by Varian Wolf
Then, as you grow more awake, you feel your neck. You can’t help it, you just do. It doesn’t matter that you’ve spent the last four days and nights with him, that he has been no less than a perfect gentleman in your presence, that he has been infinitely patient with your great shortcoming –your mortality, that he has never once made any threat to the sanctity of the blood within your veins. Okay, maybe once, but it was extremely flattering. Popular culture and myth have told you that you must tremble before this creature of the night, and that now that he has finally isolated you in this far away place, and stood beside you as you lay in vulnerable repose, his antics will have changed to those of murderous intent.
After you’ve checked your neck and found it to be free of laceration, you do a frantic assessment of the rest of your body, and when you find yourself by all accounts unmolested, you sit very still and you breathe. You feel your heart beating. Then you take a deep breath and you sigh. You have not been changed. You are not a vampire, and though you don’t know it, the very fact that you woke questioning the state of your substance makes it real obvious that you’re not. You’re still a living, sweating, eating, pissing human, and as you sit there in the dark next to that awesome, ageless creature, somehow, you’re not sure whether or not that pleases you.
Maybe you feel like a criminal because of some of the things you did that put you in bed with a vampire. Maybe you’ve taken on a sociopathic mindset because you know where you’re going, and in a way you’ve already checked out of the world, whether or not immortality lies beyond that door.
Maybe you feel like that. I did. What filled me then was an imperative, an urgency, the strongest I had ever felt in my life. It was strong as the need to be loved by that first junior high school crush, who my affection-starved psyche, pegged as the one who was going to save my life. It was as strong as the need to run like hell during any perilous moment of my former life spent before the leveled barrel of some fool’s shotgun. It was mighty as the most powerful sexual urge, the most compelling fight or flight response. I wanted it all then, the power, the freedom, the immortality, the inviolable good health, the surety that my future would have far better to offer than my past. I even wanted the special justification for aggressive appetites I thought I already had. I wanted, needed, then, to be a vampire.
And I knew then, in the dark of the slave’s quarters, that I had work to do.
Miguel had gone hunting after our stroll. After his return all fresh and rosy, we spent the remainder of the night talking about the present, the past, and the future. I had learned a great deal, including just why he wanted me to be a vampire, and just how dangerous it would be for me to try. In short, I could die.
Apparently, becoming a vampire wasn’t all that easy. Simple, yes, but not easy. In short, you had to get drained nearly to death –like one shallow breath away, then suck the hell out of a well-fed, sufficiently old vampire.
How difficult was this process, I had asked? More humans died than made it, Miguel had said. Most were not strong enough, or not well enough prepared. What do I need to do to prepare, to be strong? Be fit. Practice drinking vampire blood. Is that safe, drinking vampire blood? Safer than drinking raw blood. It got sterilized, apparently, inside vampire veins.
So we had practiced, right then and there, on the bed in the Banana Grove. I had to keep my teeth in his flesh at all times, else, as he had fed recently, his veins would heal shut, and I had to suck hard –No heart to pump it out. Oh, and vampire blood tastes like shit to mortals.
The result? I managed to get to the toilet before puking it back up.
And how much had I drunk? About a measuring cup, Miguel had said. Not enough.
So it would take some practice. We would work on that.
The other thing I had to work on was getting fit. I’d already nearly lost the ten pounds I’d gained in jail during our chaotic flight and my illness, but I was far from fit. I was a fighter. I knew what fit was, and I wasn’t it.
And I now set out on a mission to get ferociously fit.
I needed to guard incapacitated Miguel until he could mingle his blood with that of his ex-lover and disappear from cult radar. I therefore could not get far from our room during daylight hours. That was okay. I could lift weights.
The slaves’ quarters were not exactly the place to hear the Rocky theme running in your head, but they would have to do. We snuck a set of free weights into our room. Then I went to town. I did calisthenics, stretches, and everything else I could think of in that small space. Endurance seemed to be key in surviving the transition, so I circuit trained in six square feet.
When night came, I got out and ran through the French Quarter while Miguel hunted, dodging people like I was in a pinball game. I charged past drunk people, mule carts, and a guy waving an American flag and wearing board that said “Good Mister Goodwin” on it. I almost wiped out into one of those walking ghost tours when a little rat dog being held by a teeny goth girl with pyrotechnic-orange hair lunged for my throat. She hardly seemed to notice the little monster’s misbehavior, going on with her lecture on the Hanging Man of Papillon House as if her perfect pet hadn’t almost committed murder. My ankle had pretty much healed from the injury it had sustained in the fall on the pool patio, but I had always healed fast –It’d been one of my strengths as a fighter. The new hundred-and-fifty-dollar running shoes with their fiberglass insoles helped a lot. I spared myself no effort, no pain. Immortality was the goal, death the danger. Talk about twenty-four-karat motivation.
After my run and his hunt, Miguel and I convened to share the remainder of the evening. We wandered the flea market by the riverside. He bought me a dew rag with the Jolly Roger on it. I let him smell my sweaty neck.
