Interview With a Jewish Vampire

by Erica Manfred

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you about it some other time. Now pick up that phone.”

  I called Tess first, no answer. I left a message. Same story with Miriam and Ellen. Judy answered on the first ring.

  “I have no idea where your mother is, Rhoda, or Miriam or Ellen for that matter, and it’s your fault for coming up with such an irresponsible crackpot scheme. All the girls now think they’re vampires. You’ve somehow convinced them they can only drink blood. I never believed it for a minute but they sure do. What were you thinking anyway?”

  “Just tell her to call me if you hear from her,” I said and hung up. Judy was obviously not going to be any help. She just made me feel even more guilty.

  “Call Tess’s friend Hannah, you remember her. She’s the nurse who ran the IV for me. Here’s her cell number.”

  “I got an answer right away.

  “Hannah, this is Fanny’s daughter. Do you know where my mom is?”

  There was a long silence. “I don’t think Tess wanted me to tell anyone because she thought she could solve the problem before anyone notified you, but things aren’t going so well.”

  “Things? What things?” I started pacing around my apartment, twisting strands of my hair, a nervous habit I had that I thought I’d managed to break.

  “Rhoda, your mom has gone rogue.”

  “Rogue. What the hell does that mean?”

  “She’s disappeared and bodies have been turning up in Miami. The police are very suspicious. Of course they don’t know about vampires but your mom, or whoever is doing this, has been very sloppy. The bodies have puncture marks in the neck and such.”

  “Where is Tess? And Ellen and Miriam?” I looked down and realized I had torn out a handful of hair, which I was now holding. I stopped pacing, sat down and tried to be calmer, at least a little bit.

  “Tess and Ellen are in Miami looking for Mom and Miriam. They disappeared together. That’s really all I know. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more,” she said, sounding upset herself.

  “I’m going to come down there and help look for her. If Tess or Ellen turn up ask them to call me on my cell.” I gave her the number.

  “I’ll do that. Calm down, Honey. Tess will find her.”

  “By then she may have been arrested for murder. That’s worse than dying of a heart attack.”

  “Call me when you get in.” Hannah hung up.

  Sheldon put his arm around me. I curled up into him, put my head on his shoulder and cried some more.

  “Let it all out. Then get a tissue and make reservations for the next flight to Fort Lauderdale. I’ll come with you.”

  “Oh Sheldon, thank you, thank you.”

  “No need for thanks. I’m fifty percent of the problem. I’m the one who turned her into a vampire in the first place. Obviously I didn’t do much of a job of teaching her how to feed safely.”

  “Yes you did, Sheldon. You took her to the ranch, took her to Century B.A., we thought she’d settled in and everything was fine. We were wrong. Mom has always been strong willed. She’s the original ‘I did it my way’ Jewish mother.”

  “Can we get down there tonight, Rhoda? Once dead bodies start turning up we’re talking a B.A. red alert.”

  “How are we going to find out where she is?” I asked.

  “I’m sure Tess has some clues. If the girls were ‘clubbing’ she probably went along too. Tess adores dancing.”

  I opened my computer and searched for flights, booking us on the red eye to Fort Lauderdale with a credit card I couldn’t pay off, but I’d worry about that later. I printed out our tickets so we could board quickly. At least this time we wouldn’t have to check in a coffin.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  On the plane I decided that it was time to throw the Rules out the window. I was too dependent on Sheldon now. I loved him but I also had to be able to trust him. His recent evasiveness had eroded my confidence in his feelings for me—and by extension, for Mom-- even though he was her sire.

  “What’s going on between us Shel?” I asked after shoring up my courage with two vodka martinis. “You’ve been very distant recently. You’ve pulled way back from me emotionally. I haven’t wanted to press you about it, but now I feel I have to know?” I realized it wasn’t only the Rules that had stopped me from asking Sheldon what he was up to. It was dread about what his answer might be. I’d completely lost my confidence in my feminine charms after my husband dumped me—not that I’d had a whole lot of it before.

