Stainless

by Todd Grimson

  And so, if he is jealous of Keith, and thinks Keith was unworthy of Renata, he didn’t love her enough, on another level Eric wants to somehow get close to him, to have Keith like him, because he wants to know the flavor of Keith’s affection, to experience him in ways inaccessible without intimacy, without some quality of momentary “love.” This will allow him to feel closer to Renata, to understand her more.

  Eric takes off his sunglasses, puts them in his shirt pocket. He has a tiny tape recorder on his body, a tiny camera he might use if he gets a chance. The latest in Japanese technology, perfect for industrial espionage. Eric wears a khaki shirt with several pockets, loose khaki pants, red-and-black Air Jordans, a Rolex, a cross on a chain around his neck, nestled down amongst his black chest hairs. He rings the buzzer, and no one says anything to him. He waits a long, suspended five minutes, and presses the button again. He’s prepared to go into a Zen mode and stay here like this for a while, whether or not it gets any results.

  But no, that won’t be necessary. Here comes Keith. Eric recognizes him at once. He feels an upsurge of affection for him, he smiles and is sure Keith will like him in return. They already have a bond, a connection. An affinity. Keith will sense this, and be unable to resist.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Keith feels bad, like something bad is going to happen, he’s polite to this Eric Zimmerman but the whole situation is making him nervous. The thing is: he very strongly thinks that he doesn’t want this book to be written at all. So the fact that Eric has found him—it’s like Keith is in shock, he doesn’t know what to do. He needs more time to think, but it’s impossible. He shouldn’t have called Michael, he thinks. Keith is in a spot. Some kind of a decision is about to be made. He says edgier things than he intends, though it doesn’t really matter what he tells him; Keith’s voice functions as informationless noise.

  “So,” Keith says, as they walk in the garden, “this is going to be one of those books like the Dorothy Stratten story, Portrait of a Centerfold, something like that.”

  “Well, hopefully on sort of a higher level. Maybe more like that book a few years ago about Edie Sedgwick.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “She was this poor little rich girl, model, ran around with Andy Warhol and eventually O.D.’d. Pretty famous for a few seconds at the time.”

  After they walk further, look at some flowers without speaking, Keith says, “I really wish you wouldn’t do this. It serves no purpose in the world, other than to make money by exploiting Renata’s memory. I think she’s better left in her grave. She had enough cheap publicity during her life.”

  “I’m sorry you feel like this,” Eric says. “I mean, I’m dismayed. But … the book’s going to be finished, and published. It will probably be a lot less ‘cheap,’ as you put it, if you help me understand some of what you know. Both because you can put Renata in a different light than anyone else can, and because Gilberto Reyes has been saying all sorts of shit about you, shit you ought to reply to, for your own good.”

  “I don’t care what he says about me,” Keith responds. “I know I’ve got nothing to say about him.”

  “What about the idea that when you and Renata went to Venezuela, there at the end, you were down there to score heroin, because your habit was getting out of hand? That’s something that sort of has to be listened to, at least, since you were busted for heroin after the funeral, and then spent time in rehab back here in the States.”

  “Why do you ask me something like that?” Keith says. “Are you taping this? You are, aren’t you? Motherfucker.”

  “I always do, as a backup,” Eric says. He doesn’t like being discovered, however, one can tell.

  It starts to rain, softly, silvery and brown. The air feels sticky, and smells like slightly rotten fruit and distant smoke.

  “Do you want some iced tea, or a beer?” Keith asks, polite, as if all tension between them has washed away.

  Eric requests a beer. Keith comes back with two Beck’s Dark, a couple of apples, some cheese, a big knife to cut these things up. They can sit in bamboo chairs under the bougainvillea canopy, where there are also some grapevines. Here they are mostly out of the rain.

  “Tell me,” Keith says, “have you ever come across this one photograph, it looks like it was taken a long time ago, in which Renata is standing, it’s a nude, and a hand is coming out of her cunt?”