Coming down the stairs the next morning, I realized that, for the first time in I couldn’t recall how long, I was ravenously hungry. I ravaged the continental breakfast provided by our hosts, eating all of the hardboiled eggs, an English muffin, and two apples. I was building muscle now. The fat would go on its own.
“Boy, someone must have had quite a night last night,” said Jonathon, who had apparently been standing in the door of the idyllic breakfast room, watching me scarf down everything with protein in it. I realized I was drinking straight out of the soymilk carton. I put it down.
“Oh, don’t let me interrupt. You need your strength, partying all night with Desperado up there.”
This morning he was dressed in big cargo shorts and a T-shirt, with a political button that said “Good Mister Goodwin” in red letters on it. He had slides on his feet and a soda in his hand.
I knew from his eagerly congenial face that I was not going to get out of the room with just an exchange of “good mornings”. He was going to want to chat. It appeared he had nothing else to do. Judging by the ease with which so many people lounged on stairs and doorsteps around this town, having nothing to do was a New Orleans thing, or at least a Marigny thing. Couldn’t blame them, it was so damn hot here.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to Jonathon –okay, it was - but it didn’t have anything to do with him personally. I was the type of person who had to be in the mood to talk (at least talk pleasantly), and I was not in the mood; I was on a mission to which prolonged pleasantries would only be a hindrance. I had to work out and guard my vampire.
“Good morning, Annie. How are you this morning?” he asked cheerfully. Lo and behold.
“Hungry.”
“I see that. Are you planning on saving any of that for our other guests?”
I looked at him.
“I’m just kidding. We’ve got piles of food. Look at me, for God’s sake.”
He rubbed his broad belly and smiled with gratification.
“You’re taking this nightlife thing just about as seriously as I’ve ever seen anyone take it. Out just after sundown, back just minutes shy of dawn.”
“Yeah, well, that’s how we roll.”
“Are the slave’s quarters agreeing with you?”
>
“Sure.”
“Got enough room in there?”
“Yeah.”
“Because if you find you need…any more space, we have a larger room open in the main house. You know, if you find the slave’s quarters at all…constricting.”
“Our room’s fine.”
Back off. I just want to eat this whole pile of fruit.
“Just asking. We want to make sure our guests are comfortable, you know, especially the feisty ones.”
My God, did this guy think about anything other than sex? Oh wait, this was a guy.
“Jonathon, leave the poor, hungry guest alone to eat her breakfast,” chided Lucas, entering the parlor with an armload of boxes. “Let her secrets lie.”
“I don’t have any secrets.”
Lucas looked at me over the stack of boxes.
“Sure you don’t.”
“Don’t worry, sister,” Jonathon said. “What happens in the Quarter stays in the Quarter.”
“Jonathon, would you help me with these flyers?” Lucas said, opening a box and removing a stack of red, white, and blue flyers with “Good Mister Goodwin” printed on them in triumphant letters.
“Who’s this Goodwin?” I asked. “I’ve been seeing his name all over town.”
“Oh, sister,” said Lucas, putting a hand to his chest, “He is our man. He is the man who is going to clean up this mess you see outside our door.”
“Mess?”
Lucas and Jonathon looked at each other.
“You haven’t noticed?” asked Lucas, “You haven’t noticed the empty houses or the collapsing ones? What about the tarp on our roof? They’re all over town.”
He hadn’t seen Detroit.
“I actually thought your city was kind of…pretty.”
I surprised myself by thinking it.
“Oh,” said Jonathon, “That’s right, you drove in at night, and you probably haven’t been outside the neighborhood, have you?”
“Not really.”
“Well,” said Lucas, “If you want to have a nice vacation and enjoy yourself and not think about anything unpleasant while you’re here, then don’t leave the neighborhood….Half our neighbors haven’t come home, and there’s a hole in our roof we can’t afford to fix, and if we can’t afford to fix it, they’re going to shut us down, but we’re okay…”
He stopped, tears choking his speech. Jonathon put a hand on his shoulder.
“Breathe, honey,” he encouraged.
Lucas took a few deep breaths, then went on, “…We’re okay, but if you want to see what has happened to our city, why we need a man like Goodwin so badly take St. Claude east across the canal. Go there and say a prayer for us..”
The pair retreated into their private section of the house to comfort one another. I was left standing with a half-eaten pile of fruit, very sorry I had asked anything about any political candidate. I vowed to myself never to ask about one again.
I was, after all, and awkward creature, inept at reacting to another’s pain. In opening up to me, Lucas had given me a fleeting glimpse of the deep injury lurking beneath the surface of this gilded rose that was New Orleans. At the time, I hadn’t the first idea of what to do with the knowledge, but I would learn.
I would learn.
“Miguel, I have pussy-vision,” I said on our third night in New Orleans, as we sat by the edge of the broad, dark river, dotted with the orange and white of city and boat lights, beside other couples who were more vigorously engaged. Miguel wouldn’t nuzzle me again. I had tried.
“I expect a cat around every corner. Where the hell are your pursuers?”
“It will take them some time to scry my location. The spell tracks somewhat as a bloodhound would.”
