal organs, you passed out.” I know the routine.

“Uh huh.”

“And when you woke up, she wasn’t there.” His story was so plausible, given the naïveté he elicited, that I’d forgotten I hadn’t planned to believe him. I was even filling in the gaps in my mind. He didn’t seem the type to attract women too often, so I imagined the vampire
young-looking and attractive enough that he’d want to impress her but not too much to be clearly out of his league. She also must have been very engaging.

“Of course not,” Trudy butted in. “Can you believe that? Completely bailed.”

I ignored her. “What did you talk about over those drinks? What did she look like?”

“Um, she was not too tall… maybe a little shorter than you.” I’m five-foot-three. “With this curly hair, to her shoulders. I think her eyes were hazel. They weren’t blue, anyway. I’d remember that.”

“And what you talked about?”

For the first time that night, I saw him smile. Obviously, there was something about this woman that—sorry for the obvious pun—sucked him in. But by the time he finished talking, the smile was gone. “Oh, everything. All sorts of stuff. But not really. You know how you have one of those conversations? Like, you know you never stopped talking but you can’t remember later on what you said? It was like that. She even told me her name when we met, but by the middle of the conversation I’d forgotten it because we were so swept up. But I know she joked a lot. She kept making up stories about just crazy stuff, and I totally believed her. And then she’d go, ‘I’m so joking,’ and I felt all embarrassed. Which I guess is why I thought she was pulling my leg with the, uh, the vampire thing.”

Wow, I thought to myself. This is just off the wall. Clearly this woman is no spring chicken. She had a plan, and an emotionally sadistic one. The whole sequence of events was deliberate. The only thing that remained ambiguous was whether she had chosen Moshe on purpose. She might have been looking for someone who was especially unlikely to actually want to be turned, or maybe that part was irrelevant. At best, she didn’t care. I wondered if the young man in front of me would have agreed to this transformation under other circumstances. My gut told me no.

“So, since then…” I began, urging him on to the next chapter of the story.

Predictably, Trudy took it on again. “So, since then he wasn’t eating anything good for him. Until I showed him how to catch stuff.” He did look a little less pasty than usual. When I first met him, I had assumed his pallor came from age and sunlessness, but if his story were true, then it would have been from quite the reverse, from being too young and inexperienced to take care of himself. Trudy relies on a few different food sources, most of them animal. One reason she’s made her abode in the tunnels below the college is that they’re completely infested with rats. From what I understand, however, squirrel is highly preferable, and if there is one thing every college campus in the U.S. I’ve been to has in common, it’s an overabundance of squirrels. Still, human blood is necessary at least some of the time to stay healthy and coherent, and I wondered whether she had shown him her police radio yet.

the events of this day to be continued...

Boxes Within Boxes

Originally written Saturday, December 10, 2005 (continued)

It was a premature decision, however, as not a half hour after sundown a knock sounded at the door of my flat. I opened it to find Trudy and her new best friend already wiping their feet on the mat. Inwardly, I rolled my eyes at the extent of her gullibility and the depth of the possible consequences. Outwardly, I merely said to Moshe, “Excuse us for a second,” and motioned to Trudy to come inside. I closed the door on the hallway and Moshe and pulled Trudy farther in. “Why did you bring him here? I can’t trust him enough to let him in.”

“It’s all right. He’s a good guy. And I really think he could use your help.”

“Help? Trudy, he clocked Richard.” She looked blank. “Museum Richard.” I’d forgotten they still haven’t met.

“No. I mean, I don’t know. But he maybe didn’t know he was doing it. He’s been forgetting things.”

“How convenient.”

She exhaled vocally in obvious exasperation with me. “Not convenient. For real.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me.”

“And you believe him? You believe a guy who can make you talk about your favorite Pink Floyd album when what you really want to know is why he stole a bedpan from a museum?”

“How’d you know we talked about Pink Floyd?”

This time I did roll my eyes. “I didn’t. I pulled it out of my ass. It’s not the point. Trude, he’s violent.”

“And if he is? You’re worried about violence why? Look, I just need you to hear his side of it, and if you don’t believe him then fine. We’ll go away.”

“And by that time he has access to my house.” It wasn’t myself I was worried about, it was the chunk of carved black Caribbean coral that I had hidden in a box within boxes in my bedroom closet and that Trudy didn’t yet know about. I weighed the circumstances: my excuse was getting weaker in Trudy’s eyes; not letting him in might give away the fact that the charm he sought was here; and I’d be meeting Richard soon for some reason pertaining to the object in question. I sighed and relented. “OK, whatever. Give me five minutes. Tell him I have a project I need to clear out of the way in here.”

Once Trudy was back in the hall with Moshe, I went to the closet and located Bella’s charm. I hadn’t handled it since the last time I moved, and I hadn’t paid close attention to it in far longer than that. To see it on its own, it looks remarkably unimpressive. A crescent moon shape that would barely measure two inches in diameter when full, with a sallow color and an unfinished surface. The feel of it is uncanny, though. As I held it in my palm, its temperature rose from the coolness of the closet floor to match my own body heat almost immediately. In less than a moment, I could barely feel it in my hand. I found a necklace with a long chain in my bathroom (I have too little jewelry to justify a jewelry box), pulled the pendant off, and drew it through one of the natural coral holes. I hung it around my neck and pulled on a sweater, the better to hide any protrusion or bulk it might create under my clothing. When I was satisfied that it wasn’t visible, I opened the front door and apologized to Moshe for making him wait.

“Come on in,” I said.

“I don’t think I’m ever gonna get used to that,” he muttered, clearly discomfited by the indignity of being physically restricted by an unseeable force. Even if, out of common courtesy, he would never choose to enter a house uninvited, I can still understand how having to wait for the invitation can be rather humbling. I had to hand it to him, though: if the neophyte routine were pure pretense, he deserved an award. He looked completely exhausted, or depressed, and he seemed to be avoiding eye contact with me as he entered the flat.

“You will,” Trudy assured him.

We sat down in the living room, I in the armchair and my guests perched uneasily on either end of the couch. “OK,” I began, “what’s going on?”

They looked at each other as if to decide who would go first. Trudy, it seemed, would be the mediator this evening. “First of all, he doesn’t remember almost any of the times he talked to you and me. He has like a piece of time missing when all those things happened.”

“It’s true,” he offered. “I just told her when my missing periods of time were, and she agreed that those were the times. But when she started telling me what happened, what I did, some of it sounded real familiar. Like I knew… like it’s in there.”

Trudy continued, “Yeah, I thought we should tell you that first. I know that kind of makes more questions like why it’s been happening and stuff. I thought maybe he’s got like split personalities or something. You got any ideas?”

