Fat White Vampire Blues

by Andrew J. Fox

  Listless, empty, Jules shuffled back into the parlor and shoved the videotape into Maureen’s combination TV–VCR. While the set was warming up, he gently cleared the dust away from one of the sofa cushions and sat down. He didn’t bother to check if the tape was rewound. He knew it would be.

  What came on-screen looked at first like a modern, color remake of the old Claude Rains thrillerThe Invisible Man. A seemingly empty man’s suit-black jacket and trousers, white shirt, narrow black gangster’s tie-strutted around behind what looked like a gray-and-red mummy. Ribbons of gray duct tape partially encased a billowy-huge red satin mini dress and queen-sized fishnet stockings, which were both bound to a tall-backed kitchen chair. Unlike the men’s suit, the satin mini dress had an attached “face” of sorts. An oval of flesh-colored powder floated a few inches above the dress’s plunging neckline, highlighted with lips formed of fire-engine-red lipstick, almond-shaped ovals of black mascara surrounding empty eye sockets, and thick black false eyelashes that fluttered quickly, nervously, like dragonfly wings.

  Jules recognized the room they were in. It was Maureen’s kitchen, only thirty feet from where he now sat. The red satin dress whimpered. Jules knew it was Maureen’s whimper; but it was easier to think of it as the red satin dress’s.

  The black suit clapped its invisible hands together. “Welcome toChiller Theater, kiddies,” it said with Malice X’s mocking voice. “Tonight’s thrilling episode is calledThe Fuckin‘ Traitor Ho ’Fesses Up. Sponsored by those fine folks at Big Shot Beverage Company, the makers of cold drinks that turn black men sterile.”

  “Malice, please,” Maureen begged. Her voice sounded choked with mucus and tears. “Please let me go. You said you just wanted to talk. What’s with all this crazy nonsense, baby? I’ve been good, honey. I swear. I never said anything to anybody that could get you in trouble. Let me loose. You said you’d tell me what had happened to Jules if I came here and met you without telling anybody. And I did exactly what you asked-”

  “Lyin‘bitch!” The black suit backhanded the oval of flesh-colored powder, smearing its lipstick into a red scar. “You can’t speak two fuckin’ sentences in a row without sayin‘ his name!Bitch! Who the fuck else told fat boy and his queer sidekick where my sister lives? Who the fuck even told them Ihad a fuckin’ sister? Huh?”

  Maureen was weeping. Jules saw that the battered side of the powder oval was swelling like rotten fruit. “It-it wasn’t me, Malice. You gottabelieve me, baby. I never knew where your sister lived. Iswear it! I can’t even remember if you ever told me youhad a sister. I didn’t knife you in the back, baby. I’d never do anything to hurt you, Iswear…”

  The black suit moved behind the red satin dress. Maureen’s face jerked backward, as though her hair had been roughly yanked. “Yeah, that’s right, baby,” Malice X said, his voice lower, almost inaudible. “You’ll never do anything to hurt me. That’s ‘cause youcan’t hurt me. I’m way beyond gettin’ hurt by the likes of you. But I can hurtyou, baby. I can hurt youreal good.”

  He stepped off-camera for a few seconds. When he returned, he was holding a five-foot-long wooden spear. Carved of an exotic dark hardwood, it was a cross between harpoon and phallus. “This is a Yoruba ceremonial spear, baby,” Malice X said. “I got a whole collection of these. Bought it at auction. I was biddin‘ against three different museums. Thing cost me half as much as my Caddy. Nice, huh?”

  Maureen nodded her head weakly.

  “Now where you think I oughtta stick this fine thing, huh?”

  “Nowhere, Malice-”

  “Shut thefuck up!” Maureen’s head snapped back again. “I didn’t ask you to say nothin‘! That was a fuckin’ rhetorical question. You wanna say somethin‘? Say your last sweet honey-words to your fat fuck of a boyfriend.”

  Tears turned the mascara around Maureen’s eyes to black rivers that scoured the powder from her face and stained the red satin of her dress. What emerged from her mouth wasn’t words; it was a preverbal cry of despair, torn between a futile plea of innocence and a moan of bottomless regret.

