by Titus, Rose
Well, if he wasn’t too lazy to come pick it up and bring it home and re-stock. “Yeah. And we could pick up some news. Maybe someone else heard something.”
They remained there for an hour. Nothing. Rick started the car; together they prowled the streets, their eyes sharply cutting through the cool darkness. They drifted by a camp of homeless. Like gypsies they were gathered around fires, lit in trash cans. They stood in small circles around the bright flames to keep warm in the cold of the night, protect themselves from what lurked in the darkness. There were families, mothers with children, old men and women sheltering themselves in boxes. They watched the long red Pontiac suspiciously as it passed by.
“I can’t believe no one does anything to help these people,” she said.
“There are places for them to go, but the shelters get filled up. Some people care, but it’s just not enough.” He silently turned the car around, headed back onto the main road, accelerated swiftly back into the better parts of town. “Let’s go down to After Dark.”
“Okay. Maybe someone there heard something.”
Leon wandered to their table, pulled out a chair and sat.
“Any news?” Alexandra asked. She knew he would tell them anyway.
“Yeah. Rick, people are lookin’ for you.”
“Was he drunk again?”
“No. Not cops. Haven’t seen Martin lately, I think he’s too embarrassed.”
“Rick.” She instinctively needed to defend Martin again. “Please just talk to him.”
“Maybe, just for you.” He would not admit that he intended to anyway. “Okay.” He turned to Leon. “So, who’s looking for me?”
“I’ll tell you.” Leon went to the large refrigerator that was behind the counter, took out a bottle and poured blood into two ceramic cups, placed them in one of the microwaves that was on the countertop. He was extremely used to heating it, he knew the exact time and temperature. He brought them over on a tray with his own beer. “It’s a couple of homeless people.”
“What?”
“Yeah. That’s right. Lookin’ for you. By name. Gave a good description, too, right down to the grease stain on your leather jacket,” Leon laughed sarcastically.
“They want to nail me because of Bruce.”
“Don’t think so; didn’t look too hostile to me.”
“So, did these individuals leave their business card or what?”
“They said to meet under the stone bridge, the old bridge under the main road that leads out of town, tomorrow, at midnight.”
“Rick,” Alexandra pleaded, “don’t go.”
“I have to make them know I wasn’t involved.”
Leon sipped his beer. “Anyway, Rick, been nice to know you.”
“Leon, where’s Alex? He’s usually here. I’ll take him with me.”
“He got his own problems right now.”
“Good God, I’ve finally done it.” He returned earlier than expected. Keisha was in the kitchen, making herself a sandwich.
“What is it, Mr.—?”
“Oh, please, call me Alex. Yes, I think I’ve finally done it.” He noticed that her little boy had the television volume cranked up extremely loud, though he could not explain in front of Tirrell how it tortured his sensitive ears. Alex struggled to pretend not to notice. “I finally collected one half of one month’s rent from the Wicked Witch of the New Age.”
“Oh, I see. Tirrell, it’s time for you to go to bed,” Keisha remembered what Lina told her about loud noise.
“But it’s early, I wanna—”
“No! You have school tomorrow.”
“I don’t like school.”
“Don’t talk back. Now get to bed.”
Tirrell slowly and reluctantly went to what was once Alex and Lina’s room. The dog got up from in front of the television and followed.
“You’ve been so good to put up with the both of us.” She immediately turned down the volume.
“Never mind, we do understand bigotry. Anyway, she had the most unusual young man in her home this evening. Well, we have seen him before. If it does not go away on its own, I shall need to call the exterminator.”
“Well,” Keisha was reluctant to mention it earlier, she almost thought that she might be imagining things. “I heard some strange noise outside.”
“Such as?” he turned from her and went to his refrigerator. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“N-no. I don’t mind. I heard some kind of chanting.”
“Really?”
She watched as he placed the entire container into the large microwave. “Yeah, couldn’t make out what they were saying. It all came from her backyard.”
“We’ve heard it before, only now someone is just encouraging her. I imagine she’s casting some sort of spell on the evil landlord.”
“I am amazed that you survive without ever eating, I mean, regular food.” She enjoyed her Chinese food. He sat across from her, listening to her talk about her day. He seemed content to just listen.
They sat in the cool night air, at a table outside the small restaurant. It was dusk; people were still quite active, shopping, socializing, moving about the center of town at their own individual pace. She watched the street, watched the people in motion, and she listened to the conversations around her. The couple at the next table were arguing.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Laura continued. “I mean, for the first time in my life, I’m not really unhappy. And I don’t understand it.”
“Why understand?” he smiled slightly.
She noticed that if Rick smiled, he never parted his lips, or opened his mouth. Perhaps to hide what made him different? “I don’t know. I’m just not used to not being miserable. How come you’re so nice to me all the time?”
“No reason. Just because you’re there.”
“Got to be more than that,” she hoped.
“You’re interesting.”
“I am?”
