by Marta Acosta
Cricket and Ford came into the foyer. She rolled a scalpel in her manicured fingers. Oswald had used a scalpel on me and I associated the surgical instrument with his affection, with the happiness I’d once had.
Ian said to Ford, “Milagro doesn’t believe that others take pleasure in offering what she craves.”
The gawky young man stepped to me and put his hand on my shoulder, sending a warm fizzle through me. “Milagro, I’d really like it if you, um, vant to suck my blood. It would be totally awesome for someone who grew up on Bela Lugosi flicks.”
“Those are pictures on a screen,” I said. “Cuts hurt.”
“I know, but only for a second, and you’re a lot cuter than Lugosi,” he said.
Then Cricket lifted Ford’s hand and deftly slashed his palm with the scalpel, making him wince before he gave me an abashed smile.
She held Ford’s hand out to me and the cut filled with glossy red blood. “Be my guest,” the bitch said, daring me.
She had taken something from me and now the copper tang of fresh blood and the eagerness on her husband’s sweet face muddled my thinking even further.
“Please, please, please,” he said playfully.
I took Ford’s hand in both of mine and put my lips to his palm. I looked up at Ian, but I couldn’t read his expression, and then I licked Ford’s blood. It was mild, yet delectable, a healthy-young-man’s blood.
Ford was gazing down at me. I gently moved my tongue along the cut. My mind was clouded, but my body hummed with pleasure and Ford sucked in his breath and then said, “Oh, yeah, harder,” and I nipped gently to increase the blood flow.
When I saw the corner of Ian’s mouth twitch upward in a smile, I dropped Ford’s hand.
“Holy shit,” Ford said, and laughed. He glanced around at his wife, who looked pleased. “That was so cool!”
“I told you,” Cricket said. She handed the drink back to him. “Let’s find Mrs. K and have her clean that up.” She led him back toward the party.
Ian spotted the blond strand on his shirt and plucked it off, letting it drift to the floor. “You see how pleasing it is to have an eager friend. Come join the others. They’re dying to meet you.”
“‘Dying’ being the operative word. If you’d wanted me here in the first place, you would have invited me. Instead you were drinking from Cricket, and I can imagine what else you were doing, although the thought of you and her …”
He stood as close to me as he could without touching and said in a low voice, “I am not doing this for my pleasure alone, Milagro, although I’m not going to deny that, yes, I like drinking fresh, warm blood.”
“That’s not all Cricket was giving you.”
“She’s a novice putting on a show for her husband’s pleasure. For me, it was a garnish on a cocktail.”
“Emphasis on the first syllable.”
“If you want to know if I had sex with Cricket, then ask me.”
If I asked and he said yes, I wouldn’t be able to endure it. If he said no, I wouldn’t believe him. “I don’t want to know. I don’t care what you do, or who you do.”
Ian stared at me with his languid, hooded eyes and said, “You’re very conflicted about who you are, what we are, as you’ve always been. But what is amusing in a girl becomes tiresome in a woman. Grow up.”
“So says a man who spends every waking hour in pursuit of pleasure.”
“Remind me again, Milagro, what it is that you do to contribute to society, besides your decorative value, which is considerable.”
His criticism burned like salt in a wound. “I don’t do enough, and I don’t think I ever will if I keep seeing you. I compromise myself every time I’m with you, Ian.” I stopped speaking because he looked as if he was going to hit me and I realized that I wanted to brawl with him. I wanted an excuse to strike him and bite him and tear his flesh.
Ian and I stared at each other for long moments and then I saw him relax fractionally.
“My voluptuous beauty,” he said as he put his fingertips to my jaw and ran them along my throat, sliding underneath the neckline of my dress, touching the lace trim of the slip against my breast, making me tremble with desire and rage.
For a moment I thought he would at last tell me that he loved me, but he said quietly, “Stay and destroy the furniture with me.”
His hands on Cricket, his mouth on her. I shook my head.
