The World on Blood

by Jonathan Nasaw

  "Absolutely. I'm yours to command for the night."

  She felt something hard and cold bumping the side of her knee-it was the Clamato jar. She helped herself to a healthy swig, then handed him the jar. "Okay, slave. Take a hit off this—that's your first command."

  "Bless you, Mistress." He took a draught. "And my next task?"

  "Let's go climb a tree," she said, feeling the blood flush beginning to warm her chest. "I want you to tell me vampire stories until the moon goes down."

  "I was born in Baltimore, but the family always wintered on the island of Santa Luz, in the West Indies," Whistler began, with only a hint of a British accent. He was perched on a low horizontal apple bough, with his legs dangling; next to him Lourdes, also naked from the waist up, squatted easily on her heels, comfortable as a monkey. In his mind's eye he saw them from the ground, from a distance, and as a connoisseur of color and line, of sex and absurdity, he was well aware of the delicious picture they made, in the tree, in the moonlight.

  "Nanny Eames, my West Indian nurse, informed me years later that she'd known I was a vampire since I was three months old."

  "But how did she know?"

  He glanced up at her, surprised. "The same way any of us knows: she drank my blood and didn't get high."

  "Your own nanny drank your blood?"

  He appeared to be surprised again. "I keep forgetting—you haven't tasted baby-blood yet." Beyond her he saw a lone dark apple, shrivelled to the size of an apricot, still clinging to its branch. "In any event, when I was twelve my father moved my mother and I to London—he'd decided, during a delayed midlife crisis, that what he'd really wanted to do, all those years, was paint, and since he was a Whistler, it had to be London."

  "I don't get it."

  "Whistler? James McNeill Whistler the painter? He was my great-great-great-uncle. You have heard of him, haven't you?"

  "Oh, you mean like, Whistler's M—"

  He interrupted her. "If you say 'Whistler's Mother' I shall spank you and make you recite 'Arrangement in Gray and Black' a hundred times."

  "Pretty fancy talk, for a slave." Lourdes dropped down to straddle the fat bough. "Is that where all your money comes from?"

  Whistler swung his leg up and over, and turned to face her. "A portion of it. My branch of the family descends from the Whistler who built half a railroad for the czar of Russia, then sold the rest of the contract back to the czar for what history records only as a screaming shitload of rubles.

  "The rest of the Whistler fortune does come from Great-great-great-uncle James, but indirectly: after he'd been cashiered from West Point for flunking chemistry ("If silicon had been a gas," he used to say, "I would have been a major general."), he went to work for his brother at the locomotive works. They had to sack him there, as well: the draftsmen always had fresh sheets of paper stretched and pinned to their desks, and he couldn't resist scribbling on them—anything, sketches, portraits, cartoons.

  "Fortuitously, my great-grandfather Bartholomew, who was ten, was fascinated by his exotic Uncle Jem, and used to tag around after him at lunchtime and collect the drawings behind him. Seventy years later, when Bartholomew died, my grandfather Whelton Whistler found them in an enormous steamer trunk in the attic, and there you have the rest of the Whistler legacy, half of which devolved on yours truly upon the death of my grandfather. I'll inherit the other half when my father finally shuffles off this mortal coil, which the old bastard, who is now eighty-two years old, shows absolutely no intention of doing. Or so I hear—we haven't spoken since 1967."

  "How rich are you, exactly?"

  He frowned. "Only poor people know exactly how rich they are, m'dear."

  "But you don't live like rich people—you don't have any, like, servants or anything."

  "It didn't take me long, after coming into my inheritance, to learn that there are three primary uses for large sums of money. One can use it to make more money, or to buy responsibility, or to buy freedom from responsibility. I chose the third option. Servants are an enormous responsibility. A liability as well, if one has secrets one wishes kept. And besides, nowadays, there's no need for servants—one can simply lease the service itself."

  Another question occurred to her. "How come you and your father haven't spoken in so long?"

  Whistler laughed. "Servant trouble, oddly enough. Would you like to hear that story first?"

  "Sure. If it has sex and blood in it."