I glanced at Moshe, who appeared exactly as defeated and resigned to such amateur psychiatric diagnoses as someone with no better explanation for his side of this strange set of occurrences would be. My gut said that dissociative disorder was not the explanation, but I had no alternatives to offer, so I simply said, “Yours is as good a suggestion as any. Assuming he’s telling the truth, of course.” He had to deal not only with humiliating rules of the supernatural he probably hadn’t believed in before they came to apply to him but also with my unrelenting distrust. In response to my (admittedly snide) comment, he tensed up and found another corner of the room to stare into. I’m not normally so outwardly antagonistic even when antagonism is justified; I wasn’t sure why I was making an effort to make my doubts known. Maybe I half-hoped I could push him into an act of aggression in order to confirm my suspicions about him. In addition, Trudy was right—more new questions than new answers would develop—but I didn’t know how we might go about resolving them right then, so I thought we might shift the subject for a moment. “But assuming that, what was it you thought I could help with?”

Moral Fabrications

Originally written Saturday, December 10, 2005

The day was fairly ordinary when it began. I received word that I have a new niece in Vancouver. Or, to be more accurate, a grand-niece with around seventeen greats in front. I made friends with her parents—that is to say, my sixteen-times-great grand-nephew and his wife—when I was visiting their fine city several years ago. I just happened to be behind them in line for a movie, during which I just happened to pick up the umbrella left by the young lady, whom we’ll call Ms. Gordon, when she just happened to leave it behind. I just happened to have parked next to them in the lot, which made it easy to return the umbrella and ask them to share a cup of coffee. Although we don’t have any professional interests in common, he being an accountant and she a paralegal, one has a tendency to accumulate a useful range of trivial knowledge over a great number of years so that it’s rarely difficult to find common ground of some sort. In this case, they also turned out to be dog show people with a small bevy of Yorkies at home. Thus, it was not terribly difficult to invent a childhood replete with beloved Yorkies as an inroad to deeper discussion. I don’t particularly enjoy being someone I’m not, not because I’m morally above a harmless fabrication but because the emotional investment one must pretend to place in the fabrication can be rather draining (especially when those asked to accept the fabrication are as lacking in charisma as Mr. and Ms. Gordon’s job titles would accurately suggest they are). However, I wasn’t trying to become the best of friends with the pair; I only wished to initiate an acquaintanceship that would justify an annual (or so) phone call or email to learn of the latest births, deaths, and marriages. I succeeded. And so I was able to stencil “Andrea Star Gordon, Dec. 1, 2005-” at the bottom of my ongoing genealogy this morning. She and her parents will probably never know.

Tracing my brother Paul’s direct lineage has been a hobby of mine since I first returned to Europe from the School many years ago. I had a few generations to catch up with, and I’ve never been sure I found everyone. It has hardly mattered, as the family tree is now so extensive that the missing will never be missed. Fortunately, means of travel and communication have developed along with population growth, so that tracking little Andrea Star and her other middle-class relations is easier than surveying the elders of a Polish farming village. Some—specifically, those living off both the books and the beaten path—still fall through the cracks, but few can boast the virtual family forest I’ve been able to record. I like to impress those who know my historic origins by allowing them to flip through the pages of the hefty bound volume, as they inevitably skim for familiar names. Old souls look for people they might have known; mortals look for the famous ones (there are some, mostly in the last century, during which minor notoriety was much more forthcoming than was once the case). Trudy once found someone she went to high school with in St. Louis in the early 1980s. The boys were excited to find several reality TV show contestants (as I said, notoriety has become much easier to come by in recent years).

Thus, as I said, the addition of a new name to the register is an ordinary and regular affair. The rest of the day’s events were not.

Richard emailed to tell me that Moshe had made another appearance at the museum Thursday night, shortly before closing. Thursdays are the one evening in the week on which the museum stays open until 8:30. (It occurred to me as an aside that it must be convenient for him that the days are so short this time of year; he wouldn’t be able to come to the museum during the summer early enough to see very much, at least not while it’s open.) “I found him in the nineteenth-century oil gallery looking at paintings,” Richard wrote. “I came up to him to talk to him. I think I wanted to talk to him about what he said to you last Saturday at the dance, but as soon as he looked at me I forgot it. It was like you said, we talked about art and stuff but not what I was trying to talk to him about. He left like normal but by the time I remembered what I wanted to say he was out the door. I followed him out and chased him to the parking lot. When I caught up with him he slugged me in the nose and broke it! He jumped in a car and drove off. I just got home from the emergency room.”

“And another thing,” he continued. “I figured out that one of the missing journals from last week was Victor Harrigan’s.” The name chilled me. He was the Louisiana planter who, for a time, considered my erstwhile traveling companion and entruster of a certain trinket to be his property. I tried to think of all he might have known about his slaves’ extracurriculars. It had been a small farm with an unpaid staff of only about half a dozen. Could he have known about Bella’s charm? Its purpose? How it worked?

Richard suggested a time, day, and place to meet so we can discuss the issue further, and he said to bring the voodoo charm. Finally, he noted, “I think your [sic] right, his distraction spells are getting better.” I don’t remember saying such a thing, but from my encounter last weekend and Richard’s in the meantime, it does sound as if Moshe’s ability to cloud his companion’s attention span is indeed growing more sophisticated. Rather than merely sending us into a foggy haze, he’s been permitting us the dignity of a seemingly natural conversation designed to divert us from the issue at hand, namely himself. There had been prior encounters during which conversations were held while under the influence, so to speak, but not when we knew we had something else we should be bringing up. And for him to be growing violent on top of it all…. This new pattern of influence had me considerably perturbed about Trudy’s experience at the mall. She seemed to be swallowing his hook—line, sinker, and all. Our most recent meetings with him (Trudy’s and mine, anyway) had seemed congenial and at times positive, but there was every reason to doubt that either of us had been in full command of our faculties when they took place. I decided I couldn’t rely on her to come to me with her assessment of old pasty face on her own and planned to pay her a visit that evening.

This day's events to be continued...

Romero, Sinatra, Bogart

Originally written Thursday, December 8, 2005

Patrick gave me yesterday’s update. I’d been unable to find Trudy because she’d gone to the mall with him. It was daytime when they left (evening when they returned), but Patrick drives an old VW bus, and the mall they went to has a parking garage. How Moshe gets to work, on the other hand, I have no idea. Maybe he never leaves. Hm… the undead spending their afterlife within the soul sucking confines of a shopping mall. Very George Romero. So anyway, they did end up finding him there. And as he was on Saturday night, he again seemed to be in a state of denial. Since he didn’t know who Patrick and Dennis were, as far as they were aware, Trudy approached and spoke with him alone, while the guys stood off to the side and watched.

