Questionable Agency

Originally written Sunday, December 25, 2005

I called Patrick yesterday. He’ll be at his parents’ house well into next week. He confirmed that he had indeed made another clay replica of Bella’s charm and switched them out before I could retrieve the original. Although he couldn’t have seen my face redden and rise in temperature over the phone, I’m sure he could nonetheless hear the fury in my voice. He tried to protest that he didn’t think the charm would put him in danger while he was on Long Island.

“Kiddo, this is not about safety anymore. This is about you going over my head. What exactly do you think is acceptable about that?”

I expected him to make the same excuses he’d been parroting about the charm controlling me, which may or may not be true, but one thing was certain—there was no way to assume it would have any less of an effect on someone else, least of all a mortal, however exceptional he may be. Indeed, after my meeting with Medusa (who wrote “Melissa” on her business card before she gave it to me), I’m more convinced that Patrick is just using this characterization of me to justify his own desire for the object. However, I was mistaken:

“Em,” he said, “it is about safety. Thinking about the timing of things that night at the club. When you felt the charm vibrate and told it to stop. When that girl died. When you got Moshe to come outside. And meanwhile, you were making out with Jeanine. I think you’re right, that Moshe killed her. But Em," he paused, "I think you told him to.” Yikes. If he’s right, I could almost forgive him. He continued, “There wasn’t time after I thought of that to talk to you in person before my flight. I didn’t think you’d figure out it wasn’t the real one if you were in California. I was going to tell you right after break, I promise.”

Still seething, I simply told him I’d have to think about all of this in the next few days before coming back. I know he means well, but he has to learn that challenging another person’s self-determination is never acceptable. Assuming I could be the victim of false consciousness and acting on that assumption without consulting me falls within that brand of patronization that I could never easily excuse. I suppose there’s some kind of logic for him with respect to his belief that I wouldn’t discover the switch, yet his switching charms in the first place implied he thought I might use it. I’m not sure what that logic is, but I imagine he knows. At any rate, I made my disappointment in him very clear.

“Just because I’m not the sort of teacher that demands full, unquestioning obedience from my students does not mean you have the right to disrespect me,” I told him before hanging up.

Although his course of action was ill-advised, his concern was valid and his detective work as insighful as ever. Since our conversation earlier today, I’ve tried to review the events of the 16th to see if it seems feasible that I was responsible for Moshe’s actions that night. The words I uttered were along the lines of “Stop it,” and “Cut it out,” or something. I still know so little about how the charm interacts with Moshe that I have no idea whether that was enough to get translated into, “Sic, Rover.” My sense, from the other times I’ve used it, is that the kind of energy I was redistributing was at least as important as the words I spoke at the same time. And I truly don’t believe that I was invoking violent energy during that moment. My brain, to be embarrassingly honest, was buried somewhere in the depths of Jeanine’s cleavage. Still, every time I think I understand the charm, I’m shown to be mistaken. And although Patrick’s idea does not especially resonate with me, it would be irresponsible of me to jettison it entirely.

As for today, I called all the important people and wished them a happy holiday: Dennis, Jeanine, and a number of others I haven’t had reason to mention before. Patrick heard from me yesterday, and I have no interest in speaking to him again until I have to. Everyone else seems to be doing well. Including Richard!

I suppose Moshe’s abduction (or whatever it was) put me in the frame of mind to assume the worst of Richard’s disappearance, as well. It turns out his cell phone simply died. He has no landline at home. And he didn’t think there was anything so critical about immediate communication to call me for; he called me today to wish me a happy holiday. He simply left a note to one of the interns at the museum to deliver the charm to my flat and to drop it in the mailslot… and to do it during daylight. He apparently doesn’t know that the new player in town is probably not a vampire; he still thinks Moshe is the threat. I don’t stand to gain anything by telling him that the piece requires a pulse to function.

Anyway, he was only back in town for a very short time. He basically came in, left the charm for the intern, and headed out to his sister’s house. He’ll be getting home around the same time as me. I’m not sure why he thought that having someone else deliver the charm to my house when he knew I wouldn’t be there would be a good idea. Maybe he figured out that it was fake. I didn’t especially want to get into it over the phone with him. I’ll see him soon enough.

Ian’s with his family, so Aunt Elizabeth and I are celebrating Hanukkah early by renting a bunch of Adam Sandler movies and eating chocolate all day. That’s about it for now.

Unspooled

Originally written Saturday, December 24, 2005

Richard? or Patrick? One of them has a lot of explaining to do. Enough to worry about, trying to keep that thing safe. Both of them know it’s my responsibility. And both of them have either seen me get hurt, or gotten hurt, or lied about getting hurt, all because of it. This is so not the time to be trying to pull one over on me, giving me a reason not to trust them when we need to work together.

“Sweetie? You OK?” I hadn’t spoken for the few minutes I spent stewing about someone’s betrayal, wishing I at least knew whose, and Medusa’s hands on my shoulders brought me back to the present.

“Not at the moment, but moments pass.” I’d have to call Patrick whenever I had the chance and try Richard again. A frustrating thing about being a vacationing houseguest is the relative lack of privacy and free time. It would have to wait. “Things just got even more complicated. As if they weren’t complicated enough already.”

She pursed her lips and took on an expression redolent of a high school principal telling a student that she already knows, such as that no, in fact, smoking in the girls’ room is not permitted. “That ball of energy I was talking about? The one you need to untangle? I think you did it yourself. It’s all messed up because of you.”

“This whole drama is my fault?”

“How am I supposed to know that? I don’t know what’s going on that you’re all tangled up about, outside of that creepy necklace thingy; I just know you’re making a bigger deal out of it than it has to be. Just find one end of the thread, follow it through the jumble, and you’ll get to the other end. And I believe your twenty minutes are up.”

Go figure, I thought. Her one piece of actual advice, and it sounds like a complete cliché.

I paid for my session and Ian’s and collected him and Liz from the front of the store. Before I left, Medusa gave me the number of a “psychic” of the same kind as herself, one who lives near me. Most people who call themselves psychics are not energy readers, she said. Now that I’ve found the network, she suggested, I should stay within it.

When I need to switch emotional gears, I can, and not expecting to have a long enough moment to myself to call east, I decided to put aside my worries and enjoy the rest of the evening. Liz and Ian and I met up with the woman Ian’s dating and did dinner and hanging out at a bar in Santa Monica. It was good and relaxing enough to remind me that yes, I actually am on vacation.

The Wrong Cornfield

Originally written Saturday, December 24, 2005

“Probably.” I could hardly believe I was having this conversation with someone I barely knew, but there have been so many loose ends back at home that for someone with clues to fall into my lap, however vague those clues may be, seemed like an opportunity I had to take advantage of. I’d take her words with a grain of salt, but damned if I wasn’t going to take them. “But hey, OK… I have a really annoying question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“I’ve always wondered this about psychics. If it’s possible to tell the future, then how can you give advice about changing it? I mean, how can anyone make predictions about a future that’s open to revision?”

Again her wrinkles deepened, this time first around her eyes and then spreading to her chin, as she laughed loudly. “Oh, I love it. Oh, hon. I don’t read the future. I read energy. And sometimes—it’s kind of like meteorology—energy has predictable patterns. But you can’t change weather, all you can do is prepare for it. And energy—you should know—sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t.”

“What about Liz getting work on a water movie? How’d you read that in her energy?”

“Oh, I didn’t. Chalk that one up to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. There was rain in the forecast. The submarine movie was just good luck. Sometimes I like to toss in a fortune teller zinger if I think it’s a sure bet.”

Oh, for Ian to have heard that. I sure wasn’t going to be able to tell him myself. But as for the more important things, the energy reading made sense to me, and as I said already: opportunities. Taking advantage. “So does that mean you could read the charm, too?”

“Charm?”

“That’s what I’m protecting.”

“Oh yeah, you bet. When can you bring it over?”

“I… have it here,” I said. I’d assumed she’d already sensed it.

She looked skeptical. “You have it here?”

I took it from my bag (I hadn’t let it out of my presence since Tuesday) and passed it over to her. “This isn’t it.”

The blood drained from my face, and I felt like a teenager in a horror movie who’d just fornicated in the wrong haunted cornfield. “Huh?”

“This isn’t the charm.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m not being vague here. It’s not the charm you think it is. It has no significant energy.”

I took it back and held it against my wrist. No pulsation. I placed it against my chest. Still none. Neither did it change in weight or temperature, no matter what I did with it. My irritation began to build. How could I have ended up with the wrong one? Finally (after asking Medusa’s permission, it being her store), I threw the black crescent hard against the wall. It cracked into several pieces, sprinkling dust across the floor from between the fractures. Indeed, it was clay and not enchanted coral.

The events of this day to be continued...

Paralysis of the Voyeur

Originally written Saturday, December 24, 2005

I acted as if I were dismissing her question as rhetorical—as it would have been if posed to anyone else—by giving a triumphant look to Ian as I overheard him saying to Liz, “Hey, we didn’t get to know when we die!”

I turned back to Medusa, who was still staring at my eyes, and acted casual as I asked, “So what do I need to do to keep this from happening?”

“You have an item of great value in your possession. Or… protection.” I felt nearly paralyzed, yet voyeuristically so, as she continued to relate the details of my current predicament in terms that indicated she was only telling me part of what she knew.

“Great value. You mean, like, money value?” I tested.

She chuckled. “Well, maybe not at one point, but everyone in America is a capitalist. Young. Old. Living. Dead.”

Ian broke in from the couch. “Hey! Not everyone.” He and I had been co-chairs of the Young Socialists in college. That’s how we met. Now he’s an attorney for the ACLU.