“They have to walk your trail –from Michigan?”
“Not quite, but something like that. They may need weeks to find me.”
“How the hell am I supposed to stay frosty that long?”
“With luck you will not have to. Andy may call any time.”
“Does he have your new phone number?”
Miguel just looked at me.
“Well, you’ve been under a lot of pressure lately.”
“As have you.”
“Well they’re late to the damn dance. I’m itching to stick it to somebody. Making us run like that… They don’t have the fuckin’ right. Damn victimizers. Bet they fuck their children, beat their wives.”
I threw a few punches at the air. A straight right, a left hook, jab, feint, feint, hook…
Miguel, watching me, said, “You would like to go back inside the ring.”
“I’d rather bust some pussies. Smack some Siamese. Pop some Persians. Wreck some Rexes. Mangle Main Coons...Oooo! Christmas!”
Miguel had stuck a piece of paper in front of my face –not just any piece of paper. It was a paid membership to a gym –with training.
I jumped to my feet, jabbing and hooking for joy. I punched at the river. I punched at Miguel. Other couples stared.
Suddenly, I stopped.
“Stop,” he said, seeing me open my mouth. “I want you to go. You have done enough for me for now. You will be more useful later if you are robust and able.”
“But who’s gonna watch your back?”
“You may not believe so, Annie, but I am actually quite practiced at that.” Again, he interrupted my open mouth. “My greatest concern at this time is not my own safety. It is yours.”
“Mine?”
“As long as you are as you are you are in danger.”
“Are as you are you are as are…”
“And you must remain as you are for as long as is necessary to maximize your chance of winning the prize fight for your life.”
“Oh.”
“You see the problem.”
So I went to the gym. I found that it was not located in the French Quarter, but on a seedier side of New Orleans, a place of old warehouses and disheveled sidewalks with alien vegetation springing out of every crack. There were buildings out here that looked like something really big had taken an equally big bite out of them. Many were standing empty, crumbling, and devoid of windows. Being from Detroit, I wasn’t put off by any of this. This was a grittier place, a rougher place. Good.
Even better? Parking the McLaren outside of it.
I stepped through the door and at first just stood there, inhaling the healthful funk of sweat, cigarette smoke, deodorant, foot fungus, and the bacteria that grows in the spit-and-blood buckets. They don’t call boxing the “sweet science” for nothing.
I took stock of the locals, who were mostly men, and they took stock of me. New faces get the treatment in a tight training facility. Everybody wants to see if everybody else is worthy of being there, and everybody wants to know whose asses they could kick. Fighters. Heh.
When I figured everyone had gotten their eyeful, I moved away from the door and into my natural habitat among the mirrors and free weights and bags. There was a ring to the left side of the room, and a couple of fighters were getting their game on inside it, their coaches looking on and occasionally shouting some gem of coaching wisdom. I headed for the coaches beside it.
One of the onlookers, a man in his mid thirties, saw me coming and headed over to intercept me before I reached the ring. His eyes appraised me in that fighterly fashion as he approached. Mine did the same to him. He was big, sweated up, dressed in workout clothes, and fit as a fiddle,
“Can I help you, baby?”
“I’m looking for Devon Halleck.”
“He’s out for the day. Are you his new fighter?”
I handed the guy my membership receipt. He glanced at it and handed it back.
“I heard he had a girl coming. He’ll be back in the morning. I’m sure he’ll want to meet you.”
That was this guy’s way of trying to make me go away.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been in a gym. I’d like to work out tonight, if there’s somebody who can get me the papers to sign.”
The guy nodded.
“Okay. Sure. I can do that. Just come on in the office.”
He led the way to the cramped, messy office just off the main room. A few guys watched us pass, one giving my escort a thumbs-up before we disappeared inside. They didn’t offend me. Men are men everywhere you go.
Inside the office, my big receptionist dug out the gym contract that had been started in my name and a die-on-your-own-dime waiver. He looked at the name printed on the front page.
“Anna Stav…Stavropoulos,” he pronounced awkwardly
“Annie,” I corrected, looking at the name Miguel had given me and discovering that it really was as horrible as the guy had made it sound. Fucking vampire comedian asshole.
I double checked the spelling on the name before I signed the papers.
“I’m Stringer,” said the man. “Mr. Rawls is the manager. He out there by the ring. The brother is Coach Boorstin. You need anything, you just ask one of us, straight?”
I nodded, took my sheet of the triplicate, and headed back out into my version of heaven.
The looks I got were forgettable with all those pretty bags waiting for me. I had come wearing my training clothes, so there wasn’t anything else to hold me up. I did some stretches and started to warm up. I didn’t start to really draw prolonged stares until I hit the bags. Then the guy working next to me actually stopped what he was doing to ogle the chick who could hit. That was fine. He was the one wasting good workout time.
Across the room I caught one of the coaches –the one that must be Rawls, a gnarled man around fifty with a cigarette smoking in his mouth, leaning on the ropes and looking at me instead of the fight he was coaching. After about a minute, he called Stringer over, and the two exchanged a few words that seemed to satisfy the coach’s curiosity.