B005N1TFVG EBOK

by Bruce Elliot Jones

  “Still….maybe I should sleep in the hall. With the door closed between us.”

  I’d actually thought about it, though I didn’t want her to know it, hoped she wasn’t getting the idea from my head—Reading me. “Mitzi, if something’s going to happen, better it should happen now. And anyway, nothing’s going to happen. I’m your master, right? Dogs don’t attack their masters.”

  “You’re not my master.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  In a moment I felt her stretch out down by my ankles, felt the tension go out of the mattress.

  A full minute later she said softly: “I wouldn’t mind, really.”

  I stared into darkness. “Wouldn’t mind what?”

  “Your being my master. Sort of.”

  After a while I could tell from her breathing she was asleep.

  I, on the other hand, lay wide awake until the light of dawn.

  * * *

  The next day—the day before the big day—was Saturday.

  Saturdays I usually took a walk in the park, thinking about that novel I never seemed to start. So it seemed natural to walk there with Mitzi by my side. We needed time to talk about the big day—Sunday--big night, actually.

  I could tell immediately that Mitzi loved the park; could tell that by the way she kept pulling at the leash, stopping next to every tree and bush and lifting her leg, barking excitedly at the other barking dogs racing between two kids throwing a Frisbee, or straining when the girl in tight shorts and blouse passed us smiling on the park path with her Boxer.

  “What are you doing, Mitzi?”

  “Trying to get acquainted. That wasn’t a bad pair of legs.”

  “It was a female Boxer, Mitzi.”

  “Trying to get you acquainted, Ed. Did you even notice the legs on the girl walking her, not to mention the rack? How old are you, anyway?”

  “Thirty-one.”

  “And no girlfriend.”

  “Been there, Mitzi, and I thought we were going to talk about Sunday night, the big party.”

  Mitzi tugged at the leash again, lifted her leg against a sapling.

  “Why the leash, anyway? And why do you keep lifting your leg against everything in sight?”

  “I’m trying to blend in, Ed! Just a dog being walked by his master in the park, y’know? Boy, some detective you’re going to make.”

  “But nothing squirts out when you lift your leg.”

  “Female dogs don’t lift, they squat.”

  “Exactly my point. Not blending in.”

  Mitzi nuzzled something in the grass. “Humans aren’t that discerning. I’m just trying to look like your average normal human pet. I can squirt a little if it will make you feel better.”

  “Talking about tomorrow night would make me feel better.”

  I felt the leash tug sharply right. “Let’s go down to the lake.”

  “Why?”

  “More private is why.”

  I looked around uneasily. “You…think someone may be watching us?”

  “I know someone’s watching us, that’s why I keep peeing on the flora to keep up appearances. Try to get into the rhythm of the thing, huh Ed?”

  We went down to the lake, Mitzi sniffing around at the reeds, startling a big frog, which dived into the water, remembering almost too late to bark excitedly at it, pretend she was stretching against the leash.

  “So what’s the plan?” I wanted to know, casting uneasy glances over my shoulder.

  “Casting uneasy glances is not acting naturally, Ed. If there are vampires out here they’re likely the diluted variety, may not even know they’re vampires yet. This park thing is strictly a precautionary measure.”

  “Precautionary in what sense?”

  “In the sense it may not be wise to hang around your house right now. You may recall the guy with the chair leg through his chest behind the furnace?”

  “You think this Queen of the Vampires--what’s her name?”

  “Alicia.”

  “--this Alicia might know Sid?”

  Mitzi nosed at a rock, snorted offensively at something. “Oh, she knows him, all right, or at least knows of him. No full-fledged vampire doesn’t know about another. The question is, is he an active member of her sect? Or more pointedly, forgive the pun, did she send him over to do a job on you.”

  “Shit.” I said softly.

  “Don’t get your boxers in a bundle yet, they may not even be connected. You were a good target for your ex-boss in any case.”

  “Why?”

  “Think about it, Ed. You live alone, have no relatives in town, no friends of any consequence—“

  “Hey! I have friends--”

  “—no friends of any consequence, a landlord you rarely see, nobody to even start looking for you for weeks, maybe months, recently fired and unemployed, attacked by someone who’s been setting you up for months, probably, knew all your haunts, which were chiefly Henry’s Bar…you were a safe, convenient target.”

