SHADOWS

by Jonathan Nasaw

  Mrs. Jamey Whistler—she could see herself slipping into that sort of life easily enough. But every time she thought about it, she remembered Moll's scornful words in the limo on the way to the airport. Needlepoint, marriage, volunteer work with the Cancer Society.

  At least Martha had finally decided on her next move: over the phone she had let her mother talk her into spending Christmas in Tuscany. Moll's friend Gianni had a villa there that would be idyllic for a mother-and-child reunion. Selene had only one piece of advice for them: if they ran into a countess named Theresa di Voltera, they were to give her a wide berth.

  Theresa di Voltera—odd the details that stayed with one. During her futile effort to talk Jamey out of going to London in the first place, Selene had given him a slightly sanitized version of the story of his father's fall and his mother's death—it had certainly given her a better understanding of the mad old fellow's motives. Of course, she wasn't the one whose spouse and child had been murdered, but after spending a little time with Aldo—shudder—Selene thought she had attained some insight into the dynamics of the relationship between Jonas and Aldo, and was tending toward the view that the more culpable partner had already been dealt with.

  Jamey wasn't buying it, however: "Somehow the knowledge that my father was responsible for my mother's death in addition to all the others does not exactly incline me toward clemency."

  Which was yet another reason why Selene felt she needed to be there when Jamey confronted Jonas; it seemed to her that there had been quite enough killing already in this affair.

  So after a mellow Thanksgiving dinner at Catherine and Sherman Bailey's house in Mill Valley, attended by most of the coven, as well as several members of Whistler's old Penang, Martha drove Jamey and Selene to the airport in the Jaguar, which she promised to treat in their absence as if it were her own. This was a promise that Jamey found less than reassuring. Somehow he had become the father of a teenager—he was about as ready for it as Martha was to find herself the daughter of a vampire.

  * * *

  Despite her own far from modest means, Selene had never flown first class before. Didn't take her long to get into the spirit, though. Swaddled in fluffy blankets, her feet in comfortable slippers, she found herself leaning back against fat pillows, sipping a very decent chilled Chablis and glaring at the peasants from coach who dared to poke their heads through the curtains to inquire about using the upper-class toilets.

  As for the VIP treatment when they arrived at Heathrow late Friday morning—the deference of the Customs officials, the waiting car and driver—Selene decided she could get used to that as well. She told Jamey as much when they were safely ensconced in a luxurious Park Lane hotel suite with the blinds closed and the heavy drapes drawn.

  "I imagine you could," he remarked after the bellboy had been dismissed. "Where's my white box?"

  Selene had started for the bedroom—she turned back to Whistler. "You're not really blind, you know."

  "Quite right—I'd almost forgotten." Jamey took off his opaque wraparound shades and began unwinding the strip of black cloth tied around his head as a second line of defense for his eyes. Aldo Striescu wasn't the only photophobic blood drinker to have hit upon the idea of masquerading as a blind man when circumstances forced him to travel during daylight hours.

  Jamey found the hard-shell white bio-hazard ice chest with the big red cross on top near the minibar where the bellboy had deposited it, and loaded all but one of the thick plastic bags of whole blood labeled with his own name and blood type into the small refrigerator. It was a concept pioneered by Jamey in the mid-eighties, when most nations' blood supplies were considered compromised by the HIV virus: even now, with new strains of AIDS being discovered every year, the role of a wealthy hypochondriac traveling with his own predrawn blood in case an emergency transfusion became necessary was not so far-fetched or eccentric a pose that it provoked more than mild curiosity among border guards and Customs officials.

  While Jamey enjoyed his first drink on British soil, Selene finished unpacking and ran herself a bubble bath in a Romanesque tub. When Jamey came wandering in, glass in hand, she slipped beneath the suds until only her head was visible—didn't want the Creature getting any ideas.

  "I'm having our lunch sent up." He perched on the edge of the tub.

  "What did you order?"