According to Patrick, Moshe was playing a Sinatra standard when they found him, but I’m not entirely sure Patrick can tell Sinatra from Gershwin, Porter, or even Gilbert and Sullivan. Nonetheless, we can imagine it was Sinatra-like. Anyway, he says Trudy sauntered up to him, leaned her elbow on the edge of the grand piano, and asked, “So… what’s a vampire like you doing in a place like this?” (This sounded like an embellishment, too, but it was Trudy, and she does have a campy side.) He apparently was able to keep playing without missing a beat despite being flummoxed by Trudy’s sudden appearance.

“You’re the second person in a week to call me that. Who are you?”

“I’m the chick you peeping-tommed in the tunnels at the college. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our special evening together already. But since we were never properly introduced, I’m Trudy.”

Patrick says that here, Moshe drew the song to a premature but professionally improvised close to give her his undivided attention. Or to make sure he had hers. “Trudy. All right. What’s going on here? Your dancer friend—what’s her name? Marya?—She’s busy today so she sent you here to harass me instead?”

“Hey, fella, you’re the one doing the harassing. And now that we’re calling you on it, you’re making like you don’t remember a damn thing.”

“‘Cause it didn’t happen. Please leave me alone.” He turned away and was about to start playing again, but his job held him captive there, and Trudy persisted. She was apparently channeling her inner film noirist, as was evident in her next move. She pointed to the cuff of his blazer and said:

“Where’s your button?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, I know where it is. But I kinda want to know if you do. Where’d you lose your button?” It seems that it had come off in her hand when she’d run into him previously. Because of that thing he’d been doing that all of a sudden he’s not doing anymore—the mock-hypnotism—she hadn’t even realized she was holding it until long after he’d left, at which point she’d dropped it in her pocket and forgotten about it until this moment.

“I… I don’t know. I didn’t realize it was missing.”

She put it on the piano in front of him. “I tore it off of you when I caught you spying on me.”

He stared at the button, the piano keys, his hands. “When did this happen?”

“Two, three weeks ago. Before Thanksgiving. At night. Past twelve. Why? Your memory getting jogged?”

His elbows hit the keys with an unharmonious thud as he held his eyes in his palms. “No. I wish it would be.”

Trudy continued, “I don’t know what’s going through your mind, dude. Maybe you have amnesia or multiple personalities or something.” I always thought Trudy must have watched too much TV before moving underground, but these were actually becoming feasible possibilities. “I can’t force information out of you that you’re too effed up to remember.”

He shot her a gee, thanks look.

“So I think there are things we need to figure out.” Patrick saw her sit down on the piano seat next to Moshe, her back to the keyboard. At that range, they were speaking too closely for Patrick to pick up the words, so Trudy told him later a little of what transpired. He has the feeling she didn’t tell him everything, though. What he knows is that she decided to discuss the other touchy subject with Moshe—his vampirism—so she asked him why he was so squeamish about being recognized. They spoke briefly, and then Trudy offered to be available to discuss it further at a better time and place.

I’m really not sure how I feel about all of this. On the one hand, Moshe could be the brand new immortal Trudy might be thinking he is—at least, crossed my mind as well when he reacted as he did to my recognition. On the other hand, he could be bluffing. I have trouble believing he’d be so isolated from others that he’d be needing her to hold his hand now. Who made him, and where are they now? How do we know we can believe him? I’m very torn, but I’m going to have to wait to hear from Trudy about how things go. I wouldn’t have envisioned her as the support group type, but human (and non-human) resources are currently at a minimum. She could also just be buttering him up, since the strong-arming tactic clearly isn’t getting us anywhere.

Contrast

Originally written Wednesday, December 7, 2005

Sunday morning, I tried calling Richard, but he didn’t get back to me until late in the evening, when the events of the dance weekend ended. He said he’d noticed Moshe at the dance this time but hadn’t gotten to speak with him himself. He was rather intrigued to hear about our discussion, especially, it seems, the part that took place after I’d come back from defrosting the car. He said he was extremely busy, though, so I let him go with an assurance that he’d contact me if anything else relevant came up.

I sent Patrick and Dennis out on a mission. Or to be more specific, they told me they were going gift shopping and I asked them to keep an eye out for a pianist matching Moshe’s description while they’re at the mall. In fact, there are several malls in this area, and I’ve encouraged them to search all of them for as long as they need to. I’m not fond of consumer culture, so as long as I have a couple of teenage boys who aren’t as grumpy and cynical as I am, I won’t need to do the footwork myself. Or at least not that part. Anyway, that was just this afternoon—they both had their last final exams of the term today—so I may not hear back from them right away.

Meanwhile, I decided to head into the Applewood district again. With all of the distractions and excitement around Saturday night, I’d almost forgotten about that other lead we had. Trudy wasn’t home, so I tried figuring out the coordinates based on her description of the surroundings. I followed the 62 bus route and parked near a diner on Main St. There were also a White Castle and a couple of other fast food chains, but a diner was what Trudy had mentioned, so I figured this one for a good starting point. I started down the side street that made the diner’s corner with Main St. As I looked up at the buildings, it occurred to me how pointless this trip would probably be. It would be nice if some kind of sign would suddenly appear or I’d just happen to run into someone of consequence, but I didn’t even know if I were on the right street. I don’t lack patience, but what I needed was a clue.

There were lights on in some windows. Most had shades or blinds drawn, while through a few a TV was visible in the corner of a room, or a wall full of books or artwork, or the joint of molding where the ceiling meets the wall. In one, a cat looked back down at me between the pane and the curtain. I was conscious of being a voyeur, but I felt oddly comfortable about it, as if I were invisible from my vantage point on the sidewalk. The street was uncommonly quiet for this town, and I began to think of New York. The paradox of Manhattan is that while the major avenues are as noisy as they are visually overstimulating, there are small streets and alleys that seem to exist in pockets of silence. Footfalls and the rumble of the occasional taxicab seem to sound without echo. A tap or a stomp from five, six feet beneath your ears can seem to be miles away. I’ve had homes in Manhattan since long before rent control, and it’s those pockets, those spaces of facilitated meditation, that will continue pulling me back; they’re difficult to find elsewhere. I’m drawn to contrast and contradiction.

I was jolted out of my musings by a figure in a third-floor window, and all at once I became aware that I was indeed not an invisible voyeur but a highly conspicuous spy. A light behind the figure left her (it appeared to be a woman) in silhouette and probably inhibited a clear view of me down below. As she lifted her arm up and a moment later switched off the light, I ducked my head to pretend I had not been deliberately scanning apartments. Although it would only be by great coincidence that the woman in the window would know me from anywhere, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to hide my face nonetheless.