“Never had a girl walk in and ask me for help with—”
“Stop it.” It was embarrassing.
“It’s good to finally see you at peace, then,” and he left it at that.
“As I get to know the real world, I find a whole mass of people worse off than me.” She paused briefly to finish her egg roll. “I mean, there is this little kid in my class, people trashed his house to get them out of the neighborhood. I suppose because he and his mom are black.”
“Sucks,” he said flatly.
“Yes,” she agreed. She let the word echo through her mind, thinking it ironic that he would use it that way. “How many of you are there?”
“Not many.” He instinctively knew what she was asking.
“Is your world as messed up as ours?”
“No.”
“No?” she didn’t believe it.
“We do not kill one another, or steal, or interfere with each other’s wives, we start no wars.” He thought of how to explain. “In the sixties, a group of hippies lived out near the beach, on the outskirts of town, in tents, with no facilities. Often, they wore no clothes, and they never really washed up. They said they wanted to just be, man. We achieved that long ago, and without the mind altering drugs. They never did. I still see them. Some have cut their hair, some run businesses, get in the paper for embezzlement, or some other nonsense. A lot of them sell New Age charms, or herbs, in little shops. That is popular in this town. The legend about us serves them well. They all make a good living, selling crosses with quartz crystals embedded in them, protection amulets, though it’s all a waste of money to the consumer.”
“I wondered about that one.”
“Of course not.” He smiled again, and he almost laughed, but he didn’t.
“I’m probably safer with you than with anyone else.”
“Yes, but we did not create society, we are the ones trapped under it.”
“I’m sorry,” but then she realized that once she had also been trapped, caught in an endless darkness, until sh
e was finally free.
“Soon,” Rick continued, “we could be noticed.”
“But you’ve survived for thousands of years, being hunted.”
“We didn’t have much choice.”
“I wish the world was a better place,” she whispered.
The couple beside them became louder, and more intense. People began staring. Laura was glad. It helped to keep their own conversation more private.
“You filthy bastard!” the woman spat her words out ferociously. “You bastard!” She stood up, began to leave. “Go back to her, she deserves you!”
The man hurled a bowl of soy sauce at her, but missed.
The people sitting around their table began to laugh; it was entertainment. Laura and Rick remained silent. The waiters rushed to clean up the mess. The man rose to leave, looked back at the staring, smiling faces. “Hey, my wife just doesn’t understand me!”
The crowd roared with laughter and applause.
They remained seated on the bench in the small garden by her apartment building. She held tiny white flowers in her hands as she looked up and watched the cool black night sky. “That was a terrible fight those two had.”
“Indeed,” he sighed.
“Do you ever fight?” she wondered.
“Among ourselves? No. Rarely, I suppose. Myself and my older brother, on occasion, we tend to disagree. But that is it.”
She was silent a moment, and continued to look at the stars, and said, “The children fight often, even in the classroom.”
“Then they start out young, don’t they?” he was dryly cynical.
“Rick, the serial killer, why is he doing it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. But something’s got to be done.”
She looked up again at the velvet sky. “But if he’s caught, another one will just take his place in a few years, maybe.” She sat by his side and leaned against him; her face melted into his softly worn out leather jacket. She was quietly still, letting his thin ivory fingers move slowly through her flaxen hair. His other hand came around to seize hers, all the delicate flowers she held spilled onto the ground at their feet. He raised her hand to his cool lips and kissed it. She shivered, wanting to stay, forever, under the cold black night sky, forever in his embrace, to feel his lips softly caress her throat.
“I must go.”
“Go?”
“I am supposed to meet someone.”
“Who?” she did not like the sound of ‘meet someone.’
“I really don’t know who they are,” and he didn’t know how to explain.
She did not press for any more information. “Well, you’ll be back, won’t you? You have to come back. You need to finish telling me if Pavel ever finally gets back to marry Yelena. I have to know now. You can’t make it so interesting and leave me—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be back. I’ll finish it.”
There was a broken down and rusted old truck under the bridge, parked there permanently by fate. It served as a resting place sometimes; it was dry inside when it rained.
It was known that people slept under the bridge, camped out, hid from police, and shot up dope occasionally, while people drove over them on the roadway above, oblivious to their existence.
There were three of them that night, all young, and bone thin. Two sat on the hood of the truck, one sat on the ground, by its flat tire—he wore a large fake silver cross. It flashed in the moonlight.
Rick approached slowly, not sure of what they wanted.
“We’ve seen you around before,” the taller one on the truck announced. “We’ve seen you and some of the others, out at night. You all live in the nicer part of town.”
“How do you kids even know?” he wondered out loud.
“We’ve seen stuff, you know. Like, there’s this couple that meet in an alley around one in the morning, and—”
“They really ought to go somewhere else, don’t you think? You’re not the only ones to notice those two.” Someone would need to speak to them. They’ve been seen, and more than once, and it was getting to be a problem.
“And we hear stuff,” the boy continued.
