by Drew Stepek
I surveyed my body. The bite mark that the dog took out of my side was completely smoothed over and my jaw was clicked back into place. I pushed on the healed wound with my palm, making sure that nothing fishy was going on inside me. As if I would have known the difference.
I spit out my last mouthful of toothpaste and spotted a disposable razor and some shaving gel on the sink. I turned around and cracked the door into the room a bit. I hid my naked body and pressed my lips between the door and the wall.
“Can I shave?”
I heard a movie blaring from the TV.
No one responded so I asked again, a little louder. “Hey, man. Can I shave?”
In an annoyed tone, Eldritch yelled back, “Yes!”
I switched positions with my mouth and my eye. Eldritch was sitting next to Pinball’s bed on one of the complimentary chairs provided by the Golden Aces Hotel. “Jesus.” I said. “I just wanted to know if I could shave.”
“And I said yes.” He got up from the chair and walked toward the bathroom.
I shut the door and locked it.
“Unlock the door, RJ.” He tugged at the handle on the other side.
“Why? I’m getting ready.”
He lightened up a little. “I have your clothes. Against my better—”
I turned back to the vanity, blasted the hot water and filled my hand with shaving gel. “Can’t hear you. Just leave them in front of the door.” Steam quickly filled the mirror, blurring me out. I hoped the steam could blur out my conscious and The Gooch. Their tug of war was making my body and brain hurt.
“Did you receive any communication from Linnwood Perry?”
I responded with the same short, annoyed tone and covered my face with the gel. “Yes!” With my other hand, I wiped a diagonal streak across the mirror.
“And?”
I rubbed the gel all over my face. “And, he wants to meet with me.”
He tugged on the door again. “Who wants to meet with you? Linnwood?”
“No. Rodderick.” I washed off my hands and then grabbed the razor.
“Open this door.” He shook on the handle. “There must be some mistake.”
“There’s no mistake.” I dragged the razor up under my chin and then tapped the hair off of it in the sink. “He doesn’t even want to meet with Linnwood. He said that he knows who I am.”
Eldritch let out a large sigh.
I scraped the razor down under my short sideburns. “Oh, what? I’m not cool enough for him to want to meet with me?”
“Would you mind opening the door, RJ?”
“I’m naked, dude.” I tapped some more hair off of the razor and then scrubbed at the steam on the mirror again.
“Please, open this door.” He rattled the handle again.
“Jesus!” I threw the razor in the sink, unlocked the door and then threw it open, completely exposing myself to the hotel room. “I’m shaving.”
Eldritch waved his arms in an attempt to block off the bathroom area from the kid. “Not in front of the Little One.” He kicked my clothes into the small room and then slammed the door shut.
I grabbed the razor and finished off the shave with four final strokes. “I kept telling you that I was naked.” I turned off the sink and fully wiped off the mirror.
I made a gun with my finger and winked at myself. “It was nice seeing you again, RJ.” I said. “What an awful mess you are.”
I passed the beds and took a seat at the table in the corner by the door. It was afternoon, but the sun wasn’t bursting through the brown curtains. Eldritch sat on the edge of his bed.
He handed me a cigarette case. “Please. Take one.”
I took the case and opened it. An overwhelming scent of cherries and cloves swirled into my face. Unsurprisingly, the case was loaded with red filtered and brown wrapped cigarettes. I snapped the case shut and pushed it onto the table. “Gag.”
He watched my rejection carefully but refrained from making any comments about disrespect, vampire traditions or any of his other bullshit. Instead, he subtly flared his right nostril and cut to the chase. “Let us return to the topic of Stephan Rodderick.”
“I got a text from Linn about an hour ago.” I slid down into the chair. “He said that he wanted to meet with me. Alone.”
He grabbed the cigarette case. “I suppose the question is why does he refuse to meet with me. Does that seem as perplexing to you as it does to me?”
“Not really,” I answered.
I heard a gurgle coming from his stomach. He tried to ignore it but he bent over slightly and covered it with his hand.