My first response was, of course, to be annoyed by his interjections, and I expressed that annoyance, but there was another level, that of gratitude. It was a convenient excuse for moving him and Liz outside without making them feel like I didn’t trust them. “You know, on second thought, I think you guys should wait in the store.”

“Why me? I didn’t say anything!” Liz protested, but Ian was already on his way into the shop, and we overheard him challenging the clerk to explain to him exactly how healing crystals are supposed to work. Realizing that lawyers should never be left unattended in New Age shops, Liz dashed after him to prevent him from ruining the young woman’s afternoon.

As soon as they were out of sight, Medusa’s face crinkled up around the corners of her mouth as she grinned widely. “Thanks. This’ll make things a whole lot easier.” She had already started picking up the cards spread out on the table and returning them to their box. She leaned back in her seat, sans the supposed tools of the trade.

“No problem. So I’ve been thrown a bit off guard here. What—how much do you know about me?”

“Besides what I already said? I sense an old soul in you. Not ancient, but old. And you’ve been surrounded by some really random energy lately. I can’t put my finger on all of it, it’s all over the place. Kind of hemming in your own. Don’t get yourself too wrapped up in that thing you’re protecting, but don’t let anyone else get wrapped up in it, either, or else what it could do to you, it could also do to them.”

“Patrick….” Is that what she was talking about? “One of my students has been worried about me getting sucked into it, so he’s been wanting to take over. I didn’t want him to because he can’t protect himself yet from whoever else is looking for it, but it sounds like it itself could be a danger to him? He’s still mortal. Does that make a difference?”

The events of this day to be continued...

Curtain Number Two

Originally written Saturday, December 24, 2005

Medusa’s reading space was located in a room behind the counter, hidden by a heavy curtain that momentarily reminded me of the ones they had at the Crypt to separate the more public and private areas, privileging the regulars who knew their way around. Indeed, there was something of a speakeasy aura to the arrangement. Aunt Elizabeth spoke in a very low tone to the barefoot, flowy-skirted teenager who was busy stocking racks of Woman-Oriented-Woman-oriented greeting cards, and the young woman dropped her inventory to poke her head behind the curtain. We got the OK to head into the back.

Medusa did indeed wear a turban, but instead of appearing as a pastiche of the stereotypical gypsy fortune-teller, she looked more like a cancer patient hiding her chemotherapy hair loss. Her sun-scorched skin, with a Southern California tan as deep as the crow’s feet around her eyes, only added to the impression by bringing the phrase “skin cancer” to mind. But over the course of our time there, her appearance changed, not so much visually as in the impression it gave, so that by the time it was my turn to receive my reading, she looked less to me like a cancer sufferer than like a Sikh man, the dark skin and turban signs of his heritage and his faith, rather than weakness and disease. Yet when Ian and I talked afterward, he spoke of her as he had before, as if she were fulfilling his expectations of the normative psychic. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

She was thrilled to see Aunt Elizabeth and referred to her by both of her names while we were there (Aunt is her given first name and Elizabeth her middle name, but for understandable reasons, her friends only use the “Aunt” part when we want to be a pain in her butt) and even more excited that she’d brought new customers.

Liz went first and allowed us to sit in on her reading, and we settled in on a couch in a dark corner of the already mood-lit room. Honestly, there was nothing terribly exciting about it—I’ve seen and received “psychic” readings before, though “not lately,” as I had eventually informed my companions—and Medusa did sound like nothing more than a living horoscope.

Ian followed, and he too asked me and Liz to stick around during his session, though in his case it was probably so that we’d know what he was talking about when it was time to make fun of her later. His reading seemed fairly straightforward, but he made jovial and sarcastic eye contact with me surprisingly little over the next twenty minutes, considerably less than he had during Liz’s. When Medusa had asked him about what he’d like to focus on, he chose his family. He’d be spending Christmas with them—mother, brother, stepfather, and stepsister. When she told him to pass a message along to his brother, something having to do with quitting something he was in the middle of, it was sufficiently vague to fly right over my head and Liz’s. However, it seemed to hit Ian right in the gut. When he rose from his seat, he seemed to be forcing himself back into bouyancy to do his Regis Philbin impression and direct me toward the “hot seat.”

Since the others had received their readings with me in the room, I of course was not going to eject them. But when I sat down across from Medusa, she asked, “Are you sure you don’t want them to wait outside? This might get kind of personal.”

She hadn’t provided the same disclaimer for the others, but I didn’t think to wonder about it for long. “No, that’s OK. They’re close friends. I trust them.”

“That may be so, but… never mind. You want them here, that’s up to you.” She managed to say this in a tone of voice both brusque and grandmotherly, as if I had just turned down a third helping of her best lasagna.

We went through the process of mixing, cutting, and laying out the tarot cards, and she began her interpretation. “I know you asked me to focus on your job, hon, but I’m seeing all sorts of elements conjoining in one dense energy cluster for you, and what you need to do in the next few weeks is to get all those threads unraveled. If it all stays wrapped up in this little bundle when the energy collapses, everything else will collapse, too—job, love, history, even your, um, personal ties.” She paused as if to see whether I understood whom she was talking about, but I could only guess. “All you’ll have left is your life. But… you’ll have that for a while yet, won’t you?” Every part of her face suggested a smirk except for her lips. I suddenly felt very vulnerable, very known; her words could have meant any number of things, but her visage implied that she had joined my wavelength.

The events of this day to be continued

So Not a Scam

Originally written Saturday, December 24, 2005

This is another morning entry. We were out late last night, just hanging out at some bar in Santa Monica. It was fun, but not in any kind of significant way. Venice, on the other hand….

First, the normal stuff: Sand, pitbulls with heavy collars and heavy testicles (really, I wish the owners would neuter, not just because those beasts shouldn’t reproduce but because there aren’t any indecency laws against dogs), cheap shopping, and such. I picked up some dorky souvenirs for Trudy and the boys… and for Richard, although I don’t know when I’ll be able to give it to him. We got henna tattoos and chair massages, and we saw what’s-his-name, the guy with a turban and a guitar, who glides around on roller skates all day and shows up in movies whenever they need Venice Beach stock footage.

See, it’s not that I don’t have normal or boring things going on; it’s just that it seems there’s always more important stuff to get to. And on to that….

We were sitting on a bench on the boardwalk, eating our greasy boardwalk food, when Aunt Elizabeth said, “So, Marya, have you ever been to a psychic?”

Ian groaned. “Oh, for shit’s sake, Liz.”

“What?”

To me, he said, “She’s got this new psychic. Medusa.” I snickered along with him. “Her new obsession. She keeps trying to get me to get a reading.”

“So why don’t you?” I asked, though Ian is perhaps the most pragmatic person I know, and getting a reading from a psychic is probably the last place I could imagine him, and that’s after imagining him running a nude marathon in Alaska. (Hint: he’s not the most fit person I know, nor the least modest. He also lives in Southern California because four winters in upstate New York scared him from ever drifting north of the Mason-Dixon line again.)

“Cuz he’s above such childishness,” said Liz in a really bad faux-snooty-British voice.

“It’s not… I just don’t believe in passing my money off on scams like that, that’s all.”

“Oh, she is so not a scam.”

“Oh yeah, right, because she predicted that you’d be working with water.”

“And I did—my next job was that submarine movie.” Liz is a sound editor for films and TV.

“And it could have been a movie set at a beach. Or with a pool. Or in the fucking rain. Or maybe it would have rained while you were working. Oooooh,” he concluded in a creepy melody.

Liz sighed. “It’s more than the water movie. It’s a connection. Most of the other things she’s told me have been a lot more specific.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like… I dunno. It was less specif—I mean, uh, concrete. Like, feelings and moods, plans. She helps me redirect what I should be putting my energy into. Work, home, dating, creativity. That sort of thing.”

“Based on what? Do you know?” I was genuinely curious. Energy balancing actually did sound valid.

“Oh, the usual. Palm reading, tea leaves, tarot cards.”

Oh well. I made sure she couldn’t see me rolling my eyes. Nonetheless, she seemed rather enthusiastic about this Medusa person, so I asked a bit further about how the readings have worked out for her and listened to about six months’ worth of success stories. Better jobs, better sex… she even came close to attributing her cat’s recent behavioral adjustments to Medusa’s advice.

“So what you’re saying,” said Ian, “is that she’s basically a therapist with a turban and a room full of incense. I get that.” To me, he explained, “I did go with her for one of hers.”

Although he was probably right, he was hitting a personal nerve, and I didn’t want his kneejerk skepticism to take the day. “Well, whatever she is,” I said to Liz, “she sounds really interesting. And hey—it’s OK to lose a thousand dollars in Vegas if the gambling was a thousand dollars’ worth of fun.” This metaphor I addressed to Ian.

“Does that mean you’ll go for a reading?” asked Aunt Elizabeth hopefully.

“Sure, why not? And Ian, if you’ll get one, too, I’ll pay for it. Holiday present.”

Now that it was framed as a recreational activity that might return the investment with its entertainment value, he was more amenable to the idea. Medusa’s place was on the upper floor of what in Venice passes for a strip mall, a small, horseshoe-shaped, two-story building with outdoor staircases in the U. It was mainly a patchouli-scented new age store filled with knickknacks and doodads and books, for everyone from the practicing Buddhist to the curious wicca wannabe.

(It does annoy me sometimes how, although most of the traditions and religions that are represented in such stores are fully legitimate practices, they somehow take on an exoticized/fetishized element when collected all together, as if Sufi enneagrams, Lakota sweat lodges, and communicating with the archangel Gabriel had anything to do with each other except for their marginalization in comparison to Western ideals. It means that those who are drawn to them are, to be more precise, more likely drawn away from whatever “sensible” upbringing they had, whether Judeo-Christian or secular, rather than to a particular system of beliefs that speaks to them. Whenever I’m in such stores, I grow depressed with the thought of Grey Orchid books stacking the shelves. I delight in the fact that our history is still largely an oral one. It has traditionally been for practical purposes, of course—I find it hard to imagine someone learning the curriculum without a teacher—but the lack of commodification is a definite bonus.)