  "Damned if I know. They asked me if I'd like what I'd ordered during my last stay—seemed ungracious to tell them I didn't remember what that was when they'd gone to all the trouble of keeping track."

  The main course at luncheon turned out to be something called gravlax, thin slices of marinated salmon served over rice. "The height of English cuisine," Selene conceded when the last morsel was history. "Of course, that's sort of like being the tallest mountain in Ohio."

  After lunch Selene went into the bedroom and napped for a few hours. When she came out Jamey was watching a soccer match on the telly. Selene had rarely seen him so animated outside of the bedroom. "I didn't know you were such a rabid soccer fan."

  "Oh yes. Quite a respectable striker in my day. Might have gone in for it professionally if only they didn't insist on playing during the daytime."

  She sat down next to him on the sofa. "Jamey?"

  "Mmm?"

  She took his hand. "It's not too late to change your mind."

  Without taking his eyes from the screen. "It certainly is, m'dear. There are no fifty-year-old soccer—"

  "You know perfectly well what I'm talking about."

  "And you know perfectly well I'm deliberately ignoring you." There was a bowl of mixed nuts on the coffee table. Jamey tossed a cashew in the air and caught it in his mouth. When he turned to look at her his eyes were glittering red. "It's going to be dark soon. I've had the concierge book us a table at L'Odeon on Regent Street. By all reports they've a saddle of rabbit to die for, and a black pudding to bring you back from the dead. After we dine I'm going to pay a visit to Number Eleven and have a chat with my father. You can either accompany me, or return to the hotel and wait. Now if you'll excuse me, I believe the home team is about to—Oh, good stop, good stop."

  That last was to the goalie of the team in blue. When there was a break in the action Jamey turned back to Selene. "I don't mean to sound inflexible—if there's another restaurant you'd prefer, just say the word. I'm told the Connaught still has a lovely mixed grill."

  * * *

  It is possible to look at, say, a rack of lamb and not think about the lamb; it is, however, quite impossible to see a saddle of rabbit and not think about the rabbit. What little appetite Selene had worked up quickly fled at the sight of Jamey's entree. She scarcely touched her scallops, just shoved the food around on the plate so as not to offend the chef, and waved away the dessert trolley. She and Jamey hardly spoke during the meal, nor was there much conversation in the back seat of the cab on the way to No. 11. Selene kept to her side, Jamey to his. One joke: she asked him who'd made his leather bomber jacket. "Dolce et Gabbana est pro patria mori," he replied. Nothing more until the cab had turned onto the Belgrave Road—then Jamey asked her something in a whisper.

  "What?" Selene turned to him. She'd been looking out the cab window, but not paying much attention; mostly she was trying not to think about what might be waiting for them at No. 11, because when she did, even though she knew it was unlikely, she couldn't help picturing Mrs. Wah's corpse lying there rotting on the floor of the atelier.

  "Have you brought any of your poisoned pins with you?" he repeated.

  "I'm not going to help you kill your father, Jamey."

  "I'm not asking you to. I was more worried about the possibility of your using one on me again."

  "Well don't be. I don't have any pins left anyway."

  "Why didn't you just say so in the first place?" replied Jamey in a mildly annoyed tone. Then: "Next corner will be fine, driver."

  They were still three long blocks from Cranwick Square. Was Jamey so sure there'd be bloodshed, then, that he
didn't want his whereabouts traced? Selene gave it one more try as the driver pulled over to the curb. "Nothing you can do in there will bring Lourdes and Cora back."

  "Oh really? And I was so counting on their sliding down from heaven on a moonbeam." His plummiest tone. But when he turned to face her the pain in his eyes stopped her in mid—up yours.

  "I'm sorry, Jamey. You didn't need me to tell you that."

  He reached out and brushed her hair back from her forehead where it had come loose from her tortoise-shell comb. The gesture reminded her of their first meeting twenty-five years before, in Morgana's parlor; she pressed the hand tightly against her cheek.

  "Aren't we a pair to draw to?" said Jamey, tears welling in his bloodshot eyes. In the darkness in the back of the cab, the irises were only a little grayer than the whites.