I continued down the street to the next corner, circled around the block, and returned to the diner. I sat down in a booth by a window, ordered a cup of tea, and sat watching the street for as long as I could get away with on a $1.50 check. I didn’t see Moshe or Trudy or a trio of leather-clad, frizzy pink stoners or whoever else I thought I might be looking for. Still, as I headed home, I considered the hidden elements of productivity in the outing: I became more familiar with the area, I determined that nothing significant took place tonight, and I found a pocket of silence in my current home town. I also learned that there is yet another eatery in the area that serves next to nothing of use to me, that midnight crowds in Applewood consist primarily of college freshmen for whom a lack of a curfew is still a novelty, and that White Castle is sadly more popular than the mom ‘n’ pop equivalent.

Recognition

Originally written Saturday, December 3, 2005 (continued)

Because my own questions had gone unanswered. I nearly slapped my forehead in frustration. Instead, I turned the car off (figuring at least I’d have a warm, de-iced car when it was time to leave) and rushed back to the dance hall as fast as the slippery, not-yet-salted parking lot would allow me. I found Moshe in the hallway by the restrooms. No one else was around. Spinning him around by the elbow to face me, I cut right to the chase, almost afraid I’d forget again.

“What are you looking for? What did you take from the museum?”

He looked completely startled. “What?!”

“The museum. Pre-Civil War things. Why have you been following me and my friends?”

“Following you? Which friends? What are you talking about?”

He stared at me. I stared at him. “Trudy and Richard. The tunnels, the museum, the dance. And the movie theater.”

“Who? When? Huh? I don’t know those people. I mean, I… I danced with you a couple of weeks ago.”

“Yeah.”

“And I talked with you tonight. I’ve never followed you anywhere.”

“You didn’t sit behind me at the theater last week? Pride and Prejudice?”

“I went to that movie, yeah. But I don’t remember seeing you there. I definitely didn’t follow you. Look, I don’t know what this is all about. I don’t know if you just assume that every guy you dance with here is a stalker or something, but I… I better go.” He turned and started heading for the lobby, saying as he went, “You’re a nutcase.”

“And you,” I said to his back, “are the weirdest goddamn vampire I’ve ever friggin’ met!”

It took him less than a second to have me against the wall, his arm pinning me across the chest. “How did you know that?”

So I guessed it was my turn to say, “Huh?”

“That I’m a…” he actually looked embarrassed as he spoke the words in a whisper, “a vampire.”

I wanted to say, duh, but I’m nothing if not respectful of the idiocy of others. “Um, I guess it’s a vibe. Clues. You know, you meet enough vampires, you learn to recognize them.”

“You know others?” His eyes, nearly saucers, quickly narrowed. “Are you one?”

“Uh… a few, here and there. And no. No, I’m not a vampire. I’m… something else.”

At that point, the dance on the other side of the wall finished up, and people started streaming out of the doors and toward the restrooms. Moshe released his hold on me, the hallway filled, and within minutes we found ourselves surrounded by friendly mutual acquaintances. I had it in mind that we would continue with our encounter when we got clear of the minglers, but that plan must have slipped away in the meantime, because I found myself in my car, halfway home with all of my goodbyes said and a vague memory of a naïve immortal himself getting lost in the crowd.

Second Guesses

Originally written Saturday, December 3, 2005

I arrived at the contra dance tonight curious about whether we would see our elusive friend there. This is a big dance weekend, not part of the usual schedule. The Friday and Saturday evening dances run from 7:00 to 11:30, there are workshops during the day, and the tickets are special event-priced tickets. Since I do indeed have a life beyond dancing, I went only for tonight’s evening portion (Richard, as I’ve mentioned, was volunteering and had been there for much of the weekend). Advanced choreography, experienced dancers. I saw a few acquaintances from other parts of the state and further afield, regulars on the extended circuit; a student from one of my classes was there, and we were equally surprised at never having encountered each other at a dance before. For the most part, the first few hours made for a lovely evening.

Moshe didn’t appear until around 10:30, and when I saw him I wasn’t sure whether his presence confirmed or refuted our prior suspicions about him. On the one hand, spending $25 on a ticket to dance for one hour suggested an ulterior motive. On the other hand, he was actually being social. He danced and conversed with a number of people, including my student, who seemed to know him (when I asked her later, she said they belong to the same temple, which I thought was interesting). At one point, we were in adjacent dance sets, and he said hi. I smiled, said hello back, and then realized that I hadn’t entered the distracted daze I was half expecting.

The contra ended at 11:30, and there were going to be waltzes and other couples dances for a while. I’m not that crazy about those, so I usually try to escape as soon as the waltzing starts (I can spend an evening obsessively pursuing potential partners for the contras, but as soon as a waltz is called, I feel like the most reluctantly popular woman in the room). Richard, however, quite likes them, so I had a bit of a dilemma in deciding whether to wait for him so we could touch base or to call him tomorrow morning. I had begun picking up my stuff at the side of the dance hall when Moshe approached. Now, that was a change in circumstances, I thought. It wouldn’t be the last time it crossed my mind tonight.

It began with small talk: what time we’d each gotten there (I pretended not to have noticed when he came in), whether we were attending workshops, etc. I continued to feel lucid throughout this line of questioning.

“I play the piano at the mall, so I couldn’t get here until after I finished up.”

“What do you play? Probably holiday songs these days?”

“As little of those as I can get away with,” he laughed.

I laughed, too. “I imagine those get old pretty quickly.” But it made me wonder in exactly what capacity he did play the piano. I don’t shop much, but I couldn’t remember much call for pianists at malls.

“Do you play music or sing or anything?”

Hmm. I shouldn’t have been sure how to approach this one. Did he know about the karaoke? Or musical involvements in my less recent past? I just stuck with the current story, but it was more out of habit than concern. He had me completely at ease, and I probably could have said anything. But I generally don’t let on to new people that I’m Gifted—it’s safer to pass as a transitive soul like Richard, when I believe I’m being recognized as amortal at all—and I told him only about singing karaoke and the occasional open mic and fooling around on a couple of instruments. This is, of course, what I would have told him if I’d had time to reflect, but I wasn’t quite functioning on such a reflective plane.

The conversation continued on that comfortable, casual level. I told him what I did for a living and how long I’d been contra dancing (in the current generation, that is—just in case), and we even delved into some political talk. I never felt like I was under any kind of magical influence; portions like the music question seemed to flow from me as if I were just a little tipsy. Nevertheless, we carried on until he mentioned that the weather had worsened while I’d been in the dance hall, and the cars were all encased with ice outside. I headed out to start defrosting, and while I chipped away at the windshield with the scraper, I reviewed the past twenty minutes in my mind. Obviously there was no truth spell, since I’d skated through the usual partial homages to honesty that (sadly or no) have become second nature to me. Likewise, I hadn’t gone blank upon hearing the first few words from his mouth. But something still felt odd. Why should I feel strange about having a perfectly normal conversation with someone?