  The first word she managed to utter was his name. “Jules… if you can hear this… Jules, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for everything, darling. I can’t-I’m just so very, verysorry, baby.” On the left of the screen, partially off-camera, Malice X raised his spear to strike. Maureen’s empty eye sockets stared directly into the camera. “Jules!Ilove y-”

  The spear plunged through the patch of red satin covering her heart. What Jules heard then was only a faint aural shadow of the scream that had rocked the kitchen hours before. No recording instrument on earth could begin to capture the death-shriek of a vampire. Even so, the sound that assaulted him from the TV’s small speakers was enough to make his ears bleed.

  He watched, transfixed, as layer after layer of Maureen appeared on camera, only to progressively flake away like crumbs of burned pastry. First her plump white skin shimmered into view; then the thick layer of yellowish fat beneath; then a highway map of veins and arteries and organs; and then her bones. Jules tried to look away from the TV screen. But he couldn’t. Finally, the camera’s cold eye showed just a crumpled red dress and a sagging, empty pair of stockings, held partially erect by yards of drooping duct tape. On the chair’s cushion and on the floor were mounds of sugary white dust.

  Malice X returned to the center of the picture. “Now, wasn’t thatfun, kiddies? Special visual effects courtesy of Industrial Light and Tragic Magic. And dig that Dolby Surround Sound! Feel free to rewind the tape and watch that part over again. I’ll wait.” The suit stood unmoving.

  Jules felt numb inside. He could name a list of emotions long as his arm he should be feeling right now. Horror. Grief. Anger. Hate. He pictured himself shoving his fist through Malice X’s waiting image. Rending what remained of the set into tiny particles of plastic and metal. But he didn’t do it. He couldn’t move. He asked himself,Didn’t TVs used to have vacuum tubes inside? That’s what was inside him. A big vacuum tube, empty even of air.

  Finally the suit on-screen began moving and talking again. “Okay. Now you’ve had enough time to take that bathroom break and get yo’self another beer. Back to business. Way I see things, you don’t have too many friends left to lose, Jules. Who’s left? Lessee… there’s that cabdriver buddy of yours, right? And then there’s that old-timey jazz musician. But I’m not totally unreasonable. Tell you what. I won’t off your two buddies if you agree to do one little thing for me. Meet me in personal combat. One-on-one. Mano a mano. I’ll even be a sport about it. You get to name your spot. Just call the toll-free number at the end of this tape to let me know your preferred place and time. Phone’s in the kitchen, in case you don’t remember. I’ll expect to hear from you no later than midnight, Friday. Otherwise, this town’s gonna be short one cabby and one horn-playin‘ geezer. Remember, that call’s toll-free. So don’t delay! Call now!”

  Midnight, Friday.Tonight was Thursday. The screen turned blue, and a local telephone number strobed against the bright background. The large white numerals flashed across the screen like the tag end of a late-night infomercial. Jules didn’t move to write the phone number down. He watched it dance across the glass tube until it was burned into his brain. Then the tape ended. The screen dissolved into static.

  A strong breeze blew the coating of dust from the top of the television onto the floor. The sight of Maureen’s last remnants being scattered into the corners of her home, and perhaps lost forever, propelled Jules off the sofa. He focused his battered consciousness solely on the chore of collecting as much of the dust as he could. Like a sleepwalker, he stumbled into the kitchen to search for a whisk broom and dustpan. He found them in a slender broom closet by the refrigerator. He needed something to collect the dust. Something more substantial and respectful than a cardboard box or garbage bag. He spotted a large glass vase filled with silk flowers on the dining room table. Jules emptied the silk flowers into the kitchen sink.

  The chair that Maureen had been tape
d to was still in the center of the kitchen. The crumpled duct tape and empty dress and stockings offered mute testimony to Maureen’s final, agonized seconds. But Jules wouldn’t let himself think about that.

  Almost two hours later, he was nearly done. He had scoured the entrance foyer, the front parlor, the music room, the dining room, and the kitchen. He had moved sofas, tilted an upright piano, and whisked out the corners of long-disused closets. He had beaten the dust out of cushions and rugs, gently blown it from between the ruffled pages of beauty magazines, and even whisked it from the narrow grooves in the soles of his boots.