“What the hell is that?”
“Umm,” he began. “We have only eaten Mexican food since we have been here.” He batted his eyelashes in Pinball’s direction. “It is all that the Little One will eat.”
“Gnarly. Are you gonna be okay?”
“For the time being,” he assured me.
“Do you have any regular cigarettes?” I asked as I waved the smell of him away from me.
“I do not. Back to the issue at hand. Have you ever encountered Stephan Rodderick? Maybe you crossed paths at a museum or hostelry?”
Knowing I still wasn’t off the hook for the three-day binge and kill orgy, I gave short answers. “I’ve never met the guy.” I counted off with my fingers. “I’ve never been to a museum. I don’t know what a hostelry is.”
“A hostelry. An alehouse. A public house.”
“A bar?”
“Precisely.” He simplified his tone and widen his eyes. “A bar,” he said in a breathy voice.
“I’ve never met him. I’ve seen the billboards for his lame movies around L.A.” I noticed Pinball out of the corner of my eye. She was wearing the Rasta hat. “Hey, Pin… ummm… Paulina.” I winked at Eldritch and then looked over to her on the bed. “That sure is a dope hat.”
She ran her fingers through the yarn-locks. “Do you really think so?”
“Super cool,” I assured her. “Totally hip.”
I turned back to Eldritch but noticed her pushing the wig under the covers with her foot.
Eldritch did a double take. “Where did you get that, Little One?”
“I found it in the garbage when I got me a Coke,” she told him.
Eldritch turned back to me. He bent his head back and tossed his hair around in an attempt to gloss over the fact that he tried to dump my gift.
I stared at him. “Really?” I asked her. “That was lucky.”
“Yeah.” She shook her head. “It has dreadlocks on it like One Love in the movies Mr. Eldritch showed me.”
Eldritch grabbed the cigarette box and doubled over again as his stomach let out a howl.
I waved my finger at him. “What movies were those?”
“You know, the movies ‘bout the vampires. That guy that Mister Eldritch is going to get to save me from you.” She jumped on Eldritch’s bed, next to him and loudly yelled, “What’s his name again? The vampire guy?” She jumped up and down and then finally landed on her butt. “The guy who is gonna save me from Uncle RJ?”
He cupped the bottom of his stomach with both his hands. “Shhhhh, Little One.”
“No, no,” I interrupted. “Go on, Mister Eldritch.”
Pinball hopped around on her butt and started chanting. “What’s his name? What’s his name? What’s his name? What’s his name?” She pointed at the TV.
I turned to look. They were watching one of the crummy Nightshayde movies. Rodderick’s character was bent over in a forest. He picked up some dirt and sniffed it. Then, he flew into the trees like Peter Pan.
Eldritch pat her on top of the red, yellow, green, and black knitted cap. “Shhhh, Little One.” He picked up the remote control and turned the volume down on the TV.
“But what’s his name?” She grabbed the remote from him.
He looked at me.
I smirked and helped her get to the bottom of the mystery. “Well? We’re waiting!”
“L. Byron Nightshayd
e,” he mumbled.
I put my hands behind my ears and stretched them outward. “I’m sorry. I didn’t quite get that.”
“His name is L. Byron Nightshayde.” He flipped a clove into his mouth and then created a fire to light it by snapping his fingers. “Please, Little One.” He petted her on the head again and tucked one of the dreads behind her ear. “Let Uncle RJ and I speak.”
I pointed to his lit clove. “So, I guess the non-smoking rule has been lifted.”
“Booooo,” she said. She stood up and leapt from one bed to the other and then summersaulted back to her pillow.
Eldritch reached out to make sure she made the journey safely but must have unlocked something in his bowels. He looked down to his stomach and then up at me. He lifted his index finger, signifying one minute and then, embarrassed, he shuffled into the bathroom. “I will be back, Little One.”
Paulina didn’t pay attention to him. Rather, she turned the volume back up on her movie.
