"I know when I'm beaten, don't rub it in."
"You are not beaten, my dear. You only think you are."
"Mmmrnmmm…" I swayed against him. "Please stop being so superior."
He didn't reply. He sat back against the red vinyl and watched things go by. I wondered what it would be like to need no food, not have the maddening urge to pee, no dull craving for cigarettes or for the distraction of sexual tension. Ricari was a pure being. He needed only blood and God, and to die someday. No wonder he treated me as a psychologist treats a disturbed child.
"Did you pay my rent?" I asked suddenly.
He lifted his eyebrows at me. "Should I not have?"
"I was just wondering… because my landlady was bugging me for a long time… and then she stopped… I barely remember now."
"It was nothing," said Ricari. "I still have money left. I'm trying to get rid of it."
I kissed his hand, licking him, tasting the vampire skin. It tasted of nothing at all—perhaps of my hair conditioner. His flesh was the temperature of the room. I did adore an insect.
Despite this sweetness, we quarreled again as soon as we returned to the Saskatchewan.
"Darling…" I said, sitting on the gold divan and crossing my legs. "Look, I know you were lying when you told me you didn't know where Daniel is. I could see your pupils dilate." Across the room his back tensed. "Why don't you just stop playing games with me, which I don't appreciate, and just let me know what city, what country—"
"I will tell you nothing more of that creature!" Ricari exploded. "Why do you love me if you find me such a liar?"
"I know you have reasons for wanting to keep me away from him. All right, he's dangerous. Perhaps I should find him and kill him."
Ricari paled so when I said this that I shut up immediately.
"You will do no such thing. You would not survive such an attempt."
"Ricari—Orfeo—it's only that I want to have some part of you after you're gone—"
"He is no part of me," Ricari spat. His color was high. "He is the most evil, thoughtless creature I have ever known. He is a demon, hunting for fresh souls. He burns in hell, and he wishes for more innocents to fuel his fire."
I began to laugh helplessly.
Like so many Christians, Ricari could not stand it when people laughed at him. He flung down a crystal candlestick and it shattered against the parquet. "Will you listen to me?" he shouted.
This made me laugh even harder. I was not really amused—in fact, I was frightened by his vehement description—but I was helpless and hysterical, collapsed on the gold chaise longue.
He picked me up and shook me. "What's your problem?"
"Do I… do I…" I struggled for breath. "Do I have to promise not to crawl into the incinerator with you?"
Idly he stroked away the tears that were running from my eyes. "Yes," he said, all violence gone. "You must go on without me, or there will be no point in anything. Anything, you see."
"I can promise you anything but that," I said.
April 20th came.
I had slept on the chaise at the suite, wrapped in Ricari's silk robe, while he slept in bed. I got up and tiptoed to the bedroom door, intending to look in upon his sleeping naked form, but the door was bolted shut.
Ricari got up, as usual, at about five o'clock in the evening. He let me bathe with him, a nice chaste bath in the big hotel bathtub, with the water painfully hot. His skin under the lights was uniformly silky, the whitish color of unbleached cotton; in contrast, I was golden yellow, mottled with freckles, birthmarks, scars from various accidents and incisions. I carefully shaved his face with a straight razor—he didn't like safety razors at all, he always cut himself with them. "I used to bathe with my sisters," he confessed, washing my hair.
"Was it this sensual?"
"Oh, quite. We didn't know it or think of it at the time, of course. My sister taught me to kiss in the bath. It was completely innocent."
"Was this the redheaded one?"
He smiled at me.
Ricari was attempting to blow as much money as he could, so he bought me a violet linen suit, which he made me wear from the Italian boutique, and took me to dinner at a skyscraper restaurant. I was morose as hell. The more he spent, the lower I got. I spent the whole first course staring out the window, wondering if this or that fall would kill Ricari, what kind of things the same fall would do to me. The appetizer was eventually whisked away untouched.
"What's the matter?" Ricari asked, touching me on the chin. "Are you not hungry?"
"I don't know," I mumbled, peeling the skin off my cuticles, softened by the hot bath.
"Don't be depressed."