  “Rhoda, I’ve been waiting to apologize for what I’ve put you through these last months,” he said, leaning over to give me a tender kiss. “I know it’s been very hard on you never knowing when I was going to show up. Don’t think I didn’t appreciate your patience. Actually I wasn’t expecting it, knowing you.”

  “I’ve been following The Rules,” I told him, after I’d asked the flight attendant for yet another vodka martini.

  “Rules? What rules?”

  “I don’t think you want to know. They’re from a book-- too silly. Anyway what’s been keeping you away? Was it Tzeitl?” I held my breath.

  “Geez, that Goldie, she loves to make trouble. Tzeitl is Herschel’s fiancée, she’s a nice Jewish vampire girl. When I introduced her to Goldie she just ignored the fact that Tzeitl was Herschel’s girl, and decided I should marry her, but that would never happen.

  “You mean I’ve spent all these months sure that you’re cheating on me with Hershel’s fiancée. I still haven’t met Herschel by the way. Or Tzeitl. Why is that?”

  “That’s what I was going to tell you. Herschel and the rest of the Hasidic vampires in Crown Heights don’t want to let me go—they insist that I stay in the building and come to their services. There are only ten of us vampire Hasids and I’m the rabbi. Without me there’s no minyan. This means they can’t pray. It’s a disaster for them. Where will they find a replacement for me?”

  “Rabbi? You told me you were a former rabbi. Is that why I never saw you on weekends?”

  “Yup, it’s Shabbat. But they pray twice a day and were always pressuring me to be there when I wanted to visit you. I felt guilty. I was trying to please all of you but just wound up getting everyone pissed off. And that’s not all. Goldie was pushing guilt as well. She wanted me to stay home and keep her company.”

  “Goldie? She’s a golem, not your mother.”

  “Tell her that. She thinks she’s my mother. She keeps reminding me that I created her and I have to be there so she can take care of me.”

  “Can’t you de-animate her?”

  “She won’t let me. In fact she won’t let me near her because she knows that’s what I want to do. Every time I de-animate her she lays a ton of guilt on me when I bring her back to life. She doesn’t like you and doesn’t want me to live with you—or marry you. I can’t take the guilt-pushing. She’s the only mother I’ve had since I became a vampire and I do love her. What with Herschel and my friends and Goldie pulling me in one direction and you pulling me in another, I felt like I was being drawn and quartered. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Marry? Who said marry?” I was stunned that he even mentioned the “M” word. We’d never spoken about marriage.

  “That would seem to be the natural thing eventually, don’t you think?”

  “If I become a vampire that is?”

  “Yes, if you become a vampire. Marrying a human would not work.” Sheldon, looking uncomfortable, quickly changed the subject,

  “Why didn’t you tell me about all this? Why keep it to yourself?”

  “I was afraid you’d leave me. I never told you I was still religious; that I was still a rabbi. You’re an atheist, like your mother. I thought she’d hate me and you would drop me.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” a great wave of relief washed over me. If it wasn’t another woman we could work it out. “I don’t care if you’re a rabbi. I don’t care if you’re the Baal Shem Tov. I’m not an atheist, I’m actually very spiritua
l. I just don’t know what kind of spiritual.”

  “You are?” Sheldon sounded relieved as well. “That’s wonderful.”

  “Just don’t tell my mother, she thinks God is a four letter word.”

  We hadn’t solved anything though. How could Sheldon leave his minyan—or Goldie—to be with me? He’d never be able to live with himself. Should I become a vampire? I certainly wasn’t about to become a Hasidic balabusta. How could we reconcile our two different worlds? Vampire and human, kosher and non-kosher, religious and secular, bloodlust and compulsive eating.

  “What do we do?” I asked him.

  “I have no idea,” Sheldon said, throwing his hands up. “I was trying to have it both ways.”

