At the Twilight's Last Gleaming

by David Bischoff

  Finally, the suspense started rising up again through simple curiosity. And with the suspense came the flashes of anticipation of that cloak descending over me, that handsome face near my neck. And the laughs we’d share after the show.

  I was certain I’d get the part after I auditioned for it. Now, though, after that interview, I wasn’t sure of anything.

  I had to know.

  Someone cried, “Hey -- here comes someone!”

  A smiling lady in a gray skirt, blue blouse and glasses with bead holders clicked out in her pumps, smiling at us and wiggling a sheet of paper with a list on it.

  “Yes, yes, I think this is what you’re waiting for! It’s going to be a good show.”

  She found two black thumb tacks and with far too much attention to the neatness of her work, affixed the paper to a blank part of the board, perfectly square and proportionate to the other notices there. She stood back a bit to examine her handiwork, nodded, and then let it be.

  “Congratulations!” she said, and clicked back into the office, her curly hairdo quivering a bit atop her head.

  The crowd surged in to look at the list.

  My trained 20--20 vision instantly spotted my name:

  LUCY -- Rebecca Williams

  “You got it, you got it!” said Harry.

  But then, my eyes traveled up the list.

  Yes, there was the name, his glorious name near the top.

  Peter Harrigan.

  But I caught my breath.

  It read like this:

  PROFESSOR VAN HELSING -- Peter Harrigan

  “Van Helsing!” I said. “But who...”

  And my eyes leapt down to name Dracula and the name after the dashes which followed.

  I gasped.

  “Oh. My. God.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE it. I just can’t believe it!”

  I was slumped on the couch in Harry’s basement rec room. I was morose. I shook my head mournfully.

  “I just can’t believe it!” I repeated for what seemed like the thousandth time. “I just can’t believe it!” Thousand and first.

  “Look,” said Harry. “I know you wanted to get close. I mean really close to him, as in physically. But really maybe this is better.”

  “Better? How can it possibly be better, Harold? We’re not going to get with yards of each other. That was the point! Don’t you see? He was going to get hooked on me! And if not... Well, at least I’d have like....well....whatever you want to call it? A dramatic fling?”

  Harry said, “You’re not thinking straight. You’re still going to be hanging around him. In rehearsals, in productions. Plenty of time to talk to him.”

  I rolled my eyes. I knew that Harry was right, and that was annoying. What vexed me, though, most was that I was so close, so very close. to quick and easy clinches on the guy. How much easier it would be for Peter, during the cast party in the dimness, to put his arm around me while we’re sitting on the couch and just kiss me. I mean, he’d already buried his mouth in my neck hundreds of times. I’m simply wasn’t the kind of person who found it easy to throw myself at a guy. Now, what with all the girls around him, how would he even notice me?

  So went my worst case thinking, anyway.

  I knew that Harry was right, that getting to be around Peter more was a victory. But it seemed only a Phyrric victory. It was frustrating.

  Worse, I’d gotten the role of Lucy and my neck was still going to be bitten, plenty.

  But by who?.

  Who had gotten the role of Dracula. Who was Igoing to work with? Whose hot breath would be caressing my long swanlike neck.

  That was the question that had zoomed around my head as I had searched for the truth, down that surprising list

  And oh Lord, what a shock.

  Now as though to underscore my thoughts and continuing shock a mournful blues line played on the rock song from the record player.

  Harold was a record fiend. His father was a jazz nut who collected records, so it was natural that he would encourage his son to get records himself, and supply money toward that end. So Harold had a good record collection of recent pop and rock and soul records well beyond the range of top forty radio. We’d listened to some Cream already and now Harold had the first Jimi Hendrix album on, Are You Experienced?

  Jimi Hendrix is still famous, of course, but back then he hadn’t quite reached the heights, despite his hit song “Purple Haze”. He was kind of like Prince before that other famous purple, Purple Rain.

  Now Hendrix’s psychedelic guitar work squealed around the room like an angry, frustrated hornet. But its blues-based feel was good for me. Harry’s basement had that upholstered, safe feel of comfortable, carpeted gloom that suburban basements get. A single lamp glowed at on the other side of a worn leather couch. Dusk was already lapping at the windows. There was a faint not unpleasant musky smell behind the smell of furniture wax and the scent of the popcorn. I munched a handful, and followed it up with iced RC cola. It made me feel a little bit better. Sometimes I felt as though I suffered Harry so I could hang out in this cool basement. Beside the stereo and radio, there was also a 21 inch Color RCA TV set with which Harry accosted me with Star Trek every Thursday night. There was a definite bunker feel to the place. We could pull in the door mats, batten down the hatches and “Make the world go away” as the Eddy Arnold song goes. I’d gotten to be such a fixture here, that I’d have meals with Harry and his parents sometimes, and I had a key to the house.

  Was I experienced? Jimi asked on the stereo.

  Not really, but I wanted to be, but only Peter Harrigan.

  What was in store for me with the guy who was Dracula in the school play, was certainly not what I was hoping for at all.

  I closed my eyes and the image swam through my memory. The image of the cast roster.