"The one thing I love more than anything else in the world is going away soon," I said, "and I'm gonna be the one giving it the ol' heave-ho."
"Please don't think of it that way. Be happy for me."
"It's just gonna hurt so much."
"Please, Ariane."
I was quiet then, and sipped a little of my soup to be polite, but mainly I ignored that too. Ricari, in his blue silk blouse and black jacket, watched me through the whole disappointing meal, his eyes gleaming with pity.
After he paid for the meal that I'd had maybe ten bites of, we went walking around the deserted Financial District, its gray and barren streets filled with warm breeze and streetlight. We walked towards Market Street, the great band of piss-colored light, the spine of San Francisco.
"I can't do it," I said, balling my hands into fists.
"You must," he replied.
"No, I mustn't. I would only be doing it because I love you—and maybe I don't love you enough to throw you onto the pyre."
"You would do anything for me," he scoffed.
I shook my head.
We reached Market, and crossed it at Fifth Street.
I stopped him on the sidewalk, and gazed into his eyes.
"Tell me," I insisted, "where Daniel is. I have to go to him."
Ricari sighed patiently. "You will do no such thing."
"I can't go back to my old life just like that! I've given too much! You think I'm a normal human being now? I may not be one of you, but I've changed, and I don't think I can ever go back. I need you—I need—that sound in my head. Either you give me the location, or no death. Those are my terms."
"You've gone completely insane," Ricari said. He sounded impressed.
"Those are my terms!" I shouted.
He looked around us uncertainly, herding me into a side street. "Will you be quiet?" he hissed.
"Those are my terms. Accept one or the other."
"Who do you think you are?"
"I'm the only one who will help you!"
"I can get anyone to help me, my dear. All I have to do is invade their minds and tell them to cut off my head—"
"But that's suicide. God won't like that much, will he?"
"I could—" Ricari vainly grasped at straws. "I could go into the police department and show myself. They'd make short work of me."
"They'd shoot you. Won't work too well."
"Ariane! Will you shut up!"
"Make me," I replied, a thrill of disobedience running through me. He did not know I had his scalpel, palmed after our fraternal bath, in the pocket of my coat.
He grabbed my shoulders, intending perhaps to pick me up and set me down somewhere else, but I reached up and slashed the backs of his fingers with the blade. He let go, howling with pain. I ran the scalpel handle-deep into his cheek, intending to drink the blood as it poured from his lips. I wanted all the blood I had given him back. I wanted to taste it. For days I had been conjecturing about its flavor—salty? Honeylike? Something altogether different? A dark bubble pursed at his mouth and burst, forced by his startled breath.
I did not reach his lips. He struck my right arm and the scalpel slashed his cheek open as it cut and fell away. With his right palm, he slapped me on the cheekbone, and with his left-hand claws he struck at me, tore open the front of the viol
et suit, the gray blouse I wore underneath, and the flesh covering my throat and collarbones. I couldn't even cry out. I stood and looked at the shreds, the blood pouring down to my waist. It had been such an efficient move, so graceful, so simple. I felt the cold air on my flesh, on the naked bone, and only then did I sense any pain. Everything split into brilliant stars of amber light.
I dimly heard him crying out my name, but I didn't see the ground rush up to get me. I felt only that I relaxed.
Book Two
Haemodynamics
* * *
Chapter Six
I dreamt I was on a mountain, going very fast down a mountainside covered with snow. I was tied up, gagged, my mouth stuffed with dry, shit-tasting cotton rags; and I was trying to scream. I twisted and turned on the toboggan I was lashed to, trying to open my eyes and loosen my bonds or stop the horrible, rapid, shaking slide. I couldn't do any of those things. I gave up and let everything go black, convinced that I was going to hit the bottom and be crushed into a pulpy mess. I was afraid of the pain.
I was… darkness. Swift motions passing over me, voices;, I couldn't hear what they were saying. It sounded like someone laughing, or having an asthma attack, one or the other. I was still in my body, I could tell that much; my feet flopped to each side heavily, and I tried to move them, but I was too tired. It hurt to breathe. "Am I dead?" I managed to say, my voice like rubber dragged over concrete.