  I thought about it, not without a shiver or two. “He gave me a choice, you know…” I mumbled absently.

  “Sid?”

  I nodded. “He said I could either die or become like him, it was up to me.”

  Mitzi looked up at me, shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Probably a come-on to put you at ease. Vampires don’t make other vampires unless the word comes down from on high.”

  “From Alicia.”

  “Right. And I’m guessing he doesn’t know her personally. We’ll find out tomorrow night.”

  I felt a little wring of nausea; this was all happening too fast.

  “Don’t go fey on me, Ed.” With maybe the slightest glint of sympathy in her big brown eyes.

  I found a park bench, sat down. “I don’t know, just waltzing into a house filled with blood-sucking living dead like we own the place—“

  “Not waltzing in. You saw Alicia—us—at the bar, remember? So. You tell her you found her dog somewhere and are returning her. Me. All perfectly innocent.” Mitzi came up beside me on the bench. “Quit looking glum. Attracts attention.”

  I looked up at her.

  “That’s better. Annoyed. That’s a big help.”

  I sighed irritation. “Well I’m real sorry! I’m not into this clandestine thing yet!”

  “You’ll catch on. I have great hope in you, Eddie.”

  “Thanks. Meanwhile, how is it I supposedly know where this Alicia lives? You don’t have a collar or tag or anything.”

  “Make something up. Actually, it’s an advantage.”

  “Advantage?”

  “If we turn up at her doorstep tomorrow night and she asks how you found her house she won’t be suspicious. If she doesn’t ask—well, we tread softly.”

  “Meaning we don’t go in.”

  “Meaning only I go in. You make quick excuses and hightail it out of there. Lay low until I can find a way to get back to you. Meanwhile I lounge innocently about Alicia’s place like a good little pet with both ear pricked, picking up any and all info I can about their next move.”

  “How’d you know about this big soirée, anyway?”

  “See the above, Ed. Anyway, lots of people know about Alicia, she moves in important circles. Wouldn’t surprise me if the mayor were there tomorrow night.”

  “The mayor of Topeka is a vampire?”

  “Hey. Lower your voice, huh? Jesus, I wish you could read minds.”

  “Well I can’t! So is he or isn’t he?”

  “The mayor? I don’t know. Is, I’d guess. Or probably will be soon. He’d be an important lynch pin in her operation. Try to think of it as a kind of Mafia thing. You watched The Sopranos, right?”

  “Feels more like a kind of cancer thing.”

  “Another good analogy. You should be a writer, Ed.”

  “Thanks. What did you major in at doggy training school, sarcasm?”

  “Come on, let’s find a public toilet.” She got up.

  “You have to pee for real?”

/>   “You do. Badly.”

  “You can tell that?”

  “Smell a full bladder a mile away.”

  I rolled my eyes. “How about my sweat glands, my sperm count?”

  “Your athlete’s foot.”

  “Great. Terrific. A walk in the park with you is a study in humiliation.”

  “Hey,” she snuffed, “it’s no great pleasure from this side, Sport.”

  SIX

  Alicia lived on the west side of town in a simple suburban tract home that reeked of middleclass innocuousness, which was, I suppose, the whole idea. Hide in plain sight, as Mitzi had suggested.

  On the way over from my even more innocuous little home I kept trying for the hundredth time that day and now into the early evening to come up with some kind of story. Some explanation for how I’d ended up with Alicia the Vampire’s vampire dog. I wasn’t getting anywhere fast.

  “Guileless,” Mitzi said, reading my mind beside me on the front seat of my car.

  “What?”

  “Play dumb and innocent,” she sniffed luxuriously, head out the passenger side window, wind blowing back her ears, slitting her eyes, her tongue lolling with pleasure.

  “Why do dogs like doing that so much?”

  “It’s the smells. It’s like an endless barrage of wonderful and varied odors, neighborhood to neighborhood. A big cat lives in that small red house on the right, Siamese, I think.”

  “You can smell its pedigree?”