  "Always were."

  "I have to see this through, you know. One way or another I have to see this finished."

  "I know." Then, to her own surprise: "Me too."

  CHAPTER 12

  « ^ »

  Aldo Striescu hadn't truly understood the impact the sight of his eyes would have upon others until the third or fourth ride. The driver was a kid, from the sound of his voice.

  "Look, man, I just gotta ask—are you really, you know… blind, or is this just how you get rides? Don't make no difference to me—I mean, I ain't gonna kick you out or anything—but… Oh. Oh Jesus."

  For Aldo had lifted his dark glasses by way of reply. With a squeal of brakes the car veered to the right, shuddered to a stop; the driver's door flew open. They must have been on a narrow shoulder of the highway—Aldo could hear traffic rushing by just a few feet to the left as the boy vomited onto the pavement.

  After that he left the glasses on. Soon the rides began to blur together in his mind, undifferentiated by the modality of the visible. Voices, smells, snatches of conversations. Standing by the side of the coastal highway, sometimes in the heat of the sun, more often shivering, his windbreaker zipped up to his throat, in the all but palpable fog. Blood would have helped, but he had to ration his remaining store a sip at a time. A woman bought him supper and put him up in her motel room the first night, but lamentably her motives were charitable, and nothing came of it. He considered killing her for her blood, but escaping afterward would have been somewhat of a problem.

  The second day was even worse. An old man in an old sedan who kept blathering on about the view (for Aldo, of course, the scenery never changed) finally dropped him off somewhere between El Something and San Something Else, and he stepped off the side of the road to urinate into the bushes. But afterward he must have gotten disoriented, taken a wrong turn somehow, and couldn't find his way back to the highway. He tried following the sound of traffic and walked into a chain-link fence, then followed the fence and found himself in a cul-de-sac. Fighting against panic now, he tried to backtrack and stepped onto what proved to be the highway off-ramp, directly in the path of an oncoming truck. A horn blared. What are ya, bl—Oh, was the shouted comment.

  From then on he kept to the shoulder of the road. Sometimes a car radio would give him the hour, but it didn't mean much; time measured itself out in increments of riding and waiting, hot and cold, crashing and high, hungry and less hungry. Mostly he ate candy bars from gas stations when someone would help him with the vending machine. But as the days melted into nights it seemed as if the rides were getting shorter and the waits in between longer, and it occurred to him that perhaps his personal hygiene was suffering. He decided to chance using his credit card, telling himself that if the cops were indeed looking for one Leonard Patch, they'd surely nab him at the airport anyway; he asked the next ride to drop him off at a motel that fronted the road—one with a restaurant, if possible.

  There proved to be a whole strip of these lining the highway at a town called Cambria. The desk clerk walked him to the coffee shop; unable to read the menu, he ordered a burger and fries in his best Californian. Finger food; cutlery was too unwieldy. The waitress walked him back to his room. After that he was on his own. He banged his old football knee against the corner of a table, nearly scalded himself in the shower, and later, as he lay in what he presumed was the dark, he found himself wondering, not how the blind managed to get along, but why? Then he remembered that most people, the sightless included, were still as afraid of death as he used to be—before he knew about the afterlife, that is.

  But it was dangerous to think too much about flying, too tempting, with the pain starting to build again where his eyes used to be, and the pistol only a few feet away in the kit bag by the foot of the bed. Aldo allowed himself a small sip of Dutch courage from the thermos, chose a CD at random (how else, now?), and listened to Callas until the batteries of the Discman had gone dead and his bowels had come alive.

  And no wonder, on a diet of burgers and candy bars, he thought as he climbed out of bed. He'd left his cane by the side of the bed, but it went flying when he tripped over his kit bag. No time to feel around for it, either; his innards were cramping now. He started on hands and knees in what he thought was the direction of the bathroom and crawled headfirst into a table leg, lost his bearings entirely, and ended up scrambling around the floor, desperately afraid of soiling himself (toilet training at the Orfelinat had been a brutal affair) until he'd found the wall, then following the wall by touch around two corners until he reached the open bathroom doorway.