“Sorry about Bruce.” He finally said it, expecting them to immediately launch into an attack.
But they sat in silence, staring at him.
“I really am.”
He waited. They said nothing. “I want you boys to know, we had nothing to do with any of—”
“He said you were okay to him,” the taller one did all the talking. “He almost trusted you.”
“Almost,” Rick agreed.
“We know who’s killin’ all the homeless people, though.”
“Oh yeah? So why don’t you tell the cops?”
“It is the cops,” the boy said.
Rick didn’t want to hear it again. He still wasn’t sure if it was true. “That’s nuts.”
“It’s true.”
Rick stepped back to sit on the pile of old tires that were stacked across from the truck. He listened.
“It’s been going on for years. When it first started, a police car would come, before sunrise, two plain clothes guys would get out, throw the body in the trunk, then clean up the mess. People on the street say they even would bring with them a bucket and soapy water and sponges and rags to clean the blood off the pavement. None of those murders that were cleaned up ever got in the papers. So, like, this past year, they just haven’t been cleaning up. So people find the bodies. It’s always been happening. But people are just finding out about it now.”
“Did you kids see this stuff going on yourselves?” Rick asked.
“Nope. Bruce saw all this stuff. He told us. But other people say it, too. Other people who’ve been on the streets a long time, they say it, too.”
He leaned back, gazed at the three of them. The boy who sat on the ground stared back warily. “Why aren’t you kids at home with your parents?”
The boy on the hood of the truck spoke again, for the group. “’Cause my stepdad used to kick the shit outta me. So I left. That’s why. Charlie’s parents threw him out ’cause he’s gay. Rufus down there, he never says, so we just never ask. Hey. Lotsa kids on the streets. Old people. Pregnant girls too. Most girls become hookers. Even some guys do that, you know, for the money.”
“How do you kids get by?”
“Same way.”
Rick wished he didn’t ask.
“And some of us lift wallets sometimes. Ask people for spare change. If we bother people too much, cops run us off.”
“I know a guy who might be able to help you kids out.”
“Oh, I know, but we’re okay. It don’t matter, not now, not anymore.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause I’m going to die anyway, me and Charlie. Rufus checked out clean, though. He’s gonna try to get a job, get off the street, so he don’t catch it. But we’re pretty much gone. Unless some great scientist invents a cure for AIDS tomorrow and gives it out free in our neighborhood. Not likely.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“Yeah? So are we. Don’t know how long we got, but we gotta stop these murders though. It might be the last thing we do. The police won’t stop it. Either Bruce was right, or it’s just that important people don’t care about us so they don’t do anything about it. Bruce used to take care of us, when we were new to the streets. Tried to keep us off drugs, and stuff. He was our friend. I can’t cry about it. I don’t know why, but I can’t. Like, maybe I’m already dead inside, like you are. Maybe that’s why I’m not even afraid of you. I never seen one of you guys up this close before.”
“Yeah? We look a lot more menacing on TV.”
The boy on the truck laughed quietly. The other two were still silent.
“We are born this way, you know. Most fairy tales about us are untrue. And we are not exactly what you would call dead.”
“We are.”
“That is extremely tragic.” He stated it without emotion, but he felt their pain. “So
kid, you’ve introduced me to your friends. What’s your name?”
“Jimmy.”
“Hello Jimmy.”
“You’re Rick.”
“That’s how I’m called.”
“Rick what?”
“Andreyev.”
“What?”
“Andreyev.” He said it more slowly. “We came over during the Russian Revolution.”
“You that old?”
“I was born in this country. My brother is two hundred and nineteen, my sister is one hundred seventy nine. I’m only—”
“Shit!”
Rufus was still nervously tugging at the fake silver chain his cross hung on; he had been doing it since Rick appeared. “And that doesn’t work either. But none of you need to worry. After all, I’m not a cop.”
“Where do you, like, get blood from, then?”
“Slaughterhouses. We buy it. It’s that simple. How about you kids? When did you last eat?”
“Met some tourists tonight, on the main drag through town, they bought us food, then we went to their hotel—”
“Okay, no details necessary.” He worried about the men they were with. The boys were like walking disasters waiting to happen to anyone who got too close. “You kids are still doing that for a living, after testing positive?”
“Yeah? So?”
“But that’s...Never mind!”
“You care?”
“I shouldn’t, it’s really not my business. Why are you bothering to talk to me anyway?”
“’Cause Bruce said you wanted it to stop, before people started to put the blame on you guys.”
“Well, that’s true.”
“The cops won’t stop it.”
“How can we—”
“You’re our only hope.”
“Look, kid, we can only go out after sundown, so we don’t see that much, and most people are afraid to talk to us, and the cops are better organized… “
“Hey. People are dying out here, man.”
Martin poured the cereal mechanically, poured juice, then the milk was poured robotically, without thinking. “You did your homework last night, right?”
“You already asked me that, Daddy.”