The events of this day to be continued...

Being There, Doing That

Originally written Friday, December 23, 2005

Just dropping a line to say I’m so glad I took this trip. This is exactly the kind of respite I needed. I hadn’t seen Aunt Elizabeth and Ian in a couple of years, so it’s been nice catching up with them. Almost as nice as it is to be sitting out on Elizabeth’s balcony in this 75-degree (F) weather, logging in from her laptop. She doesn’t have a very exciting view or anything—just a small street off of Ventura Boulevard and all the skateboarders and dogwalkers that go with it—but she’s right around the corner from some good restaurants and shops. I’d be perfectly happy to veg right here all week, but she likes to play tourguide whenever I’m out here. “Life’s short,” she says. “When else are you gonna get to do L.A.?”

I just don’t have the heart, the impatience, or the need to contradict her (about the short life thing). Besides, I may be around well into the future, but places won’t be. Who knows when the Big One will knock the city into the ocean or when global warming will cause it to be engulfed by the rising tide? In the twenty-third century, it would be nice to be able to say that I’d been there, done that (though probably not in such historically specific terms... or maybe so, just for nostalgia's sake).

So later on this afternoon (I’m writing in the morning right now… a beautiful, breezy morning that smells like oranges) we’ll be meeting up with Ian in Venice. It’ll probably be pretty chilly by the beach, but it’s still a fabulous area, one of the last bastions of bohemia. There’s something about the gritty funkiness and the breadbasket mishmash of tourists and locals, the putrid public restrooms and the food stands—pizza, hot dogs, fajitas, falafel—that got an A for sanitation next to sit-down restaurants with Bs (I really do like how restaurants’ grades are posted publicly here, and it would be great if they did that elsewhere), that makes the salty air that much sweeter. And no, it’s not the smell of weed. It’s a metaphorical sweetness. Or maybe it’s incense.

The cat wants attention. And I told Liz I’d make her scrambled tofu for breakfast. So I’d better go. But I just want to add that I brought the charm out here with me. The other night, I was about to write that I was feeling anxious about leaving it there. Then it occurred to me that I didn’t need to. I know it only seems to support Patrick’s suspicion about how attached I appear to be to it, but what the heck am I supposed to do with it here? Its conduit is two thousand miles away and MIA. The worst thing I can see being said is that I’m over-protective. But I don’t believe there is such a thing as over-protectiveness when it comes to this particular item.

You may wonder why I don’t just leave it out here when I go back home. Or maybe you wouldn’t have. But it crossed my mind, so I thought I’d share. As I’ve mentioned before, the three charms can only be destroyed when they’re all put together to form what—according to Bella—is supposed to be some sort of amulet. Separated, they’re inexplicably indestructable (believe me, I’ve tried to prove that story wrong). Likewise, they were only actually supposed to be useable when they’re together, but apparently that was an exaggeration, as we’ve seen throughout the Moshe chronicles. It may be that the fullest extent of their power will only be realized when the parts are unified. Keeping in mind the nature of immortality and amortality, if someone wants one of the pieces, he or she will be able to track it down eventually. Whether it’s tomorrow or a century from now, I want to be there when it happens. So if my midwestern college town happens to be the place, and soon happens to be the time, then so be it. There’s no reason to believe I’ll be more prepared at some indeterminate moment in the future.

Goshdarnit, but I was trying not to get all caught up in that crap this week. OK. I’m gonna go fry up some bean curd and cuddle with the kitty. And for a short period of time, the charm will be nothing but an offbeat accessory.

Interlude

Originally written Tuesday, December 20, 2005

There’s been no sign of Moshe since Friday night. I took Bella’s charm to Trudy in the tunnels on Sunday after I finished writing up the Day That Wouldn’t End. Although the idea was not to make her the individual responsible for the charm, it no longer made sense to keep it a secret from her. I told her everything I knew. In addition, since hiding the charm in her vicinity might put her at risk, she deserved to know what dangers she needed to anticipate. She wasn’t thrilled to find out how much I’d been keeping from her, and she’s likely to be lobbing sarcastic comments about it in my direction until the end of time, but she had gotten a bit of a rush the other night when she had the opportunity to engage in her very own chase scene. A lot of immortals have a death wish—it may sound ironic, but there’s actually a very good explanation—and while for some vampires, the thirst for blood is strictly literal, it’s not unusual for it to take on a figurative element for others. In other words, Trudy seemed excited (kind of as Patrick had been) to be involved with something not exactly run-of-the-mill, and the eagerness overshadowed any irritation she had at being kept out of the loop for a while.

When she and Moshe became friends, she moved out of her cubbyhole and back into the more spacious storage area she’d occupied for a brief spell. It was the cubbyhole—the space between the tunnel ceiling and the floor of some basement—that I thought would make a good hiding place for the charm. Leaving it there made me nervous, but not much more so than did holding onto it. Trudy’s room is not that near by, but I haven’t entirely decided whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Moshe’s abductress, Kay or whoever, would still think I have it (if she realizes I survived her attack), which means she may try again, but that’s not what I’m worried about. I’m resilient. The charm is more important.

Trudy told me about her brief pursuit of the two on Friday. She’d been able to follow Moshe’s scent (with which she was, of course, very familiar) until they’d run the few blocks onto Main Street, this particular section of which (in contrast to the part of the street that runs through Applewood) tends to be very active on Saturday nights, with popular bars playing popular bands and popular restaurants feeding popular people until the 2am city curfew. While the crowds on the sidewalks are not exactly shoulder-to-shoulder after midnight, Kay and Moshe would have been able to slip into any local establishment and lose a pursuer with ease. And that’s exactly what they must have done.

“I didn’t even have time to figure out what the chick was,” she lamented.

“Had to be human, right?” I asked in response.

“You think? I thought maybe it was Miss B ‘n’ B.”

“Just because Moshe knew her? I’d’ve thought so, too, but she wanted the charm. You need a pulse to work that thing.” Which, incidentally, was another reason Trudy was a good candidate to be the informal protector of the much-coveted item. “Besides, he couldn’t remember B ‘n’ B’s name before. I know you feel like you’ve gotten to know him pretty well—and you probably know him better as a vampire than anyone—but remember, he had a whole life before this. One he isn’t letting go of.”

“Geez, I know. I was supposed to go to his parents’ with him for Hanukkah next Monday.”

That sounded so unlike Trudy that I couldn’t suppress a snort. “Are you frigging kidding me? You were gonna go over for Hanukkah?”

“Yeah, you know, the Jew thing’s not as weird as I always thought it was. It’s kinda like being Christian without Jesus.”

Well, not exactly, but if it lessens her anti-Semitism—which, like her other bigotries, is of the “Some of my best friends are _____” sort—then I wasn’t going to argue. However, this put me in mind of what he’d said about his relationship with his parents. They know nothing about his circumstances, and if he didn’t show up for the holiday, they’d either be desperately worried or desperately offended.

Trudy was still talking about “the Jew thing,” rambling about how she “didn’t mind” the little hat things, but she was glad she wouldn’t have to wear one, and she was hoping his dad wouldn’t have those hair curls. I assured her that if he’s been eating large quantities of meat over there, pork and the whole bit, then the chances were good that their particular style of worship wouldn’t also require, um, hair curls. I didn’t have the patience to explain the connection, so I merely shared my thoughts about whether he’d show up at his parents’ house without her (again, this was Sunday; it’s been a few more days, and he indeed hasn’t appeared). Unfortunately, she didn’t know where his parents lived yet. Nor did she know his last name. I emailed my student that night, the one who seemed to know him at the dance; she wrote back that she doesn’t know his address or that of his parents, but she told me their last name. It’s an extremely common one, but I passed it along to Trudy anyway. The only problem with writing to my student about this is that I may not be able to make further inquiries into Moshe without her wondering why.

The second interesting turn of events that has taken place in the past few days, this one not so serious or worrisome, is that Dennis took an interest in my teachings after seeing my wounds heal the other night. Apparently, when I fell to the sidewalk, my face scraped along the cement, and I was left with a bloody, ugly gash across my cheek and forehead. I don’t remember any of this because I was busy trying not to pass out. When Patrick turned me over, the two saw the injury (along with a few more minor ones on my hands and elbows) fade away within minutes. It’s not that he previously thought that I’d been lying about the fringe benefits of the Grey Orchid curriculum, but he understood that the time span attached to the learning process is a lengthy one and, like most people in the modern age, didn’t believe it would necessarily be a worthwhile commitment. Suddenly, he’s changed his mind, and now he’d like to work with me alongside Patrick. It’s fine with me, of course. I don’t believe it’s a waste of time for anyone. But I’m curious to find out how long he’ll continue to think so, too.

On a similar note, it’s worth pointing out how impressed I am by Patrick’s own response to the same incident. It’s possible that he’s simply pretending to be nonchalant about witnessing a cracked skull mend itself. However, I’ll be very pleased indeed if it turns out that his priorities are not located in the acquisition of such skills for their own sake. While that’s often the initial draw for many students, self-interest alone can’t sustain continued dedication, which is precisely why it won’t surprise me if Dennis’s interest wanes. The core philosophy of the School of the Grey Orchid is that understanding one’s place in the universe must begin with understanding oneself. The mind-body unity we forge in the earlier decades of study is meant to be not an end in itself but a means to grasping how it is not a unity in isolation from, but reliant on, the larger sphere of existence. That is, the rigorous training in self-discipline is meant, paradoxically, to dissolve the sense of self-as-unit and replace it with a sense of self-as-core. I hope this isn’t too confusing. I’m sure it’ll come again.