  “We can’t resolve this now, darling,” I reassured him. At least now I knew it wasn’t another woman, or it was another woman, but she was made out of clay. “We can figure it out when we get back, if we ever get back. We still have to find Mom.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Despite Sheldon’s newfound ability to fly we still had to take a limo from the airport. It seems he couldn’t fly with luggage. I had the key to Mom’s condo so we went straight there although we knew she was in Miami somewhere. Her condo would give us a base, plus I was hoping we’d find some clues there to her whereabouts.

  Mom’s apartment was dark and her bed hadn’t been slept in. The place had an air of having been empty for a while. I got really bad vibes from being there without her. I’d never without her greeting me with a big hug, a huge grin and a “do you want something to eat?”

  I put my bag in the spare room, sat down on the bed and asked Sheldon, “What do we do now?”

  “Look through her drawers and closets, Rhoda. Maybe you’ll find something that will give us a clue.”

  I went into her room and started rummaging through her stuff. I didn’t find anything strange until I got to her makeup. There was a black lipstick, black eye shadow and hair gel. Mom never wore black lipstick or black eye shadow or used hair gel. I went through her closet and noticed black clothing—a few long skirts with uneven hems, a black fitted jacket with lace at the ends of the sleeves, and a few ruffled black scarves. Mom never wore black. No one in Century Village ever wore black. It was considered a major fashion faux pas in a town where no one wanted to be reminded of funerals or death.

  “I have no idea what all this black stuff means, Sheldon. Do you?”

  He shook his head and raised his eyebrows quizzically. “The only vampires I know who wear black are Hasids.”

  “Well I doubt Mom has become an Orthodox Jew all of a sudden. That would be more of a stretch than becoming a vampire,” I laughed, which broke the tension somewhat.

  “Try to get Miriam or Ellen again,” he told me. “I’ll try Tess.”

  Ellen answered this time on the fourth ring. “Oh Rhoda, I’ve been meaning to call you,” she said in a falsely chirpy tone, as if I were a collection agency.

  “I tried calling you a few times, and Miriam and Tess. I haven’t gotten anywhere. No one returns my calls.” I was angry by this time. “Where is my mother? I can’t seem to get her on her cell phone. Why hasn’t anyone called me?”

  “We didn’t want to alarm you, Rhoda. We knew you’d get hysterical. We figured we’d find her before you noticed you hadn’t heard from her. But that didn’t work out did it?”

  “No, Sheldon felt she was in danger so we came down here. What the hell happened to her? How could you lose her? Is Miriam with her?”

  “They’re both gone and it’s my entire fault.” Ellen dropped the chirpiness and started crying, a piercing wail that was so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear. She didn’t sound as if she could talk coherently on the phone so I suggested we come over and talk to her. I didn’t wait for her agreement, just put down the phone and had Sheldon fly us over there. It was only a short distance away but I was too impatient to walk and there was no one around in Century at night to see us, and even if they were around they probably wouldn’t look up. Old people get vertigo when they look up, Mom told me.

  Ellen’s apartment was in Queensgate, another ersatz-sounding British name even though it was unlikely that one actual British person resided in any building in Century.

  I was surprised when she opened the door. There was actually some disorder in her apartment. The last time I’d been there it was pristinely clean like all of mom’s friend’s places. This time the white rug looked like it could use a vacuuming, the couch pillows were in disarray and there were clothes hanging over some of the chairs. The only pristine area was the kitchen, which was visible from the front door. That wasn’t surprising considering it was a vampire’s least used room.

  “Rhoda, Rhoda, please come in. Sorry for the mess. I haven’t been myself lately. I don’t seem to care about neatness like I used to. I’m hardly ever home. When I am home, I’m sleeping—during the day of course.” She had stopped crying, but her face still had some red lines on it. I supposed it was true that vampires’ tears are bloody. Ick! When Sheldon sobbed it was tearlessly, thank goodness.

  “You want to know about your mom of course. I don’t know much but I’ll tell you what I do know.” Ellen herself looked pretty disheveled. Her usually helmet-like blonde hair was stringy and looked like she hadn’t washed it for a week, and her blue polyester pantsuit was as wrinkled as polyester gets.

  “Just tell me how this happened? What were you all doing in Miami anyway and how did she disappear there?”