  Mitzi hunched delicate but powerful shoulders in what passed for one of her shrugs. “It’s without question the best part of being a dog. Better than sex. Better than pork tenderloin.” She jerked her head back as we swept past a low bungalow. “Pork tenderloin’s cooking in the kitchen back there, matter of fact. Hey. Relax, Ed. Just play stupid. You should be good at that.”

  “Why thank you,” I said, “my sweet little bitch.”

  “Good at the playing, I mean. You’re a reporter, right? You know how to get people to think what you want them to think.”

  “Not people who can read my mind.”

  She pulled her head in long enough to appraise me. “I told you, Alicia can’t do that.” And stuck it back out again.

  “Yeah, but what if someone else at the party can?”

  Mitzi didn’t answer for a moment; maybe her olfactory nerves were mulling over the latest odor. I glanced at her. “Hey.”

  “It’s possible, I suppose. Though mind-reading—a poor term for telepathy by the way—certainly isn’t prevalent among vampires. I’ve never heard of a case.”

  “But you weren’t a Reader before you bit Alicia. You told me.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t get the gene or whatever from Alicia, only that in her it’s apparently recessive. Believe me, I’d know if she could read my mind, I wouldn’t be taking you over there if she could, we’d both be dead meat.”

  “And if one of her guests can Read—?“

  “I’ll know that too. You might pick up on it yourself, once you hone your skills.”

  I sighed behind the wheel, gripped it a little more tightly, a little more nervously. “If I live that long.”

  “Just remember, Ed, receiving isn’t the same as transmitting. Though I might be able to train you in that direction too.”

  “The canine trains the master. What’s the world coming to?”

  “To the dogs, with any luck. Quit white-knuckling the wheel, will you? Stay frosty. You’ll do fine.”

  “You’re not even looking at the wheel, your head’s stuck out the window! How do you do that?”

  “Dogs are wonderful, mysterious creatures. Though I’m beginning to wonder more and more about their affinity for mankind. Here! Turn left here at the light.”

  I turned left like a little good human.

  It was easy to spot Alicia’s house; all the lights were on through the sixties-style bay windows, curbs packed with cars out front. The party was on.

  I parked my own little heap across the street, got out, came around to Mitzi’s side and found her sitting there with the leash in her mouth.

  “Oh. Yeah. Right.” I placed the loop around her neck. “Keeping up appearances.”

  “You’ll be fine, Ed.”

  “Please stop saying that, you’re making me nervous.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  I rolled my eyes, nudged the door shut and walked Mitzi across the street to the glowing windows as she strained at the leash to make a show of sniffing smells along the sidewalk, the grass at the curb. Or maybe she wasn’t making a show; hell, I didn’t know anymore. She anointed a fireplug and we were up the front steps and ringing the bell.

  “What’s the last name?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Just Alicia, far as I know.”

  And then she was there.

  Just Alicia.

  Hardly. A statuesque, commanding and incredibly fetching creature in a tight fitting black dress, black heels, even black neck choker, which I thought was maybe a little over-the-top but went wonderfully with her mane of jet black hair. Anyway, with that perfect rack up atop that wasp waist, she needn’t worry about anyone staring at her neck.

  “Good evening,” she smiled, not sounding at all like Bela Lugosi, even as a vision of him as Dracula flashed before my eyes. “Were we making too much noise?”

  It was so damn easy to get lost in those eyes. Was she vamping me or just vamping me?

  I stared stupidly until Mitzi bumped my leg. “What--?”

  Alicia gestured behind her, a wonderfully fluid motion using her whole body. “The music?”

  I became aware of a drumbeat rhythm for the first time, distracted by the leash wrapped around and pulling at my legs, Mitzi pretending to sniff something at the end of the stoop. “Oh! No. I think I might have—“ I tugged Mitzi around in front of me. “—is this by any chance your dog?”

  The lovely face brightened, making it even lovelier. “Oh, my goodness, you found her!” Alicia, bent took Mitzi’s head in both ivory-fingered, red-nailed hands. “Pookie! Come here to mama!” I was sure she was talking to the dog, even if she was proffering a plunging neckline a blind man couldn’t miss.

  Alicia straightened from the dog, held the door wider for me. “Do come in, won’t you? Join the party!”

  We entered the house.