  “Oh yeah. That’s by Toulon. It’s in his latest book.”

  Keith nods. Now that he knows it exists, he’s not really curious to see it, to compare it to what has been in his head. He feels tranquil, the tranquility of one who has accepted his fate. Sentenced to death. To be shot by a firing squad, or hanged. You cannot choose. There’s nothing you can do. You simply must compose yourself, and accept what is to come.

  “What I would like to do,” Eric says, gamely, “is spend some time with you, maybe a couple of days, and go over that last year month by month. I already have a lot of data. I’ve talked with the members of your band, and I have the tour schedule, and Renata’s calendar from her agency, so a lot of the basic stuff about who was where, when, is already nailed down. I’ve talked to models and photographers who were with her on the last few shoots, and so as we go over some of this I would imagine your memory will be jogged, and we can really see how her mood changed due to what was going on between you guys.”

  “You’ve put a lot of work into this,” Keith observes. “Do you have expenses paid by the publisher?”

  “There is some money there, yeah.”

  Keith gestures. “So that’s a rental car. Where are you staying?”

  The rain falls harder. Eric seems to feel like he’s won, and he’s loose. He talks about a screenplay he once did.

  “Should we go inside?” Keith says.

  “Sure.”

  They stand up. Eric takes a few steps, turns to see what Keith is doing, and he sees what is coming but cannot accept it, cannot believe. Keith plunges the knife into Eric’s chest, a thrust aimed at the heart. Stabbing someone in the stomach or the back is no good, it’s uncertain, while cutting the throat entails close contact, a fight. Or so it seems. If this doesn’t work, he’ll see.

  But it goes well. He gets blood on his hand, that’s all. Eric dies lying on his back, rain falling down from the sky onto his face, beading up and running off, absorbed into the thirsty, greedy lawn.

  FIFTY-SIX

  While she sleeps, Justine fears that she is hideous to look at, eyes filmy, like a corpse, some dark blood perhaps drooling from her mouth. Rising, she washes, and slowly dresses, for she knows that something has occurred. Keith is safe, she can sense this, but something has happened, and she is sorrowful. She dresses in black.

  It is raining out, softly. She finds Keith still sitting under the vines, contemplating the man on the lawn whom he has killed. Justine feels a trembling, which is nudity, and she weeps, she has moisture, she cries, clinging to him. Whatever divinity Keith possessed is gone now, he has fallen, and she mourns this. He is like her. She has poisoned him. The unhealed wound, the dirt of the flesh, the inner blackness that they share. He holds her, and when he tries to console her, she says, You would never have done this if you had not met me. I am corruption. We are doomed.

  Later, she says, more calmly, I don’t want to live without you. He buries his face on her breast. It is clear that he understands.

  What will they do?

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  It is Justine who returns the rental car. Together, they go into the hotel, up into Eric’s room. They pack his bags. There is a nice ghetto blaster, all kinds of cassettes. Sony headphones. His laptop. They take everything, leaving the key on the table, for the maid.

  Keith experiences fear, but then, once they’re in the Mercedes, he lets out a big sigh of relief. He starts up the car. Nobody stops them.

  He says to Justine, “Renata is dead to me. You know this. I never think of her.”

  “Let’s stop someplace,” Justine sugg
ests.

  Keith says okay. He pulls her over to him, and she licks his neck, her tongue rough, like a cat’s. Not very wet right at this moment, or hot.

  He takes them to a nightclub he remembers in West Hollywood, a place where he used to score drugs. They sit at a table where they can watch the dancers, out on the dance floor, same-sex couples mostly, here and there some males and females mixed. Blue and hot orange lights. Vermilion, then for a long time shades of pink.

  Justine takes a small sip of her drink. Keith slugs his down, orders another. He thinks of when she said, “We are doomed.” It feels true, but he wonders exactly what she meant. If they are doomed, is it his fault? He supposes that if someone really begins to look hard at Eric’s “disappearance,” the trail will lead to him. Since Eric found him, another surely can. It won’t be a secret that Eric wanted to talk to him.