  The vase was filled nearly to its top. He had probably mixed Maureen’s remains with a goodly proportion of ordinary household dust; it simply couldn’t be helped. Now the final part of his chore was before him. The most difficult part-the part that would force him to think about Maureen, the woman, instead of Maureen, the sugar trail. The last thing he had to do was to dislodge those particles of his lover that had remained stuck to the duct tape, and collect whatever dust was still hidden within the folds of Maureen’s undergarments.

  Brushing the tape with the whisk broom accomplished nothing. The bent straw only got stuck to the glue itself. Jules had better luck using one of Maureen’s nail files to scrape the dust off, but it was still hard going. Fitting, in a way. Maureen had always been a stubborn woman.

  He was almost afraid to touch her panties. Afraid her avenging spirit might incinerate the first male to touch her underwear-too many men; that’s what had led her to this. He lifted them gingerly, like he was handling the Shroud of Turin. A thimbleful of dust was cupped in the cotton panel in the crotch. Jules carefully raised the panties over the vase, then tipped the dust in. He felt self-conscious about what he did next, but he did it anyway. He held the red silk against his nostrils and breathed in deeply. Nothing. Even that was gone. Even her scent had crumpled into dust.

  Jules opened several of the drawers beneath her kitchen counter, looking for some aluminum foil to seal up the vase. A small pile of bills and letters was sitting on the countertop. The letter on top of the pile was addressed to him, care of Ms. Maureen Remoulade, cobeneficiary. The letter was from the Claims Department of the First Union Firemen’s Casualty and Insurance Company.

  Inside was a check for twenty-one thousand dollars.

  The phone rang. Jules yanked the receiver off the wall. “You fuckin‘ sonofabitch,” he said before the caller could utter a sound. “Got impatient, huh? Thought I wasn’t gonna call your fuckin’ chat line? Well, you jumped the gun, asshole-”

  “Hello? Jules, is thatyou?”

  The voice wasn’t the sneering, somewhat high-pitched voice Jules had been expecting to hear. “Uh… yeah, this is Jules,” he answered, a little embarrassed. “Who’s this?”

  “It’s Dr. Marvin Oday. You know, your old morgue buddy? Well, I’ve gotta hand it to you, Jules. You and Dr. Landrieu are quite the kidders. If nothing else, you livened up a slow night by giving me a good laugh.”

  Jules tried to decipher this comment, but drew a complete blank. “What are you talkin‘ about?” His mind felt like curdled pudding. “This about those pills I asked you to look at?”

  “Those little whiteA pills you gave me? Oh, I’ve looked at ‘em, all right. You really got my curiosity going with all that talk about secret, non-FDA-approved research. I thought maybe my analysis would take a couple of nights, at least. Only took me about ten minutes, though.”

  Events were shifting back and forth too fast for Jules to follow. He knew he should feel grateful, but he’d forgotten how. “You know what’s in them pills? That’s great, Marvin; that’s really, yeah, that’s really great. You’ve done me a big favor. So you’ll be able to make more of them for me?”

  “The first rule of comedy is never try to squeeze more humor out of a used-up joke. You want more pills? Cough up two bucks and get your butt over to a drugstore. ‘Til next time, Jules-”

  “Wait! Marvin, don’t hang up yet! You’ve gotta tell me what’s in those pills!”

  The receiver was silent for a couple of seconds. “Hold on-you mean Dr. Landrieu didn’t let you in on the joke?”

  “Whatjoke?” Jules cried, totally exasperated. “What the hell is in the damn pills?”

  “Aspirin, man. Ordinary, generic table aspirin.”

  Jules mumbled good-bye to his old coworker and hung up the phone. He went into the dining room and sat down, resting his elbows on the table and leaning his forehead against his hands.Aspirin. Ordinary table aspirin. That’s what had stripped the years off his weary, weight-burdened body?That’s what had canceled the shooting pains in his knees, restored wind to his lungs and strength to his biceps?

  It didn’t seem possible. Ordinary, common aspirin. But it had worked. It had worked just like Doc Landrieu had told him it would. Jules had no doubt about that. Maybe there was more to aspirin than just headache and hangover relief. Studies had recently shown it could prevent heart attack victims from suffering a second attack. Maybe his ex-boss had discovered more about aspirin than was commonly known?

  Another notion occurred to Jules. Maybe Doc Landrieu had discovered more aboutJules than Jules had known. Maybe the pills hadn’t done the work at all. Maybe what had really done the work had been his own trust, his ownbelief that the pills would help him.