This day's events to be continued...

Notes on Camp

Originally written Friday, December 2, 2005

Tonight was sushi-oke night with my department. Sushi, sake, karaoke, the whole works, at this kitschy Japanese restaurant at the edge of town. Fortunately, no one has made us squirm through “Turning Japanese” yet—it’s more Trudy’s sense of humor than a humanities professor’s—but they’re all Generation X-ers, and you just know it’s crossed various minds at various points. I invited Richard along, since he’d best appreciate my karaoke indulgences. I also wanted to discuss extracurriculars with him if we got the chance. He’s volunteering with an all-weekend contra dance this weekend, so he came by after that let out.

I love singing, and I’ve always been a good performer. I spent my last re-gen as a musician (various stringed instruments), music teacher (theory and harmony), and fairly prolific songwriter in the Greenwich Village scene. I only ever put out one album myself, and not a very successful one, but several of my songs have been recorded by better-known artists, to say nothing of a good number of collaborations. The Japanese place we go to is my favorite because some of my songs are on the list, including one from my own record. A sappy little political ditty it was. It got sporadic airplay on the more edgy local FM stations during Vietnam (that is, before FM became the new AM) but otherwise came and went, barely creating a blip on the public’s radar. Still, I was excited to find it on the karaoke list—really, that must be some kind of sign of mainstream success—and I sing it every so often, hoping that someday someone will come up to me and say how much I sound like the original. My ego doesn’t really need stroking, but I certainly don’t mind when it is. That might have been why I brought Richard: I know he’s heard the original before because I’ve played it for him, so that meant someone wasn’t off the hook. Hehe….

So Richard says there is no charm like mine in the museum’s archives. There’s no record of one, either, so if it had been there but was stolen, the evidence of its presence had to have been taken, too. He says there are a few other artifacts from the same time period missing, however, although none seems terribly consequential. Birth, marriage, and death certificates, a couple of diaries, and for some reason a brass bedpan. He could see no connection among any of the missing items except that they all predate the end of the Civil War, although it is true that all we know about the items is what little is written on them in the database. Richard has only been at the museum for a matter of weeks, so it isn’t as if he’d seen them before they disappeared. Likely their absence would have gone unnoticed if he hadn’t had reason to look. Certainly, the investigation created more questions than it answered.

Anyway, the karaoke was fun as always. This time I made sure to sit next to Jeanine. She’s cute, with a short red pixie haircut and trendy glasses. She’s a tad on the skinny side, but it gives her a lanky posture that’s endearingly faux-insecure, with a habit of holding herself in a way that makes you think she’s only telling you half of what she knows. Her research focus is philosophical constructs in late-19th/early-20th century literature. I thought that sounded fairly narrow the first time I heard about it, but to hear her speak about it is something else. She can explain how threads of nihilism in Gilman emerge from colonialist travel narratives by Kipling and others in a way that befuddles me, not because I don’t understand it but because I don’t understand how I hadn’t drawn the connections myself. And I have to say, me being out-thought by anyone in this field is unusual and, I confess, intriguing. On the other hand, she’s hardly a born singer: her taste is wretched—Neil Young is somewhere close to the bottom of my list—and I didn’t know it was possible to sound more uneven, bored, and cranky (simultaneously) on “Harvest Moon” than he does. But again, even her flaws are oddly charming, and I have the utmost admiration for anyone who casts humility to the wind to sing karaoke poorly.

Legacy

Originally written Thursday, December 1, 2005

On the Underground Railroad, I was going to say. It made me think of something, and I had to get in touch with Richard in a hurry. He’d said the other night that Moshe was interested in that part of the museum collection, and there’s a particular piece that, well, I don’t know if it’s actually at the museum or not, but it’s out there somewhere. Two of them, in fact. They’re not in the same place at the moment, that much I know, and that’s a good thing. But it would explain why he’s snooping around here and why he’s snooping whom.

I’m being cryptic. I’m sorry. It’s just that despite the anonymity of the internet medium, this info is a tad too confidential to be fully forthcoming about. So I’ll try to fill you in with the basics. If things resolve as I hope, I’ll be able to tell you a more complete story. One part of a three-part charm was put into my safekeeping by a West Indian slave named Bella whom I helped escape northward in the 1850s. Let’s just say that if someone’s looking to put all three back together, we’re in for some nasty weather. That is, at least, assuming that the power of the voodoo legacy the charms contain is as strong as the priestess told me it is. And if there’s one thing I believe in, it’s the power of legacy.

Anyway, Richard says that the item is not in the museum’s display collection, but he’d explore the archives for it in the next few days. If nothing else, the revelation last night probably spared you from reading my droning and complaining about my past. Still, all moments of our lives connect; it’s just that mine are particularly broadly distributed.

I feel like I should note one more thing. It was probably brought on by my conversation with Patrick and Dennis, but that night—the 29th—I dreamed of Stina. I should have known better than to claim that I’m no longer affected by her death, because every time I start to think it, the universe reminds me otherwise. In the dream, I’m in the middle of the woods, in a clearing that my less conscious mind has prevented me from forgetting since I lost her from the very spot centuries ago. This time, the clearing is located in Patrick and Dennis’s backyard. The fungus-covered log, the circle of saplings, and the charred remains of the bonfire are all in the same spots, but there is an upstairs window visible above the branches. Patrick comes out with a bag of marshmallows and starts sticking them on his fingertips and holding his hand over the extinguished bonfire. Dennis starts yelling at him from the upper window about chocolate. The marshmallows won’t melt without chocolate, he says. Then Stina comes out from nowhere, stands on top of the burnt logs, and before I can reach her, she catches fire and a moment later disappears in flames. Dennis is then by Patrick’s side, both of them happily eating their s’mores, but my attention is focused on the smoky air where her calm, brave, cat-like eyes had been just seconds before. It doesn’t feel like a nightmare (since students of the Grey Orchid generally have lucid dreams at will, we don’t have nightmares; even Patrick has passed that level of training); but I’m left with a sense of frustration because she’s vanished again. She always vanishes.

Other Four-Letter Words

Originally written Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Patrick and I were planning on heading out to the Applewood district this evening, hoping to figure out the address based on Trudy’s description of the surrounding area. It’s a mostly residential neighborhood, mostly small, old apartment buildings, with a strip of warehouses on the side toward the river. There’s a mix of working class families and poor starving artists who like the short walk to the main street (which isn’t actually called Main St, but I think I’ll refer to it as that here) and its strip of coffee shops, thrift stores, and laundromats with pubs attached.