My final update for the time being has to do with Richard. He called me on Sunday, but I didn’t hear the phone ring, and the voicemail picked up. His message said that the trip to U. of I. “was only semi-successful. Roger says that the charms aren’t related to voodoo at all. I spent the whole weekend going through everything over here, just to make sure he wasn’t mistaken, but there was nothing resembling them in anything there. Books, pictures, fieldnotes, nothing. I’ll call you when I get back in to give this back to you.” This meant we were working blindly. For 150 years, I’ve thought it belonged to the voodoo tradition. Now I can’t remember if I thought this because Bella told me so or if it was an assumption I made based on her own status as a priestess. Either way, it’s irrelevent now. We have no tradition of magic or legacy to look to for guidance or information.

The events of Friday night, incidentally, seemed to clear Richard of the suspicion of him I had been harboring. The pink-haired woman seems to be the one trying to put the pieces together. The physical pieces, that is. Meanwhile, the pieces I’m grappling with are of a different nature altogether. And the latest one is that Richard’s message came in on Sunday. I’ve tried following up several times since then, but he seems to have dropped off the face of the earth himself.

I’m flying to California tomorrow. On the one hand, I’m looking forward to a bit of a break from this chaos. On the other hand, I feel as though I’m leaving a number of loose ends untied.

Participant Observation

Originally written Sunday, December 18, 2005

I had no time to turn around. I heard a shallow crack and felt/saw myself tumble to the cold cement just before the pain seared across the back of my skull and my vision seemed to fill with blood like a wineglass. My hearing was distorted, and I felt my mind fighting to maintain consciousness, but I could almost make out the sounds of a scuffle above and around me. The fracas only lasted seconds, and my state of semi-awareness only minutes, but it seemed like far longer before enough of my bearings returned to me that I could realize I was sprawled out on the sidewalk with my head in Patrick’s lap. It took a moment for me to figure out how to put together a coherent thought or two, but when I did, I lifted my hand to the back of my head to feel for damage. There was a soft spot in the place from which the cracking sound had probably emanated, but on the inside I could feel the necessary repairs being made. The blow had been a crushing one, and it would have killed a mortal within seconds.

Next, my hand moved to search for my bag beside me. Patrick saw and said, “I have it.”

“The bag?”

“The charm.”

I was becoming more lucid now, and I pulled myself up wearily to look at him. “Kiddo, you can’t. If this had been you….”

“But look at you. You’re in no shape to play security guard.”

I nearly laughed. “And how long do you think this is going to last? Consider this a lesson for the day. Participant observation. Action research. I don’t know what cuts, scrapes, or bruises I might have gotten when I fell, but this” (I touched my head injury) “is the only thing left to heal. I’ll let you know when it’s good as new, oh, a few days from now.” Bone, for understandable reasons, I’m sure, takes much longer to mend than skin and other types of soft tissue. “Get an idea of just what you’re learning to do, huh?”

I noticed Dennis standing above us then, and although Patrick remained stoic in response to my reassurances, his boyfriend’s demeanor reflected the sense of awe I was accustomed to eliciting when people realize for the first time that I’m actually not full of shit.

I continued: “And don’t go trying to get injuries you can experiment with. You’re not nearly there yet. So why don’t you give the charm back now?”

“Honestly? Because you want it too badly. After the way you’ve acted when you have it, twice now, and now this….”

He couldn’t be serious! I thought we resolved this earlier. “When you saw me with it on earlier tonight, it was because Jeanine saw it. She thought it was jewelry. I’d have had to come up with some explanation for carrying it around in my bag and not putting it on. It was just easier to do it this way. And hello—I didn’t go all control freak again. And what about you? You’ve seemed awfully eager to be Mr. Responsible ever since you heard about it. Sure you’re not projecting?”

“You don’t trust me with it?”

“Mostly I’m just playing annoying psychologist woman. I think you want it because you’re curious and because you’re excited by the idea of getting more involved, but I do trust you not to abuse it. It’s whoever wants it that I don’t trust. What just happened now anyway? Did they go for the bag? What’d they hit me with?”

“She did. I don’t know, some big metal thing. She dropped it right… there.” It looked like a big, heavy pipe of some nondescript kind. “And with Moshe.”

“So… not some random purse-snatcher, then?”

“Not unless there’s a market out there for stolen vampires, too.”

“Don’t think he was stolen. I think he knew her. He called her Kay. Or something. It was just one person?”

“Yeah, just one. I was over there, where I could see both you and the police stuff.” He pointed back to the entrance to the alley. “Trudy and I started running as soon as I noticed her coming over here. She was about to grab the bag when we got here, but we wouldn’t let her. There was some pushing, and I think Trudy got one really good sock in, and then she just, like, grabbed Moe’s arm and ran with him. Trudy went after them. So he’s in on it?”

I noticed the casual abbreviation of the name that I had used before. I guess he just looks like a Moe tonight. “No idea. I don’t know what to think of him anymore. What’d she look like?”

At this point, Patrick looked up at Dennis, who’d been silent throughout our debriefing. I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to get involved in our disagreement. As if to defer to the young man standing above us, Patrick said, “I didn’t get a really good look. I was focusing on you and the charm. Army coat. That’s what I remember.”

“Pink hair,” Dennis added helpfully—very helpfully. “But I didn’t get over here until they started running, so I didn’t see anything else.”

Pink hair. Applewood. Although pink-haired women are not terribly unusual at (and around) the Crypt, it was at least a clue. I made a mental note but returned to the more immediate subject of concern. “Yeah, about that charm. We need to think of a safe place for it. Not with you guys. And maybe not even with me, either.”

We shared a look of contemplation, but only for a moment. It was then that Trudy returned. By her face, she was either flustered, flummoxed, feeling betrayed, or some combination of the three. “Lost them. Not sure how. You OK?”

“Getting there.” I glanced back at Patrick and said, “Problem solved.” He nodded and understood.

Bets, Threats, Marionettes

Originally written Sunday, December 18, 2005

“You tell me, cuz apparently I don’t know. You’re the one who keeps dibs on me.” He wasn’t quite as intimidated by me as I’d hoped he’d be. Maybe I’d pushed him to the edge of patience with my unrelenting cross-examinations, and he no longer felt he had to play along.

“Last time I saw you, you were leaving the dance floor with Trudy and two Crypt kids. At least one of them was one of Trudy’s regulars.”

He said nothing. He just stared at me, his forehead creasing between the eyebrows almost imperceptibly. Finally: “That’s the last thing I remember, too.” I rolled my eyes. Like I didn’t see that coming. For a few minutes, at least, he had been under my control. Since none of us, apparently, had seen him before then, there was no way to know if he were telling the truth or not. He continued, “How long ago was that?” After I estimated—loosely, since the passage of time had escaped me somewhat, too—that it had been an hour, he asked, very quietly, “What did I do?”

The gravity of the moment was weighing on him, and I was communicating at least as much through my silence as I could have through direct answers. Joey continued to spin records several doors away, while a police radio crackled every few minutes and (although I couldn’t hear it, Moshe probably could) Craig was sobbing on Trudy’s shoulder. Moshe is perhaps the most gullible immortal I’ve met, but he isn’t an idiot. He knew something was deeply wrong. I saw an ambulance pass by, reflected in the window behind him. Its lights were on, but its sirens were not. Moshe’s eyes followed it, and he looked worried, panicked even. He started to bolt, but I was standing at just the right angle to lift my arm and whip my elbow into direct and probably painful contact with his chin. He stumbled backward into the glass door, and before he could get his bearings, I flattened him against it with one hand at his breastbone, while I held the stake directly over his heart with the other.

“She’s dead, Moe.” I wasn’t sure what made me call him that; the goth getup may have prevented me from being able to apply the Hebrew appellation without a sense of irony. “And you’re the last one anyone’s seen her with. Now, I want you here because I have a mystery to solve. And you want you here because if you get yourself arrested, you’ll either burn to death or starve your way into a weak and helpless mass before anyone can prove you innocent.”

He looked down at the carved piece of wood aimed at his chest. “So that part of the legend is true, huh?” He was very nervous, only now seeming to realize the gravity of the situation.

“Curious enough to test it… the ‘legend’? You wouldn’t last long enough to remember.” It is for real. Wooden stakes kill vampires. Of course, it takes a lot more than the one-two punch some versions would have us believe. It requires a tremendous amount of muscle to penetrate the ribcage, and it will often take more than one blow to get the job done. It’s messy, it’s exhausting… and it takes either extenuating circumstances or an unwarranted perception of your own cosmic authority to believe you have the right to carry out second-death sentences, even on those who are no longer connected to the universe. It’s really no wonder that I’ve had occasion to execute only around five or so vampires in as many centuries’ time.

As for the stake, the point must be as sharp as a knife’s (if knives were conical), and the shaft should be as thin as you can make it without losing rigidity. Some kinds of wood are better than others, stiffer. I’m really not trying to make this sound phallic on purpose; if you think otherwise, then I challenge you to try to describe wooden stakes without the clichéd imagery dominating your explanation. I’d like to suggest, alternatively, that it is specifically because the procedure is so easily translated into sexual metaphor that it has become so mythic and, it seems, almost universally understood, even while other elements of vampire lore vary from one region, story, and/or storyteller to the next. And that’s not my fault. I’m just telling it the way it is.

He clearly wasn’t going to take the risk. “And so… you said prove I’m innocent? Does that mean you think I didn’t do it?”