  Justine, as if reading his mind, touches his hand. He grasps her fingers in his bandaged grip. Yes, on a much higher level than whether or not he is arrested for some crime, they are doomed. It is hopeless.

  He doesn’t care. There’s nothing to think about. The worst has already occurred. All the precious moments are a gift.

  These drinks are really watered down. Justine finishes hers. Keith wants to kiss her, to forget everything else. The body of Eric still lies out on the lawn, all wet, in the dark. They’ll figure out something to do with him, to get him out of the way.

  At a break in the music, they leave. This might be a good place to come, some other time, to seek someone to provide nourishment to Justine. There are a lot of dark corners, where people are now kissing; she could almost do it right here in the club. Two women with short haircuts up against a pillar break apart. One smiling, the other panting, provoked into more desire than perhaps she anticipated. To Keith’s disappointment, they do not kiss again. The one full of desire stares at Justine. Then, her eyes unreadable, her gaze passes over Keith. Keith and Justine walk by them. He holds her cool hand, guiding her through the jostling, sex and alcohol intoxicated crowd. The sleazy, fuck-me ambiance has its appeal.

  They go someplace else, quieter, a blues club, where they can talk. Some blues guy plays the electric guitar. Keith orders two hamburgers, and Justine smiles when the waitress puts hers down in front of her.

  “I almost forgot,” she says. “I think if I could, I’d put a lot of catsup on mine.”

  This strikes Keith as funny, and he laughs for some time, as the blues guy continues playing his guitar and everyone smokes cigarettes. Justine laughs too.

  Keith teases her by holding up a french fry, dipped in catsup, mutely, with an innocent expression of “Want one?” on his face. She shakes her head, laughs, pushes her hair out of her face.

  On the way home, the lights everywhere reflect off the wet black glistening streets. When they arrive, they decide they better do something about Eric’s body before morning comes. It’s a tiresome chore.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Justine’s hair is wet, like she’s just out of the shower; all she has on is a blue silk kimono, with a big red sunburst on the back. Her skin is marvelously clear and pale. Tamara senses some faint disharmony in the air, and Justine, though amiable enough, seems dejected underneath. Keith, by contrast, struck Tamara as fretful, and inattentive, when he let her in.

  Patrick is out of town, and this seemed a good idea earlier on. Tamara is repaying the joke with one of her own. She has come over to examine Justine, to call her bluff. The two females sequester themselves in Keith’s room, closing the door. It’s 10:00.

  She takes Justine’s blood pressure first. Pumps up the cuff and tries a second time. It’s impossibly low. Tamara frowns.

  There is no discernible heartbeat. No pulse. She puts the stethoscope on again, and listens forever. Finally, yeah, she thinks she hears a beat.

  “How old are you?” she asks, gathering her composure.

  “I don’t know,” Justine says. When Tamara looks at her, Justine continues, slowly, “When I was young, we were a long way from Paris, and the abbot didn’t speak of such things as what year. I might have heard a number, but I don’t remember it. Then, I lived like an animal for a very long time.”

  Tamara says, in a few moments, gently, “Can I ask you some dumb questions?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do crosses bother you?”

  “No.”

  “Garlic?”

  “No.”

  “But the sun … ?”

  “The sunlight would kill me. Yes.”

  “I wonder why that is. Maybe the ultraviolet rays. Have you ever been around a sunlamp?”

  “No. Please, no experiments.”

  Tamara recognizes a joke, and smiles. They smile together.

  “How much blood do you need?”

  “I need to take some once or twice a week. Maybe less, sometimes.”

  “Do you kill someone, each time?”

  “No. That’s not necessary. Only once in a while.”

  “Have you ever tried bloodbank products, packed red blood cells, that kind of thing?”

  “Yes. A few years ago. It doesn’t work. It has to be living blood, from somebody alive.”