He put his face beside mine and I felt his breath on my ear as he said, “I would never do anything to hurt you, my own girl.”
I jerked back, away from him. “Not intentionally, Ian, but you do hurt me.” Before I started crying, before I put my arms around him, before I gave in to him again, I turned away and left the house, Rosemary at my feet.
I got in my truck, gunned the engine, and drove too fast down the hill and away from my own awful lust for blood and Ian and blood and Ian.
I stopped at the market. I bought juicy steaks and a bottle of Russian River zinfandel.
When I got to my loft, I tore into the packages, devouring the raw meat and sucking at the juices in a frenzy while Rosemary greedily chomped down a ribeye. I drank the wine from the bottle, the dark liquid spilling down my lips and throat, staining my dress red-black.
The blood was still roaring through me when I looked at the ripped packages and mess around me. I threw everything in the trash. I went to the bathroom and turned the shower on as hot as I could stand it. As I pulled away the shower curtain, I caught sight of my blood-smeared face reflected in the mirror before steam saved me from looking at myself.
But nothing could save me from my own circular thoughts about Ian and Cricket, about sweet Ford and savory blood, about Mr. and Mrs. K, about my own monstrous appetites. Why did I feel so betrayed when I knew what Ian was, what he did?
I’d walked away from him before and it hadn’t hurt like this. Yet I still wanted him too much to think that our relationship was over.
I tried to expend my energy by cleaning the loft, until my neighbor banged at the wall while I was running the vacuum cleaner. I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost four in the morning.
My mind was still replaying the same agonizing scenes of Ian and Cricket when the phone rang at seven o’clock. I thought it must be Ian and grabbed it up so I could scream at him.
“Is this my pretty little bat?” asked an accented voice in chipper tones.
Only one person used that endearment and his accent was as fake as his name and his memoir. “Don Pedro Nascimento,” I said, using the honorific as sarcastically as possible.
“I am not forgotten!” he said happily. “I hope I am not calling too early, but I had a dream about you. You were in a field of flowers, drinking nectar from a lamb who was your friend.”
Don Pedro’s bag of con-man tricks included dream-telling, and he was especially gifted at inventing dreams that were easy to misinterpret as prophetic.
I said, “I’m not likely to forget the man who sold my manuscript for seven figures and goes on talk shows pretending to have written it himself.”
“I am terribly sorry that you have misunderstood events.” Don Pedro never used contractions in his speech, and I assumed he thought this made him seem more exotic and foreign than the SoCal car mechanic that he’d been. “I was most astonished when a publisher heard of my humble memoir …”
“It’s not your memoir. It’s my fauxoir. I made it all up, thus the faux.”
“And told me he wanted to publish my book. I thought of how joyful you would be for me, but knew you were establishing your own writing career and would not want your serious work associated with my small tale of spiritual growth.”
“You ripped me off totally. You told me the book was only for your family and students.”
“So it was, lovely girl! The world turns in fantastical ways. On the day I was born, a jaguar was seen in the village by my family’s hut …”
“You were born in Chula Vista, California.” Mercedes had investigated Don Pedro’s background m
ore thoroughly than did his publisher or the reviewers who raved about him. “I concocted that jaguar story. Everything about you is a lie.”
He made a tching sound and then said, “Mi amor, what terrible thing has happened to make you so unhappy?”
“Gee, I don’t know, Don Pedro, maybe some two-bit con artist took advantage of me, causing me to become bitter and cynical.”
“Milagro, I am shocked that you think I planned this happenstance of success! My life’s work is to help others find their calling.”
“Speaking of calling, why did you?”
“I hoped you would want to collaborate with me again.”
I burst out laughing. “Are you out of your twisted corkscrew of a mind? Why would I ever, ever want to see you again, let alone work with you?”
“My publisher wants another book. It could be a quite enriching project for you, not only as an artist, but as a fellow soul who is responsive to our animistic nature.”