“Oh, I have a hunch right now that you’re guilty as charged. Give me a reason to believe otherwise and I’ll be happy to.”

“Um, how? I don’t even remember any of it.”

“I’m gonna let go of you, and you’re not gonna run.” He nodded. I lowered both of my arms from his body. I felt the skin of his face with the back of my fingers. The touch made him start.

“Your hand’s cold.” He knew it wasn’t supposed to feel that way to him.

“Your face is very warm. You definitely just drank from someone living. And, uh, no animal smaller than a St. Bernard would’ve made you this warm.” I tilted his head back and forth and then held his wrists away from his body, exposing the soft side of his forearms. “No open wounds I can see. So at least you didn’t turn her.”

“But… wouldn’t that be better than dead?”

“Yeah. Sure. Cuz you’re having a ball and a half, right?”

“I’m adapting.”

“You’re coping. Reluctant vampire foundling getting the kindergarten for immortals crash course from his only favorable acquaintance while playing marionette to some as yet unknown voodoo puppeteer. Great way to start off a productive afterlife.”

“Voodoo puppeteer? Is that what’s been happening to me? How do you know this?”

“Like I said before, I think you’re the one whose bite marks are on that woman over there. Your actions have been so shady ever since we met that you’ve given me very little reason to think that anything you say is true. But there’s something bigger going on than anything you let on knowing about, and if it weren’t for one solitary factor in all of this, I’d be using you like a bulletin board right now.” I get talkative when I intimidate. I guess when I have a captive audience, I take advantage of it.

I began to reach back into the bag hanging at my side to draw out the charm. I decided it was time to show him what had had him in its thrall all these weeks. Perhaps he’d recognize it and know who had possession of one or both of its complements. Perhaps being faced with the source of the magic would interrupt or diminish the spell’s hold on him. But when I clutched the charm, I found it once again vibrating in the bottom of the bag. And instead of being placated by a firmer grasp as it had been before, this time it seemed to be increasing in rapidity from moment to moment. While pondering the meaning of the charm’s odd signals, Moshe’s eyes fixated on something behind me, and with a bewildered look on his face, he said very quietly, “Kay?”

The events of this day to be continued...

Under the Crescent Moon

Originally written Sunday, December 18, 2005

The woman in the trenchcoat saw us and unglued the cell phone from her ear for a moment to say, “Is this her?’ Patrick confirmed. She addressed me. “I let him in because he said you might know her. Is she a friend of yours?” I saw she had a keychain hanging from her wrist, gathered that the emergency exit was locked from outside, and concluded that she was an owner or manager of the place.

For Patrick to have said I knew the victim, whom he had no reason to believe I’d met before, meant that I didn’t need to examine the corpse for bite marks. “No, I don’t know her,” I said, fighting hard to keep my voice from taking on a hardened, angry edge. For a second I contemplated giving Moshe’s description, or even his name, telling them I’d seen her leave the club with him, but I followed that scenario to the best possible end—that they’d locate him and arrest him, and when the first time the light entered his jail cell he’d burn to a crisp, very complicated things could begin to reflect on me—and decided against it. All I said was, “But I did see her, and I saw the guy she came with. I think he’s downstairs, if you can let me back in.”

Once I’d indelicately interrupted Trudy and her boytoy, much as I imagine Patrick had done with me, and dragged them unsympathetically out into the cold midnight air, the look on Trudy’s face indicated that she was possibly even more shocked at the sight than I had been angry. At that moment, the police cars finally arrived, and officers emerged from each. One spoke with the manager, while another approached the skinny man, who was now on his knees beside his friend, staring and allowing tears to creep down his cheeks (he was wearing Trudy’s jacket, the collar turned up to hide his own neck punctures). A third polled the rubberneckers for any information they had to share. Some wore uniforms and others wore plain suits. From my years of avid cop and detective show viewing, I made the educated guess that the latter were detectives or forensics experts of some sort. Their plan seemed to be to avoid making a stir, probably for fear of causing the perpetrator to flee if he (or she) hadn’t already. They may have been hoping to secure a description from a witness—any witness—and scan the crowd as they left. They didn’t seem as concerned as they might have been that the killer would soon strike again. From what I could tell from a distance, Trudy’s pal seemed as reluctant as I’d been to help, and probably for the same reason.

In the meantime, Jeanine had retreated back inside from the cold and said she’d ask Joey to take her home if I didn’t come to find her. I was sad for our night to end so uncomfortably, but there was so much else to worry about now that I honestly didn’t think about it for long (except that every so often, for the next couple of hours, my skin felt imaginary fingers and lips cast a tactile shadow that would quickly dissipate a moment later). I was relieved that whatever story I’d have to make up later would not be a complex one.

“How’d this happen, Trude?”

She could only shake her head. She was completely speechless.

“Re-do your lipstick. You look like you’ve been drinking Hawaiian Punch.”

It didn’t seem to register at first, but slowly she seemed to put the instructions together and pulled out a black cherry-ish shade from her purse.

“Do you know where he is?”

“No, I—I went downstairs with Craig. I didn’t even….”

Seeing she wouldn’t be much help, I scanned the small cluster of onlookers in the alley to locate Patrick. Catching his eye across the crowd, I let him see me reach back into my bag for the charm. He watched as I held it against my chest, let its temperature pick up the pace of my slightly elevated heartbeat, and said, “Come here.” Patrick looked skeptical, but seeing as I hadn’t been wearing it prior to deciding to deliver the instruction, he would have realized I was at least not being controlled by it. I know he wanted to rush across and stop me, but if he had tried, I’d have a patronizing lecture prepared for our next lesson together. I was doing it under his watch on purpose so that there were no misunderstandings about my intent.

It took a few minutes, but eventually Moshe did arrive, appearing through the emergency exit in a daze. Trudy saw him at the same time as I did, and she started toward him. Before she reached him, I said through the charm, “You’re only here to speak with me.”
And indeed, the minute she began to speak to him, he said to her, “I’m not here for you,” and Trudy immediately looked as though her mind were wandering elsewhere.

“Follow,” I instructed. I relocated around the corner, and like a loyal pet, he obeyed. Once we were out of sight of the other key players in the drama, I backed him up into the concave entrance to a small shop, between the display windows. There were obviously limits to what the charm could do: it was not geared toward interrogation, for instance. Even though some of us have found ourselves carrying on conversations half-aware of ourselves while under its influence, we haven’t said in the process anything we wouldn’t ordinarily say, whether we were telling the truth or not. There was little reason to believe it would be any different for its primary object of control. I dropped the charm back into the shoulder bag yet again but drew out my other unconventional possession, the wooden stake. Once the crescent left my hand, Moshe appeared to come gradually out of his stupor.

“What did you do?” I asked, cutting right to the chase before he had time to become aware of his surroundings.

“Huh? Where are we?”

“Near the club.” Standing in between him and the sidewalk, weapon in hand, I wore my stern face. “Now, what the fuck did you do?”

The events of this day to be continued...

Mouth-Feel

Originally written Sunday, December 18, 2005 (continued)

“Move so quickly. You were right behind me, and when I turned around, you were coming out of the bathroom.” I was already moving my hands up her waist, the unrelenting noise of the club requiring close contact and the energy of the moment facilitating it further.

“I wasn’t behind you. Must have been someone else.” With her mouth so near to my ear, she barely had to raise her voice.

Paradoxically, the chill of my objectification had thawed my reserve. “Someone else, huh? So you didn’t do this?” I slunk around her, looping my fingers into her belt loops so she wouldn’t turn with me. When the front of my body was a shadow against her back, I pulled her against me and wrapped my arms about her middle. I mimicked with my lips and tongue the route that had been mapped on me a minute before (or mostly mimicked it… damn that choker) until I, too, had kissed my way nearly to her shoulder. Then she turned her head and asked:

“What’s that buzzing?”

“Huh?” It was then that I noticed that the charm was vibrating between my chest and her spine. I hadn’t been aware of it before, but now that I was, I realized it had been doing so since the encounter with the mysterious stranger. I immediately put my hand around it and willed the words STOP IT, CUT IT OUT at it, and the vibration soon subsided. Jeanine had turned around fully and was looking at my fist clutching the pendant. “Must’ve been picking up the vibrations from the bass.” There was indeed a track with some very heavy bass playing, but the charm hadn’t been shaking in time with the thump-thump-thump that shook even the floor. Still, it was plausible enough.

Now facing me, she leaned even closer and pulled me into a kiss, pulling my hand away from Bella’s charm and drawing it down to the small of her back. She felt good and tasted better (and I wondered vaguely why the culinary phrase “mouth-feel” had never crossed over into erotic discourse when so many other sexual metaphors and food metaphors had made the transition), and I felt that strange tingly-buttocks feeling that I get when I’m filled with sexual anticipation but that I’ve tried to describe to others occasionally, only to be met with bemusement for the effort. I was lost in her presence for what in retrospect must have been ten or fifteen minutes, forgetting for the time all the odd and disturbing goings-on (which isn’t to say that I was thinking of nothing beyond her skin and her beautiful asymmetry and her mouth-feel all the while—since I only tend to focus my attention when I have a particular reason to—but that my thoughts were of a relatively indiscriminate variety).

Then I heard my name being called from far away. I ignored it. Jeanine’s mouth-feel: firm yet yielding and soft… The voice repeated itself, closer now…. assertive and deceptively forceful yet eagerly pleading for a chance to succumb…. It was suddenly next to me, and it wasn’t going to go away.

“Em! Marya!”

I opened my eyes and closed my mouth and turned to face Patrick. “What?”

His eyes dropped to my chest, and I knew he was scrutinizing the pendant. “What the hell are you doing?”

