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.