  "Oodles, m'dear. Oodles." He cleared his throat. "London. The mid-sixties. I don't know if you're old enough to know anything about London in the sixties—Swinging England, they called it. Ever heard anything about Swinging England? Carnaby Street, Mary Quant, the Beatles, and all that?"

  "The Beatles, yeah. I was barely born, you know."

  "Well, I was one-and-twenty and newly Awakened, and in that era London was the place to be, especially for a gentleman vampire who had just come into his inheritance."

  "You said your nanny Awakened you?"

  "Yes. Came as a complete surprise. On Santa Luz babies are checked for vampirism at three months—they actually have a ritual called the Tasting, held in the courtyard of a plantation Greathouse deep in the rainforest. They rub the foot with some sort of voodoo salve so the baby feels no pain, then take enough blood to fill a small gourd, and pass it around. If they get off, they have an orgy. If they don't, they still have an orgy—there's a standby baby.

  "But the child itself is not told of the results of the Tasting until his or her twenty-first birthday. They came for me on the night of the full moon—"

  He stopped. "That's the story I started to tell you in the first place. But you know what would be better?"

  "What?"

  "Instead of my simply telling you, we'll arrange to be on Santa Luz during a full moon. You can meet Nanny yourself, and be initiated, and see a traditional vampire culture—" He stopped. "Why, I actually feel quite enthused."

  "Your nanny's still alive?"

  "Oh yes. And kicking. But she never leaves the Greathouse anymore, and there's no electricity up there. I'll get in touch with her son Prescott, let him know we'll be coming."

  "Let's do it now, let's not wait."

  "Ah, but there's the tiger to be dismounted first."

  "Fuck the tiger."

  "We shall, m'dear. But all in good time. Now, back to my story. Where was I?"

  "Vampires of London. Arooo!"

  "Ah yes. Newly Awakened, and nowhere near as proficient at procuring blood regularly as I am now. The rush-and-crash cycle was beginning to wear on me. I was still living in my father's house at the time. Just the two of us—my mother had died two years before—and of course the servants, one of whom was a portly Bahamian cook and housekeeper named Mary Anne, who, it so happened, suffered from terrible megrims—migraine headaches, we call them here. 'Oh Mr. James, it feel lak gahn to split me head in two.'

  "Now I already knew how to use a syringe—we used to inject heroin in one arm and have a friend inject cocaine into the other simultaneously. A Birmingham Train Wreck, we used to call it—why Birmingham I haven't the slightest idea, but the effect was rather like a train wreck.

  "In any event, I took pity on her, and explained how in England doctors had been bleeding patients for centuries—nothing but the truth, of course—and although the custom had rather fallen out of favor lately, if she really wanted me to, I'd be happy to see what I could do."

  "Cool."

  "But too clever by half: it worked."

  "No!"

  "Yes. It was priceless. Picture for yourself—the poor woman comes to my room one day, face drawn, temples pounding, eyes shut tight against the pain. 'I'll try any-ting, Mr. James. Drah de blood, Mr. James. Jus' drah de blood.' Her skin the color of blanched mahogany, her heart so strong the blood virtually leaps into the syringe, dark as molasses, not too thick, not too thin. And lo and behold, her face begins to relax, her eyes flutter open, and it's 'Mr. James, Mr. James, you save me life, me son.'

&
nbsp; "Alas, no happy ending. After several blissful, and may I add immodestly, headache-free months, one evening—"

  "Wait a minute, what about the sex?"

  Whistler laughed. "Here in the tree?"

  "No, baby—you promised me blood and sex. Vampire stories have to have blood and sex."

  "Well, one does hate to kiss and tell, but if I must. How shall I put this?… Mary Anne was five feet tall, a good fifteen stone, nearly twice my age, and could suck the wings off an angel when the mood was upon her. Does that help any?"

  "Thanks."

  "My pleasure. Now where was I? Ah yes—one evening she brought a friend to me—an older man, an Englishman who claimed to have megrims as well. But when I produced the syringe, he produced the manacles. Seems Mary Anne had told them all about her cure at home—"

  "And the jig was up."

