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.