Jeanine fielded his exclamation, saying, “Geez, Mar, your whole little circle is all with the chaperoning.”

“No,” I said, “he means this.” I opened the clasp behind my neck and returned it to the depths of my drawstring bag. “It—it’s not exactly mine. I was just holding onto it.” For the second time, my role and Patrick’s had reversed. He was suddenly the supervisor and I was the instructed. But as soon as the necklace left my direct contact, the universe reordered itself, and I said managerially, “What do you need?”

And he responded dutifully, “You need to see something.”

I made the slightest of head tilts toward Jeanine. He responded with the slightest of shrugs. He turned, and I started to follow. Jeanine was close behind, asking as we went, “Should I come? What’s it about?”

“It’s up to you. It’s probably not as exciting as he’s making it sound. If you want, you can go hang with Joey and I’ll find you.”

For practical reasons, I hoped she would, but I didn’t make any effort to sound encouraging, and our bond for the night had been forged. Being together seemed right for now, so she continued to trail us through the masses. Patrick led the way to the curtained door the vampires had passed through before, but instead of taking us down the stairs, he pushed open an emergency exit door I hadn’t noticed previously. A thin veil of sheer cloth hung from the ceiling and had been pulled to the side. In the dark passage, only the brightly lit EXIT sign would have been visible through the fabric.

A cold gust of air met us as we stepped outside of the building. Dennis was there, along with a small circle of other young people, all still with their coats on (as, I now noticed, had Patrick). They apparently had only just arrived at the club and not yet entered. They were whispering to each other and looking at the ground. Police sirens were already growing louder. I knew before I followed their line of vision what I would see, and I only hoped it wouldn’t be who I thought. However, the body that a very authoritative woman in a black suit and a belted leather trench seemed to be guarding from the onlookers as they edged unconsiously closer was indeed that of the young woman who’d walked out with Moshe just… how long before? I hadn’t paid attention to the time for a while, and I was surprised to discover it was past twelve. Blood rushed straight to my face as my heart dropped. I wasn’t sure if my rage were directed at the perpetrator for doing it or myself for not preventing it, but it was undeniable.

The events of this day to be continued...

Checks and Balances

Originally written Sunday, December 18, 2005 (continued)

“Nope,” I agreed. And then as she turned to start back up the stairs, I added, “But while we’re down here, I just want to take a peek around to see if maybe Patrick and his boyfriend are here. I haven’t seen them all night.”

“Marya!” she scolded. “And even if they are, you can’t give ‘em some privacy and wait til they get back up?” Not wanting to arouse suspicion (although it was unlikely she’d guess I was trying to spy on untrustworthy vampires, she might begin to think I was a creepy pervert), I was about to relent. Then she said, “Oh, isn’t that your friend Trudy?”

I followed the line of her gaze. Trudy was straddling the tall kid on one of the couches nearby, her head buried in the crook of his neck. His facial expression was near orgasmic, which surprised me for a moment until I saw how rhythmically her hips were moving above his lap. The skirt she was wearing was of full black crinoline, very “Borderline”-era Madonna, and it kept the private things private. It was impossible to see Trudy’s face, but Jeanine must have recognized the Libra sign tattooed on the back of her neck, which Jeanine had commented on earlier (she being a Libra as well).

“Oh my god, is she really doing that?” Jeanine continued. I snapped to attention and looked at her. What did she mean? Could she somehow see her sucking the young man’s blood? “I mean, isn’t she with that guy Moshe?”

Phew. “No, they’re just friendly as far as I know. But speaking of him, do you happen to see him down here, too?”

“Wow, you really are the voyeur, aren’t you? Or are you this posssessive of your friends? Imagine what you must be like with your girlfriends, huh?” Her hand crept up my spine from just above my bustier to my neck. I felt goosebumps rise in the wake of her touch. Moshe or no Moshe, the sexual charge of the room was contagious, and I had no complaints. “I really do have to pee, though. Maybe we can stop back down here afterward. You know—for another look.”

I scanned the room one last time before we returned up the stairs. There was no sign of Moshe or the well-endowed woman anywhere. I probably need not say that this troubled me, but there was little I could think to do about it except to keep an eye out for them. I interlaced my fingers with Jeanine’s, gave her a flirtatious half-smile to let her think she’d regained my attention, and led the way back to the dance floor.

There was, of course, a line for the ladies’ room on the upper floor, which was essentially a broad balcony encircling and looking down on the dance floor. And when my turn came, there was, of course, pee on the seat. In a place like this, hovering (as opposed to covering) becomes the norm fairly early in the evening. The paranoia that women who hover have about making direct contact with the toilet seat seems to be multiplied by one hundred at bars and dance clubs. I marvel at it, myself. Do they not realize how much less sanitary doorknobs are compared with toilet seats (even after the seats get urinated on, urine being sterile)? I grabbed a wad of paper, wiped off the surface, and then lined the seat with more. As I sat on my layer of toilet paper, I thought about how the construction of the restroom toilet in the public imagination holds a particularly taboo place that constructions of less private items like doorknobs do not. At some point along the line, there will be the opportunity to write scholarly work on the subject that will be taken seriously. Unfortunately, I admitted to myself as I finished up and flushed, that time is not now. I washed my hands while thinking about how interesting it would be to see whether hovering vs. covering correlated in any way with hand-washing and how the U.S.’s highly individualistic culture makes it more likely for someone to hover (because it allows her to avoid someone else’s germs) than to wash her hands (because it’s done in the interest of preventing the spread of one’s own genes to others) and wondering why I’d decided to go into philosophy in this re-gen and not social science.

It was just as I was walking out, trying to figure out how to carry out this research ethically (since people are probably more likely to wash their hands when others are present), hoping to take a look over the balcony onto the dance floor in case Moshe had come into sight before Jeanine came out of the restroom, when I felt hands sneak their way around my waist and a body press against mine from behind and hold me against the railing. Lips found a spot between my ear and my jawline, and my eyes closed almost involuntarily as the gentle mouth brushed its way lightly down my neck. It ended where my shoulder began; I felt a light nibble, and one of the hands was then cupping the other side of my neck, as if to hold it steady before tracing a line down my throat and the notch in the breastbone. The next moment, the hands and body crept away as quickly as they’d materialized.

Wondering why Jeanine had pulled away so suddenly, I turned around to see her only then emerging from the ladies’ room. Frisson hit me at the sight of her eight feet away when I thought she’d only a second ago been right behind me. It felt like alarm, but the alarm only fed the erotic charge of the moment.

“How’d you do that?” I asked her, just in case she had indeed performed an act of illusion. At the same time, I glanced around to see if someone else might be watching or paying attention or sneaking away. The crowds were so thick, however, that she (I had been so certain it was Jeanine that I couldn’t imagine the brief visitor had been male) could have been a foot away or back downstairs by then and there was no way to tell. I wished I knew, at the very least, whether it were a random interception or if I’d been sought out.

“Do what?” Jeanine said.

The events of this day to be continued...

Curtain Number One

Originally written Sunday, December 19, 2005 (continued)

After I introduced Jeanine to the vampires (albeit not as “the vampires,” of course), we headed to the bar. I convinced her to allow me to pay for the first round of drinks by promising she could cover the second. That’s when the first misstep of the night occurred. As I was digging into my bag for my wallet, I felt a vibration. Thinking it was my phone, I pulled it out along with the wallet: with only one thumb grasping it, I didn’t have enough sensory input to recognize the shape. Of course it wasn’t my phone, and I realized it only the moment before Bella’s charm came into view. This would not have been a problem if it hadn’t still had the chain strung through it, making its function as an accessory apparent. Before I could shove it back into the bag, Jeanine had snatched it up from the counter:

“Oh wow, this is just perfect for a place like this! Let me put it on you.”

I tried to make my protest sound nonchalant. “No, no, that’s OK. I wasn’t planning on wearing that tonight. I’m not sure if it really goes.” I could have said I’d brought it along to pass on to Patrick, but then I might have had to explain why he’d want such a feminine trinket.

“Actually, I think it’ll go really well with what you’re wearing. I’ve never seen anything so unique.”

And thus, while I was adding her use of “unique” as a comparative and not absolute adjective to the list of potentially condemnable charms, I pulled my hair away from my neck so that she could fasten the clasp behind me. I had to admit that the round black coral looked perfect where it rested below my clavicle and above the lacy bustier (I had deposited the velvet blazer at the coat check). I reminded myself that Patrick and perhaps Dennis would in all likelihood be the only people there to recognize it as anything more than a distinctive piece of jewelry. Besides, it made sense that now that I knew how it could influence me, I could be more capable of resisting it. I thought to myself that it was a good thing that wooden stakes don’t vibrate (a moment later I suppressed a peurile giggle at my unspoken Freudian slip).

For that matter, I took note that as soon as it was in place over my heart, it took up its familiar synchronicity with my pulse, having stopped vibrating shortly after I'd grabbed hold of it and before Jeanine had been able to pick it up; within moments, the pulsing too was gone and I felt nothing from it at all: its weight seemed to diminish as it warmed to match my body temperature. At no point did Jeanine make any indication that she had noticed it move on its own.

We circulated around the club. As more people filtered in, the music grew louder. We swung by the sound booth to say hello to Jeanine’s DJ friend, Joey. He was thrilled to see her and attempted to chat while going about his business. We hung around the booth for a while, Jeanine watching him do his work and I watching Trudy and Moshe do theirs from what proved to be possibly the best vantage point in the club. They danced for a short time, but for all the transforming effect Moshe’s new look leant him, it didn’t make him any better a dancer than he was the night I’d met him at the contra. I saw Trudy make eye contact with a tall and scrawny young man in a fishnet shirt. He smiled and nodded hello at her as though he knew her. Moshe followed as Trudy danced over to him and the plump and busty young woman who seemed to be with him. The man bent down while Trudy yelled something into his ear; he looked, grinning, at Moshe, and then took his companion by the hand. The foursome headed to the bar, where it was probably marginally quieter.

