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.