Anyway, we were planning on heading out there but at the last minute he called me to say he had a cold, or the flu, or something making him want to cut his nose off and would I please come over and teach him how to turn the nerve endings off so he could do that. I told him no, but I’d come over and start training him to eject the germs from his system. Apparently, he’d caught something from his roommate Dennis, whom I’d suspected was becoming more than a roommate to him, and they as much as confirmed it to me this evening. Patrick is an open-minded young man, and college can often present options you don’t realize were there in other contexts. But I’ve been pleased to see that it doesn’t appear to be just a hooking-up thing. Watching the two of them interact is one of the sweetest experiences I’ve had with a pair of 18-year-old guys.

We’d started working on opening up communication with the white blood cells already, so this was merely an extension on that lesson (and I have to say that despite the complications the modern world has created with reducing attention spans and all that, there has certainly been an advantage in the medical field providing a more complete set of vocabulary and a more accurate sense of bodily function than we had in my student days). Of course we didn’t get terribly far for all our work tonight, but Patrick knows how long it will take before he can truly see results, and he did admit that working on it actively made him feel a little better, even if there was actually no improvement. At any rate, he wasn’t about to pull a Van Gogh on his sniffer anymore.

So he and Dennis said they’d told their parents about their relationship over Thanksgiving weekend. Dennis’s parents (who live in Massachusetts) were surprised, but he’s pretty certain they’ll adjust. Patrick’s parents blamed me. I don’t even know what Patrick has told them about me, but apparently they know 1) that I’m a woman who has had relationships with women, and 2) that I act as a mentor of some sort to their son. He tried to reason with them that it made little sense that a female mentor would “recruit” a male mentee in any way they were doubtless too scared to imagine, but they wouldn’t accept it. I suggested that they probably were just having a hard time processing it, and they need someplace to focus their blame. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, many times, from varying degrees of proximity.

I guess they were in a mushy mood tonight—they were sharing their first cold, after all—because they started asking about my love life. I suppose I can understand why they’d think I might have eons of romantic stories to tell. It’s not like Grey Orchid is a monastic order with a vow of celibacy. The Gifted, of course, are required to render ourselves infertile (the better to focus our energies on students, who are old enough not to require constant supervision and of whom, in the old days, there were usually more than one per educator), but the teachings are conspicuously mum about sex itself. I can certainly dredge up second-hand stories of amortal romance, souls who remained coupled as they moved from rebirth to rebirth, mortal loves lost as their old-souled mates lived on, and so forth.

My own have been rather pedestrian by comparison: I’ve had attachments and involvements, and eventually each one ends. Sex doesn’t get old (although sexual partners sometimes do), but there just aren’t many people who hold my attention, and over time, it’s not unusual to get pickier. In the early years, I had a series of marriages of convenience in order to function as a woman in Ming China, Renaissance Europe, and colonial America, but I haven’t had to do that in a long time, as circumstances become more and more amendable to unmarried women. I’ve had a few lifetime-long relationships (the other person’s lifetime, that is) that were indeed about love and sometimes passion, but for the most part finding a partner doesn’t consume me. Also, the various influences that drive the sense of urgency most people have about coupling—procreation and a sense of mortality—simply don’t apply to me. I operate on a different timeline.

The only one I’ve had that maybe once made a really good story was my first love, Kristina, back when I was still mortal. So I told them about that one. Unsurprisingly, they thought it was a fairy tale I’d made up. I’m so far removed from it that if it hadn’t led me to the School of the Grey Orchid, I’d probably think I made it up, too. Vicious vampire tyrant, forbidden love, attempted flight from said tyrant, said love kidnapped by tyrant’s lackeys, and a trading caravan with room for one more, bound for the Silk Road to China… followed by centuries of never-avenged guilt, naturally, since I was the one who put her in danger.

By now, those key words and phrases stand out much more to me than the experience itself does. It’s ceased to be reality and has become nothing but a story that I probably wouldn’t even remember if I weren’t asked to repeat it every so often. The emotions are still there when I recall her, from the ecstasy to the remorse, but the sights, sounds, and smells that used to be Stina are abstracted by those of the thousands of others I’ve known in between. My most exciting stories have little to do with romance, yet mortals seem to be more drawn to the stories of love and sex than to those of the Algonquin Round Table, or about my first husband’s circle of Elizabethan playwright friends, or about being a conductor on the

Not the Same Forever

Originally written Monday, November 28, 2005

I nearly ran Trudy down as I was coming out of a lecture at the multicultural center this evening. I love Trudy to death, but at that moment I realized for the first time the hazards of growing so close to her that she could find me that easily by scent. She won’t be the same person forever.

Anyway, the lecture had been given by a very prominent African-American writer, and the friends I was walking out of the building with were all black. I was able to make introductions between Trudy and my colleagues easily enough, but as soon as we were out of human earshot, she said, “So, you must have been like a drop of milk in a bowl of raisins tonight, huh?”

Now, I’ve already mentioned that I’ve spent time in the American South during slavery. So of course you know that what Trudy said was nothing compared to what I experienced regularly for more than a generation. Yet I still feel disappointed when someone I know sticks their foot in their mouth and doesn’t even realize it. Before Richard was Charlotte, he was a slave himself. However, he’s white in his current rebirth, so Trudy would probably think nothing of making comments in front of him, either. She seems to think racism is only racism if it takes place in front of someone it applies to. I started to rethink the plan I had for Operation Moshe. But then she said, “I have some info on old pasty-face.” I felt a fiery blush start to develop under my skin and stopped it before it became visible. Once again, I probably shouldn’t have used a nickname like that in front of her. It’s a little bit better than “the Jewish vampire,” but when I hear it in my head and in my voice it sounds satirical and chiding; when I hear Trudy say it, it sounds petty and disrespectful. Is that my academic elitism taking hold? Or is it because that really is how she means it?

She continued: “I went out to a car accident at a freeway off-ramp last night. Wasn’t there soon enough to get to the bodies, but on my way back up here I saw our friend heading north on the 62” (a bus), “and I got off at his stop with him. I saw him go into this apartment building in the Applewood district and come out like twenty minutes later, smiling, with this paper bag.”

“Where’d he go?”

“Don’t know. The way he was going I wasn’t gonna be upwind of him anymore. I didn’t want to take my chances so I stayed put. Wanted to see if anyone else came out.”

“And?”

“Only this bunch of stoners heading toward the diner on the corner. Two guys with leather jackets and a chick with frizzy pink hair.”

“Mortals?”

“Far as I know. You know groups.”

What she meant was, when people are in groups, their scents mingle so that vampires can’t always tell them apart. I obviously don’t rely on the same criteria for recognition, so I just gave a shrugging, head-shaking, whateverish, “Sure.”