  "So to speak. No charges were ever pressed—there was some talk about practicing medicine without a license, but nothing ever came of it. I was allowed—encouraged—to leave the country (fortunately I was still an American citizen) but I never was able to convince my father of my sudden interest in traditional British folk medicine, and he's refused to see me from that day to this."

  "Did he know you were drinking the blood?"

  "He must have, don't you think? Why else the never-darken-my-door-again treatment? My theory is that he's a frustrated vampire himself—at least latently."

  "So you think vampiring might be, like, congenitary?"

  "Might very well be," he replied. "I honestly don't know." Then he swung his leg back over the bough, twisted around, and dropped lightly to the ground.

  Lourdes jumped down after him. He stepped forward and covered her breasts with his hands. She unsnapped her jeans, lowered the zipper so the pale v of her lower belly was exposed, then placed her hands over his, and slid them downward from her breasts until his palms were pressing directly over her womb. "Shall we make a baby and find out?" she asked him.

  He lowered his face to hers—when his tongue slipped into her mouth she nipped at it. He pulled his head away and caught her smiling her bared-teeth smile up at him. "Why not?" he said. "If it's not one of us, we can always feed off it."

  The lips closed, the smile disappeared. "Only a little taste now and then," she said firmly.

  FIVE

  "Is there a problem, Nick?" Betty Ruth called through the closed bedroom door. She'd left him on the bed with his cards and her diaphragm half an hour before.

  "Me and Rosie need a few more minutes," was the reply.

  "Rosie?"

  "You know, Rosie Palm and her five sisters. Don't panic, though—I'm only halfway through the deck. The hearts were a disappointment, but the spades look promising. Give us another twenty minutes."

  Twenty minutes later: "I'm coming in, Nick."

  "Hold on, hold on." She heard soft fumbling sounds, and pictured him pulling up his Levi's. "Okay."

  He looked up sheepishly. He had indeed pulled on his pants and was sitting on the edge of the bed with the diaphragm lying beside him amidst the multi-national dicks spread across the Shaker quilt. She cleared a space and sat down beside him in her flannel nightgown. "How clever," she remarked. Each suit represented a different continent. The hearts were Europe. "I see what you mean about the hearts."

  With a grin—hey, his worst fear had already come true; now maybe he could relax a little—he handed her the spades. Africa, of course. "Oh my," she said. Something about sitting there with a picture of a foot-long erection in her hand had put her beyond the reach of embarrassment as well. Actually, anything was better than some of the small talk she remembered from her courting days.

  She turned to him. "Listen, Nick, we're not going to let a little thing like this stand in our way, are we?"

  He couldn't help himself: "In the first place, it's not little; and in the second place, it's not standing." Totally cracked himself up—camping was something he'd pretty much given up along with sex and blood, and he was glad to know he hadn't lost his touch.

  "I'm glad to see you've kept your sense of humor," said Betty. "They taught us in Hum Sex—" ("That's Human Sexuality, hon," was her aside in response to his raised eyebrows.) "—that the funny bone was one of the most powerful erogenous zones." Then, acting on impulse, she swept the cards from the bed. This was entirely unlike her—but then, entirely unlike her was what was going to be needed here, she realized, if she was going to get this thing off the ground. So to speak.

  "Oh come on, Bet—"

  "Don't move." She gathered up all her pillows from the head of the bed, heaped them behind Nick's back, then pushed him back gently until he was half reclining, with his legs over the edge of the bed and his feet on the floor. "Now lie back and close your eyes." Then she was on her knees in front of him, tugging down his jeans and his underwear in the same handful, so that she couldn't tell whether they were briefs or boxers until they were around his ankles. (Briefs. Red Calvins.)

  "Please, Betty. What good do you think this is gonna do—you know I'm gay."

  "That's why I'm down here on the floor instead of up there on the mattress with you, hon. And that's also what your imagination is for. Now shut up and close your eyes like I told you. Oh, and hand me that diaphragm."

  Twenty years ago I was the King of the Castro, thought Nick. Now here I am getting a b.j. from a female minister. Then, a minute later: But you know what? It ain't bad.