  DRACULA -- Emory Clarke

  “Emory Clarke!” I said, eyes popping open. “Emory Clarke! I didn’t even know he was an actor.”

  “Who’s an actor at high school?” said Harry. “It’s like a starting point. Looks like Emory just got the bug.”

  “But he wasn’t at the audition!”

  Harry munched on some popcorn, musing on that a bit. He washed the mouthful with his Coke. Ice clinked as he set the plastic tumbler back down on the wicker mat coaster on the coffee table.

  “You know what, Rebecca?”

  “What?”

  “Maybe what happened was this. Maybe Emory is in one of Mr. Crawley’s English classes. Mr. Crawley knows him. Mr. Crawley has heard him read. Mr. Crawley thinks, hmm. How about a Dracula with a southern accent?”

  “Well, he’s creepy enough, that’s for sure.”

  “I thought you liked creepy. He’s tall too. With the right posture and direction and a cape he’ll probably make a bang-up Dracula.”

  “Oh thanks, Harold. You’re not the one who has to get fanged.”

  “It’s all under that cape. Nobody but you and Emory see what happens. You can be as cold as ice. Not at all the way it was going to be with Peter. It’s going to be fine.”

  Harold had a good point. Harold was right, basically, but that irked me a bit. Because I could see suddenly see that Harold was happy that I wasn’t going to be getting that close to Peter. Harold still nursed his hopes of draping his own cape around me.

  I took a deep breath and controlled my ire. It was kind of a back-handed compliment, as usual. Like all of Harry’s attention. It was annoying, sure -- but it was also not only flattering, but it gave me an odd kind of self-confidence.

  In my heart of hearts, I didn’t think I was that attractive to guys. Not physically, anyway. I was kind of lumpy and my features weren’t all that symmetrical. I kind of liked my brown eyes, I guess, and the Air Force kept my te
eth in shape so I had a nice smile, when and if it ever happened. My hair was nice too, I guess. But ultimately, it all just didn’t fit together for me because I just felt awkward as hell. I wasn’t used to my newish breasts (another asymmetry). The whole woman business was just too messy at times. And my moods were hard to deal with even when I realized they were just moods and not the forces of the universe swirling within me, the Center of It All! In my heart of hearts, I had to asked myself -- why would an attractive nice guy want to be close to someone was gawky and clunky as me, beautiful neck or no?

  It really hadn’t mattered that much before. Not before I’d met Peter Harrigan, anyway.

  I remember when I first saw Peter. It must have been the second or third week of school and I was just starting to relax, unwinding from the unease of adjustment from being in England to being in Maryland. It was lunch period, and I remember I’d brought my lunch that day. Cheese and apples and bread -- my Ploughman’s Lunch, as we called it in England. Good cheddar cheese of course, not the Cheeze Whiz or Velveeta that seemed to be popular in the States now -- or the higher end “American Cheese”. Peter had set his lunch tray beside from me, along with some friends. Scarcely able to munch on my apple, I observed him.

  He was piercingly beautiful. His eyebrows were arched and just the right color of dark to accent those dreamy brown eyes of his. His nose was so delicately carved, his chin so cute-- his cheekbones perfectly refined, the result surely of some perfect artist rather than nature. He smelled delicious. And when he happened to smile at me, I felt absolutely liquid inside.

  When he left, I realized I hadn’t touched my cheese or bread -- but felt no hunger. I couldn’t eat dinner that evening. I sat listening to Chopin on my cheap stereo, trying to do my homework, his voice and what he said playing over and over again my head.

  I was dumbstruck. I’d never been affected this way before by a boy. All this physical attraction business seemed amusingly abstract, stuff that other had to suffer, but no....no....not me.

  I dreamed about him that night, and I woke up, sweating, thinking about the delicate way his hands had curled around his carton of milk, and the charming angle his neck had taken when he’d leaned back to laugh. Peter Harrigan seemed all sparkle and delight -- with some secret ingredient that made him irresistible to some previously unknown part of me. My catnip? Maybe. Whatever it was, it shook me to the bottom of my being -- or at least to the bottom of my body.

  My body.

  I took a deep breath now in Harry’s basement, listening to Jimi Hendrix play Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.” It was a body thing. When you were dealing with a body thing like physical attraction, it was like hunger. You needed something. Right here! Right now!

  But, with sometime to relax the body, get it out of the driver’s seat-- and let the mind take over -- well it was just the right thing to do.

  Harry was right.

  I nodded, as though to myself. “No cape. No cape. But I’ll be around him. Lots.”

  “And you’ll actually have dialogue with him,” said Harry, selling his point harder. “You could, like, even have a few problems with that dialogue. Yeah. And maybe go off to rehearse with him. Alone!”

  “Alone....together!” I hadn’t thought of that at all.

  “You’re right. You’re right! Oh, you’re the best, Harry! Just the best!”

  I got up and hugged him and kissed his forehead.

  He was so surprised, he didn’t move.

  I held him a bit tighter, and it felt nice. He smelled of popcorn and Old Spice and old records with a whiff of sneakers. It was like hugging my brother or father in some ways, but there was still a closeness, a trust.

  “Oh....uh...thanks.”

  I broke off the hug and planted myself back on the couch.