“Nothing you can offer me would ever convince me to help you with fauxoir dos, the sequel.”
“Are you sure?” he said, and then he named a significant sum, a sum that surprised me, and added, “Cash. I will be in London for a week, and I can fly you there to meet with me and explore our second adventure together, my little bat.”
A trip to London would get me away from Ian. I’d be able to meet Wilcox Spiggott and he would show me another way, a better way, to live with this condition. “Okay, Don Pedro, I’ll meet you to talk about the book, but you have to fly me out first-class.”
I called Mercedes before noon to tell her what I was doing.
She said, “I can’t believe anyone is paying you that much to write. You can pay off your assessment fee.”
“Exactly. It’s too bad my only success is with loony nonsense. It’s a sad comment on society and the literary world.”
“I can watch Rosemary for you.”
“Fabulous. Do you think you can dig up anything about that vamp I told you about, Wilcox Spiggott? I think I’ll drop in on him while I’m there.”
“Why don’t you ask Gabriel? He’ll have the inside scoop.”
“I don’t want the Vamp Council to hassle Gabriel because of me. Not that anything will happen, but you know the Council has a problem with me already.”
There was silence on the other end of the line, and so I said, “And, no, I haven’t told Ian I’m going. I need to get away from him and clear my head. Sometimes I think that he could convince me to do anything.”
I heard Mercedes sigh and she said, “Seriously? Because the only time I’ve ever seen you make compromises was when you were with Oswald.”
“That time I was too compromising. Trying to please others made me vulnerable to their machinations. You’re the only one I really trust to look out for my best interests.”
“That’s not true. There are others who love you and want the best for you.”
“Do you mean Ian?”
There was a pause, and she said, “I meant your dog.”
People who said you couldn’t run from your problems had obviously never flown first-class to London seated in a private pod with their own movies, luxury gift bags, and a super-cute flight attendant who gave a great minimassage.
After a tasty Bloody Mary, I put on my complimentary terry slippers, eyeshade, and headphones, and tried to sleep.
four
An American, a Broad
I jauntily wheeled my chartreuse zebra-striped suitcase through the airport and to the stairs that led to the trains. Although I’d repaired one of the case’s broken wheels with a piece of wire coat hanger, it still looked very stylish.
I liked the hustle and bustle of big-city public transportation, and I liked grabbing a window seat on a train and seeing billboards and scenery flashing by.
Mercedes had recommended a hotel in Kensington that was close to the Tube. The hotel was a well-kept, renovated Victorian with moderately priced rooms, just the sort of comfortable, convenient place Mercedes would stay while checking out bands.
My junior suite was a medium-sized room with a love seat, a narrow desk, a view to the street, and an all-white bathroom with a deep tub.
I walked to a French café, bought a latte, and took a stroll to the park, trying to remember to look to my right when crossing streets. When I returned to my hotel, I called Don Pedro.
“Don Pedro, why don’t we meet at one of the local attractions so I can sightsee while you tell me whatever?”
“Alas, I have so many followers all over the world, those who come to me for guidance in the ways of the shapeshifter. I fear that we would be interrupted and I want to give you my undivided attention.”
“Gotcha, no witnesses.” I was tempted to tell Don Pedro that I actually knew a real shapeshifter—it had something to do with biology and optical illusions—but he’d insist that he was one himself.
“May I come to your room?” he asked.
“Only if you promise not to put the moves on me.” I was joking since he was a little bug of a fellow that I could crush between my fingers.
He tittered and said, “I shall treat you with the utmost respect even though you are certainly a most enticing young woman and if I were younger—”
“Stop or you’ll give me brain cooties. I’ll see you at noon.”
There was a knock on my door exactly at noon. I opened it to see Don Pedro Nascimento, officially the author of Spiritual Transformation: Adventures of a Shapeshifter.
He was a tiny brown man with enormous chocolate eyes behind oversized black-framed glasses. He wore khaki pants, a white shirt with colorful yarn embroidery of birds and flowers, and a brown and white woven jacket with a llama motif and fringe. He carried the same worn leather satchel he’d had when I’d first met him.