  Nor did it last long—with an effort he remembered why they were there. "Soon," he called, without opening his eyes. "Real soon." Then he moaned: his testicles had been seized in a death grip and—of all things—a ministerial fingertip was inserting itself into his rectum. He came with a cry; Betty milked him expertly onto the diaphragm and rolled onto her back. "You're not going to want to see this next part," she warned him, as she rearranged the pillows under her thighs.

  "You're right," he replied, closing his eyes again. A squishy sound, and then it was done.

  And afterwards? A difficult feeling to assess, for either of them. Whether it had been a crossroads in both their lives or only a funny, futile little bump in the road was something they wouldn't know until after Christmas at the earliest. In the meantime Betty would be spending the next few hours flat on her back with her legs above her head, and the next few weeks praying to Higher Power for all she was worth.

  So he threw a blanket over her, found the Time magazine she'd asked for in the bathroom rack, brought her a drink of water not from the bathroom tap but from the MultiPure filter in the kitchen, bent over her awkwardly so as not to dislodge anything, kissed her cheek in a brotherly fashion—she apologized for not being in a position to show him out—and left by the kitchen door, whistling an old Chicago blues song—the one where they spell out M-A-N and don't miss a letter.

  He found himself whistling the same studly tune during the drive back to Berkeley, and then again in the shower, and afterwards as he put on a pair of crisp pajamas. A Farewell to Arms was on the midnight movie. Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones. "You and me, Rock," he said, lifting a toast to the screen. "Breaking women's hearts from Paris to Frisco."

  Then the phone rang. "Hellooo," he chirped—he was sure it was Betty.

  "Is this Nick?"

  It wasn't Betty, though. Not a minister of the Higher Power by any stretch of the imagination. Pretty much the opposite, as a matter of fact. Selene.

  He hadn't heard her voice in over five years. It sounded about the same, though, which pleased him: after their last meeting, there'd been some question about whether she'd ever regain the use of it at all.

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  ONE

  Another mental snapshot for Whistler's scrapbook of color and line, sex and absurdity:

  Eight o'clock Monday morning; the farmhouse kitchen; Lourdes puttering around, starting a pot of coffee, rinsing out last night's wineglasses, nuking frozen croissants in the microwave. What made the snapshot a keeper, though, was her costume for this
display of domesticity: full dominatrix from the black seamed stockings attached by garters dangling from the beribboned black Merry Widow all the way down to the stiletto heels; a leather G-string completed the ensemble—her mask and whip lay on the counter next to the cow-shaped creamer filled with blood.

  But try as he might to distance himself, Whistler couldn't deny the feelings that welled up in his chest just sitting at the kitchen table watching her—it was as if his heart was a Creature now. "Lourdes?"

  "Jamey?"

  "I adore you."

  She put down the butter knife and brandished the whip at him. "You better."

  "I do."

  "No, Whistler, I mean it. 'Cause after I make this phone call, there's gonna be no going back."

  "Phone away, my beloved. Phone away."

  "Okay." She drew a deep breath, after which she had to tuck her bosom back into the bustier, then took the handset down from the wall and punched up Bev's number at the blood bank.

  Answering machine, she mouthed to Whistler. "Hi Bev, this is Lourdes. I'm sorry for the late notice, but I'm not coming in to work this morning. In fact, I'm not ever coming to work again. But it's not what you think—I haven't gone out or anything. I'll tell you all about it at the meeting tonight. Better yet, I'll show you. See you tonight."

  Her face was flushed when she turned back from hanging up the phone, and her chest was heaving with emotion—an occurrence Whistler noted with appreciation. "I will have something to show her tonight, won't I?" she asked him.

  "M'dear, we'll knock their eyes out. Just let me make a few calls, and then it's breakfast and beddy-bye for us."

  Beside the phone they exchanged a lingering kiss, but when his fingers reached down and began to insinuate themselves under the G-string she stepped back gracefully—not an easy feat in stiletto heels, but easier for a ballerina: it was almost like being on point—and tapped him playfully with the whip. "Let's give pussy a rest, shall we?" she said, handing him the receiver. "Business first, then pleasure."