  “What a day!” I said.

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “What a day.”First rehearsal -- this Friday afternoon.”

  “Harry -- how do you know so much about the production?”

  He smiled.

  “I joined the drama club. Tech side. I’m going to help with staging. Lights mostly I think.”

  I smiled at him. “Oh Harry, that’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”

  I had to hug him again.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I WAS ALONE in the woods.

  There was a stillness in the trees, thick as the leaves. The scent of woodsmoke hung in the air, a charred, uneasy smell. Above, in a blue-black sky laced with rippled clouds, hung an intensely full moon, pregnant with light.

  I was walking. I was walking alone in the woods, and I knew that I wanted to get home. I wanted to get home and lock all the windows and bar all the doors. I had no idea what I was doing in the woods alone.

  My feet thumped along the path, and I could feel my own breath hot in my lungs. Something in the bushes stirred, and panic gripped me tight around my mid-section, an iron hand of paralysis. I stopped, took a deep breath of the night.

  And then I heard it.

  It started as almost a whisper, a soft something coming out of nowhere. And then it built, built up to a keening, and then a long, aching howl.

  I felt my heart racing. I began to perspire. I knew that sound. To my mind, it was mystery. But to something else, something deep and instinctual -- it was all too familiar --

  I ran...and ran...and...ran and.....

  Something gripped my shoulder.

  “Rebecca! Rebecca, sweetie. Wake up! You’re having a nightmare.”

  I opened my eyes.

  I was back in my room. My familiar room, not the woods at all.

  My father, looking tousled and garbed in pajamas and untied robe, was sitting beside me on my bed.

  “Sorry if you were having a good time,” he said. “I was on my way to the bathroom and I heard you gasping and crying, so I figured I’d better check on you.”

  I was too groggy and upset to have any pride. I just lifted myself up and hugged him.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “You okay?”

  My eyes were all gummed up. Things were faint and blurry. But I had my father’s arms around me, and suddenly I wasn’t frightened anymore. I felt safe.

  “I am now, I think.”

  He just held me quietly for a bit, stroking my back gently as he’d done since I was a very little girl. Dad was an affable Eisenhower Republican -- all tradition, fusty values, awkward manners and golf whenever possible. I’d gotten a bit irritated with him lately. Especially when he seemed to not think that the current popular music was particularly wonderful, the Summer of Love in San Francisco wasn’t the best thing to ever happen to this country, and that the war in Vietnam was not the absolute worst ever and should be protested. Otherwise, though, he was a pretty good Dad.

  A fervent advocacy of reading, he was the one who kept my brother and myself in paperback books. And although we didn’t much like the Ian Fleming and thriller books he enjoyed (“Fail Safe! Now that’s one hell of a book!”) he was known to read some of the books we read.

  “You sure you aren’t scaring yourself too much with those gothic romances, hon?” he said finally.

  “No.”

  “And this Dracula business?”

  “No.” I’d told them about getting the part of Lucy in the play the previous evening. They seemed mostly pleased that I’d be socializing more, although I suspect they would have preferred a nice Methodist church group.

  “Well, that’s good...”

  I was a little girl again. “I think I am a little upset about one thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I was.....” Should I? Why not, I thought.

  “You know the principal?”

  “Sure,” said Dad. “He’s been at the PTA events I’ve attended. Good guy.”

 
“He’s kind of strange.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, he had me come to his office and told me he didn’t like the clothes I wore.”

  “Hmmm. Nothing against the dress code, though is it? he asked. And modest?”

  “I guess,” I said.

  “Still, he’s a straight up guy. A disciplinarian, I suppose. Likes a strict chain of command. Nothing wrong with chain of command.”

  “He’s just kind of intimidating. He said I was of leader material, not follower or rebel material.”

  “Hmm.” Dad looked thoughtful. “I guess that was a compliment.”

  “I didn’t feel like it.”

  “Well, tell you what,” he said. “I’ll have a talk with him and see what’s what. I need to get a bit more in the loop of my children’s education anyway.” I could almost see him stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe he plays golf.”

  “I think he’s, like, more of a hunter, Dad.”

  “Yes, he does seem the hunter type, but golf’s a much better place to talk. Meanwhile, I appreciate your self-expression. But I happen to think you are a very pretty girl and you’d look good in a bit more color.”

  I was thinking about future rehearsals. So far all the black garb hadn’t gotten much attention from Peter. So why not add a bit of color, and a maidenly smile?

  “You know, maybe your right. But Dad...”

  “Yes?”

  “Maybe sometime you can talk to him. You know, man to man...”

  Dad had big sloping shoulders and a broad face centered with a big nose. But the biggest thing about him, after his heart, was his mouth. It almost seemed to stretch from ear to ear when he smiled. “I don’t know what good that would do, pumpkin.”

  “He might lay off me a little, see me less as one of the masses, you know. He wouldn’t think, there’s that rebel woman, he’d think there’s Col. Williams little girl. And maybe he’d be nicer then.”

  “Hmm. That’s a possibility, Rebecca. Very well then, yes. That’s just what I’ll do. And I do think there’s a PTA meeting coming up next week, and I’ll be in town then.”