  Made it, though. It was his first bowel movement since he'd been blinded, and when, after a great deal of stink and commotion, it was done and he had located the roll of paper in the recess next to the toilet, he found himself confronting one of the world's greatest mysteries: how do the blind know when they're done wiping themselves?

  It struck him as hilariously funny: sitting there on the throne with a wad of bum-paper in his hand, he began to laugh. How long he went on he couldn't have said, but every time the hilarity started to subside he'd reach back to wipe himself and off he'd go again—harsh, barking laughter bouncing off the tile walls. Eventually someone in the adjacent room started banging on the wall and threatening to call the desk, so Aldo swiped and sniffed until he was reasonably certain he was clean, and shuffled back to bed giggling quietly.

  But as he lay there listening to the radio and thinking ahead to the next morning, thinking about going out there again, his good humor deserted him, along with most of his courage, and he went so far as to take the pistol out of the kit bag. Just wanted to feel its reassuring weight in his hand, he told himself. Then he wanted to see how it felt against his temple. Then in his mouth, cocked, safety off; then farther in, angled up—blow a chimney hole straight up through the roof of the mouth that way, take out the entire cerebral cortex. That was how Major Strada had done it, according to a later émigré. Characteristically thorough, but uncharacteristically messy. Have to leave a fiver for the maid. How to tell one bill from another? Didn't matter—leave her all his money. Be flying over Bosnia or Burundi by then anyway. Or Bucharest or Bolinas…

  Bolinas—now there was the fucking rub. Slowly Aldo slid the barrel out of his mouth. It was the one thing that would make eternity unbearable—to be flying around knowing that somewhere down there the victorious striga was still enjoying life, eyes and all. Then a sudden realization: the strigoi was almost certainly alive as well. She hadn't killed him—not permanently, anyway. He'd probably been flying around up there watching the whole thing—and now the two of them were together, laughing about poor Aldo coming in his pants, tearing his own eyes out in agony.

  Not yet, thought Aldo, regretfully slipping the pistol back into his kit bag. Not yet.

  * * *

  Aldo spent the next few hours working things out in his head. He would need help, he knew. First thing he would do when he got back home (no, second thing—his first stop would be his apartment, where he had left himself a welcome-home present in his refrigerator) would be to cab over to Cranwick Square, tell the old man he needed more money, scare him, tell Jonas the
striga was coming for him. Then, if Selene hadn't simply gone back home, he could hire a good skip tracer to find her. Once he'd located her, he'd hire one of his old field buddies to help him go after her. Anton Roman—Tony Rome, they called him, after an old Sinatra movie—was always looking for work. Third stool from the end at the Cock and Fender.

  Aldo even managed to catch a little sleep that night, with the aid of his last two sleeping pills and a relaxing fantasy of having Selene under him again, fighting just as hard as she'd fought him last time, but this time knowing there'd be no waking up for her…

  * * *

  The next morning Aldo's hitching luck changed. The waitress at the motel coffee shop helped hook him up with a retired couple driving down to San Simeon to see the Hearst Castle, and they in turn passed him on to another retired couple who'd just finished the tour and were driving down to L.A.

  So Aldo finished the overland portion of his Incredible Journey in the backseat of a new-smelling Eldorado, listening to two old farts droning on and on about the wonders of the Castle. His thermos went dry south of Oxnard. By the time they'd reached the Los Angeles airport, though they'd gone far out of their way for him, he would gladly have slaughtered both of them just to shut them up, and the hell with their blood.

  Not that he wasn't desperate for a drink when they finally dropped him off. It was with the courage of that desperation that he had the curbside skycap bring him to the front of the nearest ticket queue, where he slapped his passport and his credit card down on the counter and announced loudly, in his best Croydenese, that his name was Leonard Patch and that he had to get back to England as quickly as possible.