I looked back at the TV. I didn’t know what to say to her.
The girl character from the movie was in the middle of this weird six-pointed star inside of this sacrificial temple or something. Once again, Rodderick twirled to the ground, after collapsing the ceiling onto a bunch of thousand-year-old vampires in Victorian garb and the like.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“These beings are my blood. You are my soul.”
“What’s her name?” I said, trying to break the ice with Paulina.
Her eyes were glued to the screen. “Her name is Hamster Fist Rose.”
I laughed a little. “Hamster Fist? That’s kind of a weird name.”
Eldritch yelled out from the bathroom. “It’s Amethyst Rose.”
“I like Hamster Fist better,” I told her.
She smiled back at me.
Without making any jarring motions, I dragged my chair over next to her bed. “I don’t know if you can understand this…”
She put her finger over her lips. “Shhhh.”
“Oh, yeah, cool.” I turned back to the film. This was a great way to get him to connect with her.
Rodderick’s character, which by this point I had finally concluded was named L. Byron Nightshayde, was standing across from the girl character, which I had also concluded was name Amethyst Rose. He was caressing her cheek with the back of his hand. A tear fell onto his skin and he started glimmering.
“I shouldn’t cry,” she said.
“What is… cry?” he said back.
“Haaaaaaa!” I burst out. “‘What is cry?’ Priceless.”
“Shhhhhh,” Paulina reminded me.
“It’s just—”
She lifted the remote and paused the film. “It’s just, what?”
“Well, this guy has been alive for hundreds of years, right?”
“I dunno.”
“He’s not a robot. He knows what the fuck crying is.”
Eldritch pounded on the wall. “Language, RJ.”
I turned the chair around so I was facing her. “Do you like this movie, Paulina?”
“I guess,” she said.
“You know that vampires aren’t like that in real life, right?”
“But Mister Eldritch tol’ me that he was real and I was gonna go live with him in a mansion.”
“Yeah, sure.” I struggled to connect with her. “I mean, he’s real, right. But there are other kinds of vampires.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “Like me.”
She put the remote down next to her leg. I bent forward and she hid behind the Rasta wig. It was a trait that I remembered seeing in her older sister when she’d hide behind her hair.
I took a breath. “I promise you that I want to do the right thing here. Do you understand that?”
She shook her head and bit into one of the dreadlocks. “No.”
“It was a really bad thing that I did to your parents. I want to do the right thing here and I want to get you to safety. Please trust me that I would have done anything for your sister.”
“Then why is she dead too?”
I scratched at my leg and then my arms. “I can’t answer that.” I looked at her bedspread. “It’s just... it’s just that... I’m kinda busted.”
“Mister Eldritch says you’re a druggie.”
“And he’s right.” I looked around the room for words. A puppet show with my dreams coming from one hand and The Gooch coming from the other wouldn’t make any sense to a child. “I don’t know how to explain me.”
She reached for the remote.
I delicately put my hand over hers. “Have you ever had a pet that you can’t stop playing with?”
“I hated my dog. He was meaners.”
“Yeah. Sure. He was pretty mean.” I looked around the room again. “What about a toy? Have you ever had a toy that you couldn’t stop playing with no matter who told you that you should put it down?”
“I din’t have no toys,” she whispered. “After Bailia left me, I would always go in her room and play with her toys every day. I wanted her to come back so my daddy would stop bein’ mean to me. Daddy found out an’ threw all them toys away. I wasn’t allowed to go in her room no more.”
I lifted my hand off of hers and put the remote back in her hand. “I didn’t have any toys, either. We’re gonna get you some toys. I promise.”
I turned my chair back around to watch Rodderick’s movie. After what seemed like an eternity of seeing how perfect L. Byron Nightshayde’s counterfeit vampire life was, Eldritch flushed the toilet and reentered the room.
“I do not recommend anyone go in there,” he said, as he winked at me and patted me on the shoulder.
Paulina giggled.