“So I just went home. I thought you’d want to know. Oh, and I was out there for like three hours hanging out.”

That’s fairly typical of her. Wants to get whatever kind of acknowledgement she thinks she deserves. She definitely deserved this, though, so I just thanked her and asked if she could remember the address or if she could show me sometime. We thought we might go right then, but at that moment an ambulance sped by and turned at the next light. Trudy pulled out a radio I didn’t know she’d been carrying and turned it on to hear about another car accident. She cut our conversation short to run in the ambulance’s direction. I headed home to sleep on this new information.

By Association

Originally written Saturday, November 26, 2005

Richard and I had a nice dinner and a movie tonight, full of nostalgia. Richard doesn’t have regenerations—or re-gens—like I have, he has rebirths, which make it difficult to keep in touch over the generations. Thus, this is only the second of his lifetimes in which we’ve been acquainted. The first was in New Orleans in the early nineteenth century. So it was fairly serendipitous that a movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, a novel we’d both read and that we discussed at the Café Montserrat on Burgundy Street, has recently opened in theaters. Over dinner (French-Creole), we talked about the post-Katrina New Orleans and how much we’d both like to contribute to its reconstruction. There also seemed a bitterness to the fact that it was the novel that thrived and the city (to say nothing of the café, which closed even before Richard’s—then Charlotte’s—death) that will never quite be the same. Then we went off on an existential tangent about rebirth and regeneration and the lovely analogies we could make with cities and books.

The movie was just delightful, and I couldn’t have asked for a better companion. The book was never a great favorite of mine in the sense of standing out above other great works of literature, but the personal associations enhanced the experience, and Keira Knightley was quite good. I was so caught up in the pleasure of seeing an old friend again that I completely forgot to talk to him about Moshe. In fact, from the dinner and the wine and the unrestrained conversation and, of course, the movie (seeing movies in theaters has the same effect on me as engaged meditation), I was taken very much by surprise when I stood up after the closing credits, turned around in response to the feeling of a looming presence, and found old pasty-face standing directly behind us. I stumbled backward and nearly fell over the stadium seats at my knees, but Richard caught me in time.

“Moshe,” I said, as I felt the blood drain from my face. He nodded in a way that could have been a greeting or a confirmation.

“You know Moshe?” asked Richard.

I looked at him. “From the dance last week. You know him from someplace else?”

“He was at the museum yesterday. I was returning a piece to a display, and he… You were at the dance?” Moshe nodded again. “Huh. I don’t remember you. But I guess I mostly remember the ladies.” Richard tried to chuckle at his own light humor, but the gaze from Moshe’s quiet eyes seemed to crush the attempt.

Trying to rescue the moment, I said, “Moshe, Richard and I were thinking of grabbing some coffee, dessert. You busy now? Feel like coming?”

He shook his head slightly and replied, “I just want to—”

“To see?” I asked, remembering what Trudy had said. But by the time I was finished with the phrase, he was no longer in front of us. I turned to Richard to see him mirroring my confusion and then looked down the theater steps just as Moshe turned the corner past an usher with a broom. I pushed past Richard and started after the vampire, following mostly by time-honed instinct and rationale, as he was nowhere to be seen. I heard Richard hurrying behind me, not understanding my urgency. Sure enough, as we rushed outside through the rear of the theater, I could just glimpse of him disappearing into a sewer. I stopped then, since tracking a vampire on his own terrain isn’t easy, and anyway, traveling around a smelly, messy sewer was probably not going to be worthwhile, since I still wasn’t sure what to say or do if I caught him. “What did he do at the museum, Rick?”

“He was interested in the Underground Railroad items and some of the other relics from the antebellum south.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“Anything? You mean did he speak? Yeah, of course. He said he’d known someone who told him some stories about that period, and he wanted to get a better feel for the, uh, historical context.” His relaxed expression grew more tense. “But that’s all I can remember too clearly. I don’t know what else he said. Well, maybe meanings or something, but not—not words.”

“Is it like you were on auto-pilot?” Richard can talk about certain historical eras as if he were reciting the alphabet.

“Huh. Yeah. Yeah, it was. Is. I don’t know if it’s how it was or how I remember it.”

“Well, I think he’s stalking us. And I think he has some magic thing going on.”

“You mean that hypnosis thing?”

“It’s not hypnosis.” I can’t be hypnotized, and Richard knows it. I am, however, vulnerable to magic and such.

“Oh yeah. So is that why… um, stalking you and me?”

“And Trudy. The young vampire in the campus tunnels. Friend of mine. We’re just trying to get a handle on him right now. He comes, he sees, he goes. We don’t know if he’s watching us ‘cause we’re old souls or if it’s something more personal. But these things can’t be a coincidence anymore.”

I also debriefed him about what we knew or suspected about his risk factor, which may be greater than we thought it was, since we’re becoming able to put the pieces together about his ability to distract or divert attention with a few words. Richard and I said goodnight, sleep tight. We or I will be in contact with Trudy so that we can maybe track him farther next time. Regardless of whether we’re looking to actually converse with him, finding where he lives might give us some clues for figuring out what his deal is.

Thankful

Originally written Thursday, November 24, 2005

I spent half the day grading and half the day cooking. I have a few old friends who like to call me on Thanksgiving, and I spent some time speaking with them—Aunt Elizabeth (who’s not actually my aunt, obviously; we just call her that), who lives in California and whom I’ll be visiting in several weeks, and Ian, a workaholic who lives conveniently close to Aunt Elizabeth. They’re both good friends from college, from my current regeneration.

I made a vegan tofurky pot pie and a sweet potato cole slaw. I was pretty happy, actually, to make these things and know they might get eaten. This was the first fully veg Thanksgiving I’ve been to the whole time I’ve been in the United States. And although I make food for myself every year and enough to share, my non-veg companions rarely eat more than a polite bite or two. I can chalk it up solely to bias, since traditional Thanksgiving food is so bland that it baffles me that they could possibly imagine that vegetarian food—my vegetarian food—is going to be more so. But they do. Almost without fail, they do. Even after tasting it. Tradition is more important to patriotic Americans than a truly pleasurable meal. I’m convinced of it. It’s the only explanation for such mindless chauvinism.

But this year, of course, is different. It was at the home of Cas, a friend from the department. His girlfriend Emmy and our other colleague Jeanine were there, as well. So we had a nice, small meal, in terms of company size anyway. There was enough food to feed the four of us for a week and enough mulled wine for, well, the night I guess, since we finished it off. I don’t know Cas too well, so I was glad to spend some time with him. And I don’t know Jeanine at all. As junior faculty, we’re all constantly busy, trying to do too much (and knowing you never can do too much) so that we can ensure our positions here six or seven years from now. I can’t be sure—I have the tendency toward false positives in this area—but I thought Jeanine might have been flirting with me a little. It could also, of course, have been the mulled wine.