  A placebo. Doc Landrieu had slipped him a placebo. That rotten bastard. Here Jules had trusted him, believed in him, and his old boss had abused that trust, twisted him around his pinkie finger just so he could get Jules to reconsider moving with him down to Argentina Jules barely had time to work a good mad up before the delayed-action epiphany kicked him in the head like the business end of a French Quarter mule:

  It wasn’t the pills at all. It wasme. It’salwaysbeen me.

  Everything Doodlebug had tried to convince him of was true. Jules had been transforming into a wolf with a barrel-belly because that was the only kind of wolf he’d believed he could become. He hadn’t flown in years because he’d lost faith in his ability to leave the ground. He’d suffered from aches and pains and shortness of breath for decades, all because an unending stream of newspaper articles and TV shows had told him a person of his sizehad to suffer these things.

  None of it had been necessary. Maybe it had been safe and comforting… he’d always had a ready excuse at hand whenever he screwed up. But those excuses were a part of his old, familiar self that should’ve burned up when his house did.

  His form and his fate were in his own hands.

  He was 450 pounds of Grade-A, USDA-choice vampire. It was time he started acting it.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the number from the tape. An unfamiliar voice answered.

  “Get me your boss,” Jules said. “Tell him it’s the fat man.”

  Two minutes later, Malice X came on the line. “I guess you figured out which end of the tape to stick in the machine, huh?“

  Jules briefly considered five or six snappy comebacks. But he was in no mood for banter, clever or otherwise. “You and me, Malice. Let’s do it. Let’s get this shit over with.”

  “Whoa-ho-ho!You soundserious, man. But I guess losin‘ a friend and a lover in one night can do that to a guy. Just name your time and place, Julio.“

  “Tomorrow night. Ten o’clock. Your place.”

  “You mean where I live?”

  “Whatever hole in the ground you crawl into at the end of the night.”

  Malice X laughed. “You hit closer to the truth than you know, man. How come my house? Not that I mind, but you’ve got me curious.“

  “I don’t want you worryin‘ about me settin’ an ambush for you. I want you to feel nice and comfortable.”

  The black vampire laughed again. “Why, that’s downrightballsy of you, Jules! Stupid, but ballsy. I like that. Fine. My boys’ll watch, but they won’t interfere; I promise. ‘No ambushes’…heh. Youkill me, man!”

  He gave Jules directions. The instructions were nothing Jules needed to write d
own. Malice X lived in the heart of the city, barely a mile from Maureen’s house. At the center of everything-but hidden, invisible-deep down. Jules was surprised when he learned the location of his enemy’s home, but after a few seconds of thought, it made perfect sense.

  So in nineteen hours and twenty-three minutes, Jules would battle his nemesis deep beneath Canal Street. That suited Jules just fine. It meant he’d have less distance to travel when he dragged Malice X down to hell.

  EIGHTEEN

  Jules stared at the insurance check in his hand. Twenty-one thousand dollars. More money than he’d ever held in his hands in his whole, long, often impoverished existence.

  A bus rumbled past, spewing a cloud of diesel smoke over the Hibernia Bank automated teller kiosk at the corner of Royal and Bienville Streets. Jules signed the back of the check, then sealed it in a deposit envelope. The envelope glue tasted like peppermint motor oil. He stuck his rarely used banking card into the machine’s slot, then realized with a sinking feeling that he couldn’t remember his numeric password. After a second of gastric upset, he smiled ruefully when he recalled that he hadn’t picked a numeric password at all. He punched inM-A-U-R-E-E-N. The machine flashed its electronic version of “A-OK.”

  Twenty-one thousand dollars. He could do a lot of good with that kind of money. Maybe he couldn’t make amends for all the rotten things he’d done over the past eighty years. But he could make life better for the few friends he had left.

  Half an hour after the Palm Court Jazz Cafй had closed, the stretch of Decatur Street in front of the club was deserted. Deserted except for a tired musician loading equipment into his creaky Coupe DeVille.

  “Hey, Chop. How’re they hangin‘?”

  The elderly bandleader finished placing his trumpet case in his trunk and turned around. “Jules? Seems like I’m seein‘ you all the time nowadays. How’s that new lady friend of yours? The big curvy blonde I seen you with?”