  “Well, we were in the habit of going dancing in South Beach. You know there’s not much to do in Century at night and the clubs in South Beach are open pretty much all night.”

  “I can’t imagine any of you dancing to rock, or whatever kids listen to these days, or going into a club where everyone is under thirty,” I said. “How did you get in? How did you learn to dance?”

  “We glamoured the bouncers and from there it was pretty easy.”

  “You did what?”

  “Glamoured,” Ellen said as if I should know what she was talking about. “Sheldon explain it to her.”

  “Vampires can hypnotize humans into thinking whatever we want them to think. I don’t use that power because I think it’s unethical, but obviously Ellen here and her friends don’t feel the same way.”

  “Sheldon, don’t get all Hasidic high and mighty with me. I know you’re not exactly Mr. Clean Vampire,” Ellen retorted, obviously insulted. “Tess has told me some stories about you.”

  “Can we please stop bickering here. I need to find my mother. Where was she last seen?”

  “Tess and I left her and Miriam at Club Dread, a Jamaican place on Washington Avenue. They play reggae. Your mom loved it. She said it reminded her of the days when she and your dad danced Calypso to Harry Belafonte.”

  “How did you lose her?”

  “Tess and I went to another club that played salsa, which we like better. We were supposed to meet up with Fanny and Miriam after the clubs closed at 5 a.m. but they weren’t where we’d agreed to meet. We went back to Club Dread and looked for them but the bouncer said he hadn’t seen them leave.”

  “Maybe they glamoured him so he’d forget that he saw them.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “And where is Tess?”

  “She stayed in Miami with a friend. She’s still looking for them, but I spoke to her recently and she wasn’t having any luck.” Ellen sounded miserable. “I’ve lost my friends. All I have left is Judy and she doesn’t even believe I’m a vampire. I don’t talk to her anymore. ”

  I was having a hard time feeling sorry for her since she’d lost my mother. I was not looking forward to playing Anita Blake, vampire hunter, in South Beach, but I supposed I would have to try.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Sheldon and I arrived at Club Dread the next night, when the club opened. We borrowed Mom’s car since she’d left an extra set of keys hanging by the door. I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t taken it—usually she w
as the designated driver when the girls went out, but I guess now they all could see in the dark.

  Club Dread was on the main strip in South Beach, glittery Collins Avenue with all the Art Deco hotels and neon signs. It actually was in one of the hotels, a rather seedy one. The bouncer at the door, if that’s what he was, was a large Jamaican guy with, of course, dreadlocks, dressed in jeans and a tight white t-shirt that displayed his bulging muscles, obviously the result of some serious body-building. He had ear buds and was dancing to the music on his I-Pod, oblivious to us, and to the other patrons who were just strolling in The place could have burned down for all he’d have noticed.

  “It’s no wonder he didn’t notice Mom and Miriam coming or going,” I said.

  “I doubt they had to do a whole lot of glamouring to get in,” Sheldon added.

  “He’s probably just around in case there’s a fight.” I took his hand. “Let’s go in then. Maybe there’s someone in the club we can ask.”

  The music inside was so loud I couldn’t imagine how we could ask anybody anything, but it was still early and the dance floor was almost deserted. The bartender was just lounging around waiting for customers. Sheldon whispered in my ear that he’d do the questioning because he’d be able to hear the answers. I gratefully agreed.

  There were no barstools. Actually there didn’t seem to be any place to sit, just an enormous dance floor, a balcony with huge floodlights shining down, and a stage with sound equipment. I supposed the band would show up later. There were some perfunctory island-y looking decorations on the wall, but I doubt anyone ever looked at them.

  Sheldon leaned over the bar and shouted in the bartender’s ear. I couldn’t hear a word he said or anything the bartender said back. I really had to have my hearing tested. I’d visited one too many of these clubs in my twenties and probably ruined my hearing.

  Sheldon took my hand and led me back into the lobby, which was quieter.

  “He did see your mom and her friends come in a couple of times about two weeks ago—but he can’t remember which days.”