I watched the vampires order drinks for the humans (on Moshe’s dime, it appeared). They formed a tight little circle and shouted over the music for fifteen minutes or so before resting their empty plastic cups on the counter and disappearing through a curtain-draped door in the side wall. I excused myself to go to the ladies’ room and hurried to the stairs. I wove through small groups of people dancing or trying to talk, sometimes pausing to let others pass through the same scarce holes in the crowd from the other direction. Finally I reached the door framed by heavy plush fabric. As I began to push aside the curtain, I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard Jeanine’s voice close to my ear:

“I don’t think there’s a restroom that way. I think it was back upstairs.”

“Are you sure?” I answered. “I asked the bartender a moment ago and I’m pretty sure she said it was this way.”

“Oh, well, maybe. Anyway, I have to go, too. You know when you don’t realize it until a minute after someone mentions it to you?”

The door led to a staircase that led down into what seemed to be a basement room below the dance floor. For a moment, it felt like illicit territory, but as my eyes adjusted to the thick darkness and the door upstairs closed on the loud drones of heavy bass, melodic percussion, and a sultry female voice speaking rhythmically in German, I was able to see that this was merely a second level to the club. The only sources of light were in the stairwell, over the small, quiet bar to the side, and a few torch-like lights emitting black light toward the ceiling at intervals around the wall. Mellow experimental music was being piped in through speakers. It only took a glance to see that this was essentially a make-out room. Squishy-looking couches lined the walls and filled the space in the center of the room. Couples and a triple or two lined the couches. While everyone looked to be fully dressed, there were hands and arms inside the vehicle while the bus was in motion… so to speak.

“Guess there’s no restroom here,” said Jeanine.

The events of this day to be continued...

Shadows of Former Selves

Originally written Sunday, December 18, 2005

Jeanine had called me earlier to ask what she should wear—as she’d mentioned the other day, she’s not really the goth type. I told her that I’d be more or less guessing, myself, since I’d never been to this particular one, but goth clubs tend to be fairly laid back, and that I was just planning on digging up some stuff from my old Rocky Horror days (I didn’t mention that those days took place in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, when it was still playing at the Waverly and it wasn’t too unusual to see apparently middle-aged folks there, as I was at the time). Since we were also planning to go directly from dinner to the club, it would preferably be something versatile. “Wear something black and sexy and you can’t go wrong,” I said.

“Well then, maybe you should show up a bit early to tell me whether I look sexy enough!”

My pleasure, I thought.

What I dug up for myself was a black bustier and calf-length slip. With a red velvet blazer over the ensemble, it would be in no way inappropriate for going out to dinner, what with how much trendy fashions these days resemble what we used to consider underclothing. I found a velvet drawstring bag that was larger than most people would take clubbing, but I needed room for my wallet, keys, cell phone, and charm, as well as the device Patrick had referred to when he’d suggested looking after Moshe the old-fashioned way: a wooden stake. But more about that later. I know I’d previously thought I wouldn’t bring the charm along, but I was becoming increasingly protective of it. I wasn’t planning on bringing it into contact with my heartbeat; I just didn’t feel comfortable leaving it at home unattended.

When I picked up Jeanine, she’d put together a tight black t-shirt that revealed cleavage I didn’t know she had and low-riding jeans encircled by a studded leather belt. Around her neck she wore a choker that matched the belt; I might more aptly call it a collar. I was a little relieved and a little disappointed by the collar, relieved because she wouldn’t be mistaken for Moshe and Trudy’s type and disappointed because, well, I happen to like nibbling on necks, too. She pulled on a fuzzy bolero that looked like something I might have owned in the 1950s, and we were on our way.

Dinner went very nicely. On some levels, it was better than I’d hoped. We had much in common, although I realized I’d need to keep some of our similarities to myself for now. She’d earned one of her graduate degrees at NYU, for instance; I’d been attached to the Columbia law library many years ago, but it was too soon to begin any interscholastic rivalry. She also has exquisite taste in wine, but it wouldn’t have been prudent to tell her I knew the original owners of her favorite Argentinean winery (est. 1927). Of course, she is turning out to be a rather engaging woman even beyond our superficial likenesses. But as the number of details on which I could not expand with her accrued, I grew frustrated.

In retrospect, that frustration may have been why I found myself consumed with noticing her faults during much of the meal. It began with her teeth, which I hadn’t previously noticed were a little bit crossed in the front, while her canines were set far up in her gums; they were also tinted like a smoker's, even though I knew her not to be. I tried to focus on her eyes when she spoke, but my gaze kept gravitating to her mouth. Then there were her breasts: I could see from her form-fitting top that one was bigger than the other to a greater degree than are most women’s, including my own. And then there was the way that her side of the conversation would frequently go off-topic in a pointless, rambling sort of way. It’s not that any of these things were dealbreakers; overall I still found her compellingly attractive. In fact, like her grating Neil Young appreciation (and impersonation), her foibles add to her appeal. I know myself, though, and I recognize that I was already collecting characteristics about which I could change my opinion at some undetermined point in the future if I need a reason to cease being interested in her.

We arrived at the Crypt around 10:00, right about the time when there were enough people trickling in for the place not to look embarrassingly empty. My boys weren’t there yet, but we saw Trudy and Moshe almost immediately. Or perhaps I should say I saw Trudy. Moshe, on the other hand, did not register as Moshe in my awareness until I’d looked a second or third time and heard him speak. Trudy, I gathered, had done a good job on him. His wire-rimmed glasses had been replaced by dark eyeliner, and his hair was straightened, spiked, and black. I couldn’t tell for certain in the dim light, but it seemed he wore a light-colored foundation that left his complexion as pale as ever, but it was a more consistent shade of pale and certainly less pasty. His pleather pants and t-shirt-with-generically-silly-quip appeared to be standard Hot Topic gear (which made me imagine the vaguely amusing scene of Moshe the shopping mall pianist dropping by the last store the retail kids might have expected him to enter), but he wore the whole get-up as if it were made for him. He’d have no trouble finding a willing partner or two tonight. That was the good news. The bad news was that Trudy might think he wouldn’t need supervision if he could procure his own meal. The responsibility would fall to me to keep an eye on him.

The events of this day to be continued....

Good Vibrations?

Originally written Saturday, December 17, 2005

“Sure, whatever. Anyway, I just thought this would be a good step to take. And I thought that after all these years you’d be able to trust me with this. I mean, who knows more about the story behind it than me? And maybe now el jefe Moshe.”

“The chief?”

“Huh?”

“Chief Moshe?”

“Oops. I thought ‘jefe’ meant ‘thief.’”

“El bandito. El criminal.”

“Well, I got the ‘el’ right. Anyway, I feel like you’re not giving me enough credit. But if you want to go out there with me, then I understand.”

He was definitely trying to guilt-trip me into giving up the goods. Maybe he had a good reason to want it, and maybe he had a good reason not to tell me what that reason was. In any case, Patrick had given me exactly the way out that I needed. I couldn’t have planned it better if I’d tried. If he wanted a visual aid, he’d get one. And if and when he found out on his own that he wouldn’t be able to destroy it without the other two, he might not make the attempt and thereby discover it was only a cheap clay replica. All of this, of course, hinged on the assumption that he was telling the truth. And if he wasn’t, the consequences, whatever they might be, would be no worse than if I’d given him the original.

My coat was hanging on the back of my chair. Both charms were in the same pocket, balancing out the weight of my wallet on the other side (you only need to rely on coin-op laundry for ten years to be primed for hoarding quarters for the rest of your life). I hoped I’d be able to tell them apart by touch, perhaps by changing the real one’s temperature. When I reached in, however, it was easier than I’d expected. One of the two rough, round objects was not only already warm but was vibrating rapidly like a tuning fork. This was new. As I squeezed my fingers around it, it came to a rest, much like a small animal needing to be calmed by its mother. When I loosened my grip, the vibrating resumed. It was a silent vibration, but it was distinct. I grabbed the other crescent, the non-magical one, and made a miniature production of pausing to look at it, glancing up at Richard and back again, exhaling deeply to express my acquiescence, and finally placing it in Richard's hand, all the while watching for his reaction.

Despite the fact that he’d been needling me for it for five minutes, he actually seemed stunned that I gave in. He even began to backpedal (or pretend to). “Really? Are you sure?”

“No. I’m really not. You absolutely, positively have to be careful with this. And bring it back to me as soon as you’re done with it. Don't hang onto it.”

His expression was all gratitude and appreciation. “Thank you,” he said. “This is—thank you.” He picked it up, cradling it for a moment in his palm. His forehead creased slightly in consternation. “But isn’t it supposed to…” he stopped himself before completing the sentence.

“Supposed to what?”

“Um… I thought it was supposed to be bigger.” I had the feeling that’s not what he’d begun to say. What did he already know about it?

“Nope. That’s the same size it’s always been.” It was true: as I mentioned earlier, Patrick’s counterfeit was perfectly sized. He even did the inner curve of the crescent particularly accurately for someone working from memory: the angles at the points and the depth of the body had matched up when I held them together. Short term memory is quickly developed early in the curriculum, and he must have sketched the outline as soon as he’d left the restaurant after brunch, but I’m so verbally-minded that Patrick’s visual memory seemed especially impressive so soon. In any case, I wondered momentarily if I should simply tell Richard that I was giving him a phony. After all, if he needed it in good faith, he’d be upset if he found out it was the wrong one. My gut was telling me, however, that if he knew it wasn’t the original, he’d continue to badger me and accuse me of not trusting him… which was true, of course, but he hadn’t given me a reason to trust him lately.