Definitely laughing. "What'd she say?" A girl's voice.
"She said, 'Am I dead?' That, my little victim, is a matter of opinion." A man's voice, accompanied by the feel of moist cool fingers stroking my forehead. "Now, stop worrying over matters of existential philosophy, and go back to sleep. You're in your bed at home. Can't you smell it?"
I could smell it. The sweat from my head, the synthetic tang of cheap pillowcases, even the faintest hint of… John? No matter; I was suddenly too comfortable to resist anything, remember anything, and I had to do as I was told.
Then I was awake.
I rolled over and felt for my bedside table, my alarm clock, but my hand instead knocked over something that fell with a small plastic clatter to the floor. I opened my eyes and looked down at the floor—a plastic thermometer lay there, on an unfamiliar linoleum floor, a smooth pattern of brown dots and seams in squares. Not my room. Not my bed either. I lay on a narrow bed with one metal rail on the side, a hospital bed. There was not enough light for me to be in a hospital, even late at night; also missing were the busy hospital sounds, the humming of fluorescent lights, beepers, the quiet but distinct hurrying of nurses. I shrugged off layers of cheap flannel blankets and half sat up.
I was wearing a white T-shirt with the collar and sleeves cut out, the front of it dotted with brown droplets of dried blood. I touched my chest. It seemed whole. I was in no pain whatsoever anywhere. I peeked down the front of the T-shirt to see. There were four tiny pink seams that ran from the base of the throat down to where the tits became ribs, lines as fine as plastic surgery scars.
I was not alone in the room. A dark-haired young man slouched languidly in a folding chair across from me, maybe ten feet away, as if waiting for me to wake up. His skin shone eggshell-pale in the umbrous darkness of the room, bright in contrast with his dark clothes—a fishnet blouse and black, glistening, reptile-patterned jeans. He pushed black hair off his brow, leaned forward, and smiled at me. "Hello at last," he said.
"Where am I?" I asked. My voice was full of mucus, and I coughed and spat into a fold I made in the soft, old bedsheet.
"You're at my place," the man said. He had the same voice that had, long ago, commanded me to sleep in my own bed. "My name's Daniel. You're in Hollywood."
I sat very still and blinked at him. "Daniel?" I said. The one and only? The black-hearted demon of Berlin, this, a quiet-voiced, jaunty California Goth boy?
"You may have heard of me," he replied with a straight face.
"How did I get here?"
"You may ask yourself—well, how did I get here?" he quoted the Talking Heads, smiling at last. "In fact, you were sent. Do you remember?"
"Remember what?"
"You arrived here four days ago, in a San Francisco Yellow Cab. You were slashed and unconscious, bleeding very badly. You had a note stuck to your chest with your own blood. I've got it on me—do you want to see it? I think it explains a lot."
I nodded jerkily, and he reached into his pocket and withdrew a slip of paper. He stood up to give it to me. He had an exquisite form, bones and sleekness, grace sliding through every joint and each lean, smooth muscle. The skintight jeans creaked as he walked over to me and bent down to give me the note. Then he sat back down in his chair and watched me unfold it.
On grainy cream-brown paper, in black ballpoint, was written in an unbalanced, florid script:
A little present from me to you. You are welcome to her; she is just like you in so many ways. If I keep her, I'll kill her or I'll lose my mind. Always and ever your slave, O.V.R.
The note was crisp with old blood, dried a darker shade of brown than the paper. I folded it back up and set it down on the blankets in front of me. "Oh," I said. "Yeah, that explains a lot…"
"You're all right now," said Daniel calmly. "Tell me your name."
"Ariane."
He grinned, and I saw his fangs glisten wetly in what light there was. He had rather long, ostentatious fangs, as if age wore them down to smoother stubs. "You look," he said, half laughing, "so pissed off."
"I don't know whether I'm dead or alive," I said. "It doesn't make any sense. It feels like this has all been a dream."
"Yeah," he agreed. "You are alive, though, I can vouch for that." He regarded me with bright eyes ringed with messy black pencil.