Trudy was over after dark. The others questioned why she hadn’t arrived in time for dinner and would she still like leftovers, and she made up a prior engagement excuse, inventing a church and a volunteering gig and a whole feast of donated food. That was good thinking. I probably would have gone with a medically restricted diet requiring her to eat before coming, but then she would have had to abstain from the alcohol or deal with skeptical looks, and I’m sure she wouldn’t have appreciated that.

The highlight of the evening came when we dug into the entertainment that was me and Cas’s reason for deciding to GiveThanks together, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is a guilty pleasure for me. I know the phrase “guilty pleasure” suggests there’s something wrong with it that makes it guilty, but that’s not exactly the way I mean it. It’s a very well done show. But I don’t enjoy it for the same reason many others do. This was Trudy’s first time seeing it, and it’s always wonderful to share it with someone else with an insider’s perspective. Imagine a film production company from a foreign country trying to make a movie about the U.S. without any consultation from Americans and without a single person on the creative team ever having been here. Some things are likely to be right because of existing media and the myths it perpetuates, but many things—often the elements most at the core of the project—are likely to be fundamentally and hilariously wrong. I’ve looked at other vampire universes in pop culture—Anne Rice and all things Dracula—and some are more accurate than Buffy and the more fantasy-driven Angel, but these are the ones I find most entertaining, largely because they have relatable characters and are well-written.

But mostly it’s because every so often there’s a line or a plot point or a piece of speculation that hits startlingly close to reality, sometimes nailing it on the head in a way that it functions almost as a note of reassurance that someone on the creative team knows the truth but also knows the unspoken rules that bind the truth to secrecy. I am, of course, breaking some of those rules by making this journal available to the public, but I hardly expect it to enjoy the exposure of a long-running network TV program.

So anyway, Trudy chuckled along with me and exchanged sidelong glances with regard to some of the more humorous indulgences, like the bumpy vampire make-up faces, the hooey with the crosses and holy water, and the presto-change-o fighting skills they’re all re-born with (which the show makes fun of itself for periodically, as well). “Must come from that ‘demon’ that takes up residence in the human’s body, huh?” she giggled when I drove her home later tonight. There’s a component of vanity in the draw a lot of us have to that show. We want to see what other people think of us. Of course there’s no one like me in the series—I guess vampires are sexier than ancient eastern philosophy—but there’s still plenty of basis for identification and, therefore, appeal to the aforementioned vanity.

But oh yeah, before I forget. I did ask Cas and Emmy and Jeanine to let me know if they have any kind of encounter with a quiet yet disquieting man with peeping tom tendencies. Trudy and I stressed that he’s probably harmless but that the uncanny coincidence of our consecutive meetings with him recommended concern.

Wanting to See

Originally written Wednesday, November 23, 2005

This is a light work week because of Thanksgiving, so I went after class to drop in on Trudy in her new living space, but once again her belongings were missing. I spent half an hour wandering the tunnels until she found me in the main corridor near the quad dorms, acting rather irate. I asked her what happened.

“Your friend from the dance.”

“Richard?”

“Who’s Richard? No. The one you asked me about. The Jewish vampire.”

Oops. I hadn’t meant to objectify him that way, especially to someone with questionable biases like Trudy. I guess I wasn’t the only one struck by it. “Moshe.”

“Yeah.”

“You saw him?”

“I don’t think I saw as much of him as he saw of me. Last night. I was in my room, and I don’t know how long he was there, but I looked up and he was there. Watching me.”

Trudy’s room for the past several days was a sizeable, otherwise currently unused storage closet branching off of one of the more remote tunnels. It didn’t have an actual door, but pipes and pillars and shelving units provided a decent amount of privacy from the few passersby that might have come that way. And because the tunnel was rather remote—I wouldn’t have thought to look down it if Trudy hadn’t led me to it from elsewhere—passersby were rare and, almost without exception, deliberate.

I widened my eyes in concern, curiosity, surprise, and she continued: “I chased after him, and he ran away. I caught up with him when he took a wrong turn and got him cornered. So I got a good look at him but not a lot else. He looked just like you said about him, real pale, and he felt cold—“

“Even to you?” I asked.

“Yeah. That means he hasn’t eaten lately. He was also acting weak, like running was tough on him. So I guess he got me off guard. I asked him what the hell he was doing, who was he. He wasn’t scared, though, and real calm he just said, ‘I want to see.’ Just that. I had no fucking clue what he was talking about. Then he just ran away again and I didn’t even think of going after him again until he was way out of the room. I didn’t even think of stopping him.”

After the encounter, she moved her small collection of things again—bedroll, radio receiver, clothing, cash, and such. She told me the story while we walked there from the main corridor (she had scented me nearby and came to find me to give me the update). Her new location was even harder to find than the previous one, accessible only through a panel in the ceiling of another storage closet, a tomb-like hole with space to sit but not to stand.

“Are you sure you don’t want to find a regular place to live? I mean, there are ways to get around the daylight thing without living underground. I’ve known a few vampires who do just fine.”

“If you asked me a week ago I might’ve said show me the place. But right now the safer the better, and this feels safer. So it’s better. It’s also cheaper.”

It’s definitely that. But since she brought up the issue of safety, we discussed Moshe and the little bits of information she was able to pick up from her brief interaction with him. If all the signs suggest he’s a light eater, he’s probably young, or at any rate not a serious threat to mortals. In one sense, this is relieving, but in another, it underlines the question of why he seems so interested in Trudy and possibly me. He jangled my nerves a bit on Saturday, and that’s nothing compared to the startled state he left Trudy in. It’s a conundrum: we’re the ones who can probably take best care of ourselves, yet we’re also the ones he’s given most cause for concern… as far as we know.

I’ll need to find a subtle way to speak to my mortal friends. I have many, and I’ll be seeing a few tomorrow for Thanksgiving. But the only ones who know about the less conventional aspects of my life are Patrick and his roommate, both of whom will be away this weekend with their respective families. I clued Patrick in while I drove him to the airport after leaving Trudy’s and asked him to pass the info on to Dennis. I told him they should let me know right away if Moshe makes any kind of contact with them the way he has with me and Trudy. Tonight I’ll have to sleep on ways to bring it up with friends who won’t understand the vampire part. Before I left Trudy’s, I asked if she wanted to come by my friends’ house for the holiday tomorrow night. She had an unusual look on her face as she accepted the invitation, but I couldn’t tell if she were relieved, grateful, flattered, or something else entirely. In any case, it made me glad I asked her.