“¡Mi Milagro!” he said, and reached out to hug me.
I moved away and said, “Come in, Don Pedro.”
He walked into the room and sat down on the love seat. He smelled of coconut oil, and I had a sudden craving for a piña colada, a sunny beach, and a Rupert Holmes tune playing on a boom box. I turned the desk chair to face Don Pedro and sat down.
“Your aura is even more brilliant than when we last met!” he said. “I hope that your journey is astonishing.”
“Yes, first-class is definitely the way to go.”
“I meant your journey on this astral plane, Milagro, exploring and discovering your spirit self. Your power glows from you like the sun rising over the red rocks of Sedona, where I once met a shaman in the form of a javelina—”
“That’s utterly enthralling. Let’s talk business.”
He crossed one toothpick leg over the other and said, “I have watched you in my dreams, and I am both enraptured and fretful.”
“That’s kind of you. Do you mind saving the caca for people who pay for your seminars and private consultations?”
“There are different truths, Milagro. There is the truth that you think you know about me, and there also exists the truth of your book as I lived it.”
“How could you live something that I fabricated?”
“It could only happen through the magical meeting of our minds, my Milagro!” he said ecstatically. “This is why you and only you can help write my second book. It explores life in different realms.”
“Like the earth realm and space realm? Aliens?” I said, suddenly interested. “I’d love to subvert the clichés of aliens as long-armed, big-headed pixies. What about swarms of nanorobots that can cluster together to mimic any other life-form? I could tie that into your shapeshifter mythology.”
Don Pedro held up his weathered hand. “I was speaking of the realms of life and afterlife and most especially the Middle World. Life after life and before deathly death. I traveled to an island in the azure Caribbean, and a tribe gathered to make a feast for me and …”
I dazed off at this point, because all of Don Pedro’s stories followed the same plot: he was treated as a wise elder by indigenous people who had
a feast in his honor. They invited him to a ceremony, injested magical potions, had visions, shapeshifted, et cetera. However, the word “undead” caught my attention.
“Don Pedro, what exactly do you mean by undead?”
“The tribe,” he said, and then whistled. “That is how they say their name, the whistle of a bird, because they are as birds, neither of earth nor heaven. Their name means the Caretakers. They showed me how they raise up the dead with their astonishing juju.”
“If it isn’t astonishing, it isn’t juju,” I commented.
“I sat with one of these living-dead creatures, and we smoked a bowl of an herb that only grows there in the volcanic soil. He told me of returning to life from the misty swamp of eternity.” Don Pedro stared at me and said solemnly, “This being was an oracle, and he asked me to give you this gift.”
“That’s really not necessary …” I began, worried that he’d pull a mummified foot or, worse, a dried man-handle from his satchel.
Instead, Don Pedro brought out a large clear plastic bag with a folded cloth inside. “The oracle said that you would know how to use it to help those who wish to come back and to guide them to the island.”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?” I took the bag and saw that the material was handwoven of fine yarn. It was white with an intricate border of suns, moons, mountains, and waves. “It’s beautiful.” I would have to show this to my friends in the Stitching & Bitching group. “The colors are so pretty.”
“It is imbued with magical powders that will preserve and revive the dead and was woven by a blind bruja whose third-eye guides her. The color is taken from the spring flowers that grow in the soil by a spring of freshwater.”
“Organic dyes, then. I thought so.”
“By the spring, I saw a monkey, a mono araña, with a face as white as a ghost, and a bat flew overhead. The monkey said to me, ‘The little bat above must spread her wings or she will fall into the chasm. Her strength and her …’” Don Pedro paused and wrinkled his brow. “‘Her strength and her fun are gifts to be used.’”
My strength and fun? As usual, Don Pedro made no sense. I held up the powdery cloth and said, “I’m not going to have any problems getting this through customs, am I?”