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.