  There was a little nervous tug on the leash. I wasn’t remembering something…something Mitzi had said earlier. With my eyes on Alicia’s magnificent revolving hind quarters, I couldn’t seem to recall what.

  Someone shut the door firmly behind us and it finally caught up with me; she hadn’t asked how I’d managed to find her house. And now I was in it.

  In the living room, in fact, surrounded by sofas and chairs and chalk-faced vampires swaying to the jungle beat from the radio, or was that just a trick of the lighting from the jumping fireplace flames?

  “I was just in the neighborhood.” I blurted clumsily behind her, “cruising the evening breeze! Something all dogs like to do, I guess! Humans too, I suppose! You know, a nice drive in the evening and--”–and you’re talking too fast and too much, fruitcake!—“…and, well, anyway, we turned down your street and the funniest thing, the moment we passed your place, bingo--out the open window the little doggy shot! And straight up your front walk!”

  Alicia seemed unconcerned about my blather, which I took as a bad sign. She stopped before the small suburban living room, gestured with a slender, tightly toned arm. “Excuse me, everyone! I’d like you all to meet…“

  She turned to me. “…sorry, what was the name again?”

  “Bill.” I lied. “Bill Sutter.” A skinny friend from junior high whose name I thought I could remember quickly.

  “--Mr. Sutter, who has been kind enough and clever enough to return to me my darling lost Pookie. Mr. Sutter, may I present Mr. Benson,” (left stuffed sofa: middle aged, bald, cherubic), “Mr. Kevin Crenshaw,” (left end of sofa, bespectacled, bookish, overdressed) “Miss Clancy Cummings,” (very nice,
strawberry blonde and slender, killer smile), “Mr. John Peebles, His Honor the Mayor,” (right in sofa, potbellied, over dressed but with style, dripping cash), “and Miss Abigail Portman.” (Morris chair, dowdy but trim for a sixtyish matron). “We were just discussing the merits of things cultural in a small town, or the lack thereof. Mr. Crenshaw, you were saying something about the local theater?”

  “Lack thereof,” from a vaguely pompous Crenshaw, sipping his red wine with the small finger crooked. At least I assumed it was wine.

  “Why, there’s a lovely dinner theater right downtown,” Mrs. Portman disagreed.

  “I rest my case,” Crenshaw snuffed.

  “I don’t understand,” Mrs. Portman queried.

  “Dinner or theater?” from a patiently smiling Mayor Peebles, “Never the twain shall meet. Let the chewing be left to actors and scenery.”

  Everyone seemed to nod and murmur agreement at that, as if to do less would be impolite or exempt them from the mayor’s circle.

  I looked over the small town faces, the bad hair and twangy accents. These couldn’t possibly be vampires. There must be some mistake. Vampires are sexy or dashing or flashing of eye. Something! The only eyes flashing here were those of our hostess.

  “What do you think, Mr. Sutter?” It was the red haired beauty with the perfect teeth, Miss Clancy Cummings. And she seemed a tad less chalky than the others.

  I shrugged politely. “They have movie theaters in K.C. called Pork and Screen or something. A uniformed usher not only seats you but brings you a full course meal during the feature.”

  “Must be terribly rude to the people behind you,” from a wrinkled nosed Mrs. Portman.

  “I think the auditorium is raked,” I offered, “you know, on a grade. And all the seating is in pairs. You can even order hard drinks, I’m told.”

  “Everything’s up to date in Kansas City,” from a smiling Miss Cummings.

  “Oh, let’s not talk about that place,” from a sour-faced Mr. Benson, who looked to have just swallowed something distasteful. “The slaughterhouse!”

  I smiled convivially his way, through suddenly trembling lips. “Pardon me?”

  “Bill thinks the stockyards are still active in KC, don’t you, Bill?” the mayor chuckled, fat belly trembling. “They went out with button shoes, William, or at least with trucking.” The mayor drew a sentimental breath. “Killed the railway industry too, or the passengers service anyway, unless you count that damn Amtrak. Anyone remember the wonderful Pullman cars? The Santa Fe Super Chief? The soothing clickity-click lulling you to sleep atop crisp linen sheets? Ah, those were the days!”