I touched my chest, checking to be sure a heart still beat underneath. "So he did know where you were all along," I murmured.
"Of course he did. Did he lie and say he didn't know?" He didn't wait for a response from me, snorting faintly. "Candy-ass. When it comes down to it, it's 'Let Daniel deal with it, let's send evil into evil,' blah-de-blah. I get so sick of that Catholic bullshit."
"I loved him," I said numbly.
"And he probably loved you. Or he still loves you. Did he ever try that dying thing on you?"
"What dying thing?"
"Oh, you know, climbs into a coffin, 'bury me in my best suit,' et cetera."
"He did want me to kill him," I admitted. "I was going to incinerate him."
Daniel made a face. "Yuck. Ever smelled a burning vampire? Stinks like shit." He was gazing at me with some concern. "You should be OK now. We fixed you right up. Do you feel all right? Does anything hurt?"
"I have to pee," I murmured.
"I don't doubt it. Bathroom's through there." He angled his head towards a half-closed door. "You can take a shower too, if you want. I'll have some clothes when you come out. I got it under control."
I got out of bed gingerly. If anything, I was simply tired, as if I'd been fasting or running marathons. The T-shirt slid aside indecently, exposing my bare ass and the dark crescent of my pubic hair, but he didn't look away or even pretend he hadn't seen. I pulled a blanket around myself and tiptoed across the chilly tiles to the bathroom.
I felt too fragile to shower, but I used a grainy hotel-issue washcloth to scrub my face, my pits, my cunt and ass (I remembered losing control of my bowels and my bladder as I looked down at the gaping wounds in my chest, as the blood sprang out in glorious spurts, lit by the amber streetlights). I washed my hair with a little bottle of shampoo (Pert Plus, yet more hotel pickings, from the Hollywood Hilton), pulled the T-shirt back over me, and came back into the room.
He was still there, and laid out on the bed was a sleeveless dress of warm-gray silk, brand-new cotton panties, and black silk socks. "Wow," I said, quietly impressed. "Silk socks." I looked at him, sitting there, smiling crookedly. "You gonna sit there while I dress?"
"Unless you insist. I've seen you naked before."
I sigh
ed, and began to pull the clothes on with my back to him. The silk enclosed me warmly and I realized that I had been shaking, and now I had stopped. "So… where… exactly am I, besides Hollywood?"
"My headquarters, sort of." Up till this point, his accent had been a completely normal American one, a little crisper than usual; here a slight accent crept through. "I almost live here. I have my own place too. This is where you can usually find me. I have a cell phone too. I get calls at all hours." He looked around him. "You are in what we call the Rotting Hall, in the basement. That's why it's so cold in here. It's a nice evening outside—the sun's just going down. You hungry? I'm hungry."
"What do you mean?"
He shrugged. "I'm hungry," he repeated. "Do you want to go out to dinner?" He held out shoes to me—black elastic flats, size eight. "You like Greek? It's California Greek, but it's still all right, especially if you actually eat meat."
I put on the shoes. "You—eat?"
"Of course I do. Don't you?"
"Orfeo doesn't," I explained.
He looked away, rubbing his thick eyebrow with his forefinger. "Oh, yeah," he said with a faint grimace. "He's too special for that. I eat." He held out his hand and helped me stand up. We began to walk from the room.
"Do you shit?" I asked in a slightly embarrassed murmur.
"Yes, don't you? You are one strange kid."
Outside the room with the hospital bed was a long, dark, empty hall that smelled of cobwebs and soil. At the end of the hall were wooden stairs, and at the top of the stairs a doorless jamb yawned into a vast room.
It was the lobby, I supposed; huge and littered with old dusty couches, broken end tables with lamps, crates, spatters of wax. A few candles were lit in a massive candelabra that stood bristling by a spiral staircase. It was nearly the only light in the room; the windows were covered with black plastic trash bags, boards, or haphazard squares of red felt. A little light struggled against the red felt, warming the color of the atmosphere. The air reeked sweetly of marijuana smoke, incense, and the sweet sticky smell of burned opium. "Smells, uh, good in here," I commented.
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