We conversed casually for a little while longer and paid the check. I picked up my box with the leftover angel hair. As we stepped out of the restaurant, I looped the plastic bag around my wrist and plunged my hands inside my pockets. As I headed toward my car, I was able to feel the charm’s vibrations subside. Why it vibrated and why it stopped, I have no idea; I'll just add it to the list of mysteries.

And that’s part one of what happened yesterday, the 16th. I’m going to have to go into part two tomorrow. Hopefully there won’t be too much more happening in the meantime. These overly eventful days are difficult to relate all in one sitting. And who’d have guessed? It’s only taken me a month and already I feel a sense of responsibility for keeping up with what I know readers want to hear.

The Pretenders

Originally written Saturday, December 17, 2005

“Fair enough. So what’ll you be looking for at U. of I.?”

“Archives. West Indian spirituality. They’ve got the largest collection of voodoo-related materials in the Midwest there.”

“And you think this is gonna help you figure out why there might be a vampire looking for the charm? Rick, we know what it does. We know why someone would want to add it to their collection. That’s not the mystery.”

“No, I know that. But try to think back to when you first got it from Bella. Do you remember? You said then that she told you there are ways to use one to locate the others. And how to destroy them. But we don’t know what they are. What those ways are, I mean. If we got that info, we might be in better shape.”

“Sounds like a good plan. I support.” I didn’t tell him I already know some of what he’s interested in.

“Good. Uh, thanks. So that’s why I asked you to bring the charm with you today.”

“And why’s that?”

Apparently, the wine was not enough of a relaxant. The table between us started to vibrate slightly. When the forks resting on our empty dishes began to rattle softly, he lifted his elbows from the surface rather than cease the shaking of his knee. Still, he was able to look me steadily in the eye as he spoke: “Because I thought that it would help me in my research.”

“So you want to take a look at it?”

“Well, yes, for now, but… I was also hoping to take it to U. of I. with me.” I’d seen the request coming from a mile away; I just wondered what the nature of his excuse would be and why he would be constructing it.

I turned my head slightly to the side and scrutinized him with one eye. “You want to take the charm off my hands to do that? What for?”

“Well, you know, Roger says that a lot of the materials are illustrated, so it would be good to have the visual aid. And what if I find out how to destroy it, shouldn’t I do it right away? Why wait til I get back to do it?”

“Or you could take a picture and use the phone. Or I can go out there with you. I just don’t feel comfortable with it leaving my possession right now.”

He seemed to be trying to regain his focus deliberately, doing his best not to appear flustered. The leg-shaking and head-rubbing had disappeared now that the ice was broken. “You could come out there with me. I really don’t think you need to worry, though. You can keep investigating on the homefront. If Moshe knows you have it, then he won’t know it’s gone unless you come with me, right?”

“Maybe. Look, at one point I might not have minded you borrowing it for a while. But with someone possibly looking for it, this is exactly the kind of time when it’s not a good idea. Why do you think I’m the one Bella gave it to in the first place? What are you gonna do if you do get accosted while you have it?” I paused and blinked for effect before pointedly asking, “How’s your nose?” in reference to the injury he’d supposedly sustained last week. There was no bandage and no bruising, and if there were any disfiguration, I couldn’t tell. I wondered if he’d suggested meeting today specifically because it was long enough after the incident for it to heal or for me to believe it had healed. I have a slightly distorted perception of how long healing is supposed to take for others anyway, and he may have counted on my giving him the benefit of the doubt.

“Sensitive. Sore. Thanks for asking.” He touched the bridge gingerly and winced convincingly. “If I am accosted, I’ll be prepared next time. He’s not that tough; he just caught me by surprise.”

“But he can distract you, and we don’t know if he’s working alone.”

He could probably see that even if he could come up with an excuse that held water, it would sound argumentative at this point and therefore suspicious. He switched gears almost visibly. His eyebrows rose, his eyes and shoulders fell, he heaved a sigh, and he said, “OK, you’re right—“

“I’m always right,” I broke in.

“Yeah, and you’re still always right. You’re the best person to protect it, physically speaking. Even though he’s distracted you, too.” Yet another thing he could not know, at least at this point, was that the very type of object that had made Moshe “do” the brain-muddling thing was the same type that was likely to protect me from it now. “I just wanted to do you a favor. We’re both implicated in this thing, you because you have it and me because I have access to the information about it. Or had it, until the stuff got stolen. I guess I was just thinking of us as like teammates here.”

Ah. To paraphrase Chrissie Hynds, this was beginning to sound like emotional blackmail. “Course we’re teammates, Rick. But look—I’m the goalie, and you’re, uh, not the goalie. I don’t know. The forward or something. What sport are we talking about?”

He snorted. “Who knows. Hockey? Soccer? Basketball?”

“Basketball doesn’t have goalies. In fact, the forwards are like the goalies. We’re definitely not talking about basketball. How about lacrosse?”

“I don’t know how to play lacrosse.”

“Neither do I. But it has goalies. So it has goalies, and we don’t know how to play it. Sounds like a good analogy, right?” The bulk of this asinine exchange was deadpan.

The events of this day to be continued...

Circumvention

Originally written Saturday, December 17, 2005 (continued)

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? My sister lives about an hour away from here. She has the biggest house, so our parents are coming out from Rochester for Christmas. I was raised Catholic this time around. I’ve been Catholic so many times I feel like I’ll be entering the priesthood in a generation or two.”

“Yeah, right! You couldn’t handle the priesthood. I seem to remember once upon a time your thing for priests didn’t have much to do with being one.”

“Yeah, well, you can insert randy priest joke here if you want, just as long as it’s not the, um, you know—child molesting kind.”

“No. No child molesting. Wouldn’t think of it. Closeted, self-denying fellow brother of the order molesting, on the other hand….” Sexuality is a strange thing with transitives. Their very being challenges the idea that desires are purely biological or purely a choice, since the lines between body and soul are not always easy to discern. There are too many factors at play in each rebirth to make assumptions about anyone in particular, but most are fairly flexible. What I’ll say for the moment is that Charlotte liked men… a lot. Richard likes women… a lot. However, I’ve also known transitives—as I think I’ve mentioned briefly before—who were so deeply in love with each other that they found ways to reunite, rebirth after rebirth, to spend successive lives together regardless of their respective sexes and other bodily characteristics that might compromise compatibility in more mundane situations. I've known others with an attraction to one particular sex that carried with them from one rebirth to the next, regardless of their own bodily makeup.

As an aside, and I mention it only because it came up and because you may now be wondering, child molesting is not about desire but about power. Thus, no matter how flexible one’s sexuality is from one generation to another, the likelihood that someone will suddenly become a pedophile who previously was not is not part of the same construction. But I digress….

And I continued. “So, sister’s for Christmas. Didja see her for Thanksgiving, too?”

“Yeah, actually, she and her kids and her husband came by here for dinner. What about you? Holiday plans?”

“I’m going to California to see college friends for a week or so. Get out of this bitter cold.”

“Ohh, lucky you. Send me postcards?”

“Sure. Postcards from the beautifully gentrified suburban San Fernando Valley. You got it. Did your sister’s family stay long enough for you to show them around? See your work? Anything?”

“Nah, her boy plays football in high school. They had to be back the next day for a big game. So it was came, ate, left for them.”

“Hm. How are things that time of year at the museum anyway? Get busy cuz people are off? See more traffic the couple of days before the holiday?” All that stupid family stuff just to get to the one day I cared about.

“Not that much more, but we were switching exhibits that week so I was working late hours, then just coming home and crashing. Honestly, cooking Thanksgiving dinner for six ended up being relaxing compared to that.” In other words, his only alibi would be others at the museum itself, and only for the first part of the night. And speaking of relaxing, he had ordered an additional glass of wine in the midst of all of this, on top of the bottle we’d already split. While three large glasses on a full stomach was hardly going to impair his judgment, I did notice a subtle change in his demeanor as a little bit of tension left his neck and shoulders. Figuring I’d drawn out of him all the information about the night of the 22nd that I could reasonably expect, and guessing I might continue to have the upper hand if Richard were still too nervous to bring it up himself, I entered the next phase of inquiry.

“So Rick, I hate to change the subject so abruptly,” which wasn’t altogether true, as I was more than happy to, “but you wanted to get together for a reason, right?’

“Um, yeah, I did.” He was evidently caught off-guard. Inadvertently, I’d lulled him into a comfortable frame of mind and then shaken him clear out of it. “The, um, the things the vampire stole from the museum.”

“Yeah. Any news about those?”

“Well, not those, exactly. I’ve been asking around from people from dancing about him to see if I can find out where to find him. A couple of people say they know him, but they don’t know where he lives.”

My gosh, why hadn’t I thought of that? I could contact my student from this past quarter whom I saw speaking to Moshe at the dance two weeks ago, just to grill her for information about what he was like prior to his estimated time of immortalization. Richard was continuing as, with my divided attention, I ruminated over ways to make such queries sound casual:

“So, um, I haven’t been able to get that stuff back. But I’ve been going through some related archived stuff from the same region and period. I’m not getting very far, but I have a professional contact at U. of I. that might be able to help.” The university he’d referred to is about two hours from here.

“Well, that’s better than nothing. I’m not sure I really want outside people being dragged into this thing, but…”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about Roger. All he knows is I have research to do. It’s a perfectly normal thing.” By this time, he was rubbing his hand over his smooth, bare scalp. I’d seen him do it absent-mindedly before, but right now he was doing it repeatedly, almost compulsively. It registered as a nervous tic.

The events of this day to be continued...