  “Animals?”

  “No. A human being.”

  “And you hypnotize this person, beforehand?”

  “Yes. I try to make it as painless as I can. I usually disguise the wound, and leave them without memory of anything strange.”

  “How did you meet Keith? Did you bite him?”

  “Yes, but he was on heroin, so I couldn’t use any of his blood. We liked each other, for some reason. I don’t know why. I noticed something in him, I think.”

  “And now you’re very close.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he have any desire to become a vampire?”

  “No. He says he doesn’t want to.”

  “But if you took his blood …”

  “Until he died. Then he would rise, after three days, if his body was not disturbed.”

  “Why does it change? Why isn’t it just like someone bleeding to death?”

  “Oh, when I bite them, I inject them with my substance.”

  Justine shows her fangs.

  “Can I take a closer look?” Tamara asks, zeal for knowledge overcoming reflexive fear.

  Justine’s eyes dilate, but she allows Tamara to examine her deadly mouth. It’s very interesting. Justine demonstrates how she can squirt some of this clear viscous fluid, like a snake.

  Tamara would love to have some of this to analyze in the lab, but she doesn’t think it is a good idea to ask. She feels that Justine likes her, but this could all turn around if Justine perceived her as a threat. Already, by revealing herself in this way, she must feel she’s taking a tremendous risk. Tamara doesn’t want to abuse the act of faith.

  This is all too much to take in. She trembles. The world is much more wondrous and wildly strange than most people will ever know. She cannot begin to imagine what it would be like to ever try to bring up the subject of vampirism to any of her colleagues. It changes the whole world.

  “Do you want to see how I do it?” Justine asks, and it takes a moment before Tamara realizes what she must mean.

  “Yes.”

  “All right. I need to go out tonight anyway. I’ll ask Keith if he cares if you come along.”

  He doesn’t, or says he doesn’t. Justine gets dressed, and the whole enterprise seems to be amusing her, or that’s Tamara’s impression anyway.

  “How many people like you are there?” Tamara asks, in the car.

  “How many vampires? I don’t know,” Justine says, blithely. “Not very many, I don’t think. Los Angeles is a good place, the conditions are ideal … and I’ve only come across a few.”

  “Where are we going? Are you just going to be looking for someone on the street?”

  “No.” Justine laughs.

  “There’s a women-only nightclub,” Keith explains, “where Justine’s very popular.”

  “Eve
ry few months,” she says, smiling. “It’s a sure thing, and it’s fast.”

  She becomes thoughtful then, staring out the window at the nighttime scenery of blackness and lights. Tamara is nervous.

  There is no easy parking near this club, so they let Justine out at the curb. Keith says they’ll make a circuit, and come by every five minutes or so.

  Justine nods and turns to go. She is wearing a light cotton red jacket over a black bra, a blue mini-skirt, her stomach bare. Some makeup, and a necklace of pierced gold coins.

  “This is really happening, isn’t it?” Tamara says to Keith, after a few minutes of driving around, making right turns.

  “It’s real.” Then: “I don’t have to say to you … “

  “You can trust me,” she interjects.

  ”I know that,” he replies, after a moment. “I’m sorry to make you feel like you have to say it, but I’m glad you did, I don’t completely understand what she’s doing, why she showed herself to Patrick and you. It’s so completely against her way of life, how careful she is about everything.”

  “I won’t betray her. My first reaction, already, is that it must be some sort of blood disease.”

  “A blood disease that keeps her young forever, but that makes her unable to face daylight without death?”

  “Sure. Where does the blood go, by the way?”

  “Some of it comes out again, but most of it disappears inside her body, as far as I know.”

  “There might be some way to treat it,” Tamara says. “I’d like to analyze a tube of her blood, see what it does.”

  Justine is walking down the sidewalk, with another woman, short black hair, a crewcut, black leather tight jacket and pants, boots with little silver chains.

  They get in the backseat. The woman smells of alcohol and musk.