“Look, Eldritch,” I whispered. “We need to clear the air now. I don’t care what the fuck you’re telling her about me. I know that the truth is much worse. I’m sorry for leaving and I’m sorry for getting wasted. I did fight an opossum. I did fight a pack of guard dogs and I did end up in the middle of a coke war between the Perrys and the roller chicks.”
“Ride the Lightning,” he said, correcting me. “I know them well.” He glanced over at Pinball and began whispering. “On one such occasion, the leader, Darla Destruction, and I shared a bottle of absinthe said to contain the blood of Vlad the Impaler.”
I started whispering as well. Mocking him. “Oh. La-dee-da. I didn’t realize you were such good friends with all the gangs in Austin,” I sighed. “She got her fucking face ripped off and Linnwood farted in her dead mouth and took selfies.”
He bowed his head. “Unfortunate. She was a great friend.”
“So, the chicks—what was there name again?”
“Ride the Lightning.”
“Ride the Lighting. Sorry. The all-girl gang named after the Metallica album.”
He inhaled the clove. “It was actually a passage from the Stephen King’s The Stand.”
“Fine. They are named after a passage from a Stephen King story.” I waved the smoke back in his face. “My point is, I got caught up in the moment. I was hiding out and I was being an asshole. I did a bunch of oxy that I cooked inside the exhaust of a jet ski. I snorted a bunch of coke the night I sent you all those texts. I also did a bunch of coke with Linnwood yesterday.”
He turned to Pinball, who was settled back into the world of Nightshayde. “We need to make this right, RJ,” he said.
“I know that. I want to do the right thing here. It was a mistake, okay?” I tilted my forehead across the room. “It was my mistake. I know that I can’t get Bait back. I know that I can’t go back in time and fix everything that I fucked up.”
He turned back to me. “Her parents were monsters. You did not do the right thing, but you will do the right thing.”
I reached out to take a drag from his cigarette. “Do you accept my apology?”
“I do.” He took another puff and handed it over to me. “However, the plan has changed. If Stephan will only speak to you, then we need to not make room for error.
The Little One’s life depends on it.”
“What’s the plan?” I took a drag of the clove and sucked it down to my lungs.
Eldritch reached out. “Don’t inhale.”
The powerful clove smoke tore into my lungs and was immediately rejected. I started to cough. “Then why do you smoke these?” Rather than flick it back in his face, like I normally would have done if I wasn’t pleading for forgiveness, I handed it back. “What’s the point?”
“Smells like cherries,” Pinball deduced as she pinched her nose. “I hate cherries.”
Eldritch mashed out the clove on the table. “Sorry, Little One.”
I tried to hack the taste of the cigarette out of my throat. “Do you have any water?”
Eldritch reached behind him into a disposable Styrofoam cooler and grabbed a bottle. He handed it to me.
“What’s the plan?” I asked again as I took a swig.
He pulled his chair closer to mine. “We… I mean, you… need to convince Stephan to take the Little One. He owns his own research foundation for children’s cancer.”
“Why is this so complicated?” I moaned. “And, why do I have to be the dog in this plan?”
“You are doing the right thing, of course,” he returned. “I rushed to your side and saved your life on several occasions. The girl goes to Rodderick and we return to Los Angeles.”
“Yeah.” I pulled my chair closer. “I mean, I figured we’d just leave the kid with him and he would be a hero for saving her. Have him make up some story about how he was filling up his car at a gas station and saw her in the back of van or something.”
He stroked his chin. “I am not sure we need to go that deep into the story.”
“Well, then we’ll let him come up with the story. Linnwood told me that he is laying low because the paparazzi is camped out in front of his compound.”
He tilted his head. “I am not sure he has a compound.”
I weighed the options with my hands. “Compound. Mansion. Who cares?”
“I think he has a ranch. A mid-century ranch.”
“Fine,” I said. “The press is camped out by his ranch because he just OD’d. I will go meet with him—”
“At the ranch?”