“Yeah, I thought so.” She spread the futon as I gathered the pillows, sheet and blanket. “What about AIDS? I mean, you don’t screen your victims. It might not affect you, or maybe it does. But how will it affect me?”
“That is a very good question.” We sat together on the newly made bed, Nicole leaning into my open arms, her hands running over my back. “When I first heard of the virus, I ran some experiments. I can assure you that neither of us has anything to worry about. Perhaps, if I were to bite someone with the virus, then shortly thereafter, bite someone else while the previous person’s blood still coated my fangs—that might be a problem. But the virus simply cannot live, let alone propagate, within my body. First, my body temperature is too cold. Second, whatever it is in my blood that makes me what I am, that is death to the AIDS virus.”
“Maybe they could use your blood as a cure for AIDS.”
“Then, there would be all these formally HIV positive people turning into vampires, but maybe someday one of us will figure how to isolate the vampiric part.”
“Someday, but not today.” Nicole wrapped her arms around the back of my neck and pulled me closer to her. Our lips met. Hers, moist, soft like rose petals, kissing me with passion and fervor, her tongue passing my lips, meeting my tongue, caressing my teeth, searching for the two very sharp, very pointy, very special ones.
Our mouths remained locked together, arms clamped around each other as we slowly peeled off each other’s garments, slowly, ever so slowly revealing each other’s secrets. Her hands unclasping each button, lingering upon the flesh underneath. Mine feeling the softness of her round breasts, the delicate lace of her brassiere lightly tickling my fingers.
Then, all secrets were stripped away, and we momentarily parted just to gain greater perspective in order to gaze upon the truth before us. And the truth was accepted, and it was beautiful, and we joined together again, hands again touching, kneading, probing, and soon lips and tongues did what hands had done.
“God, your skin is so cold.”
“Vampires do have a much lower body temperature.”
“Mmmmm. That’ll be nice when it gets really hot.”
Nicole moved between my legs, taking what had been my mortal manhood in her mouth. The pleasure of her tongue caressing what was still sensitive skin distracted me from something I should have told her. After a bit, she stopped and looked up at me.
“Al, is there something wrong?” She held the limp organ, her expression most mournful.
I sat up and tenderly caressed her hair. “Nothing is wrong, my dear. I am sorry, I should have told you. That is the one thing I cannot do.”
“You can’t get it up?” She let the organ drop through her fingers.
“A reproductive organ in a creature that does not reproduce through sexual intercourse is as useful as a mortal’s appendix. I hope you are not disappointed.”
She moved her body upward, resting her head against my beating heart. “No. It’s okay.” Nicole faced me, a sweet smile on her face. “That I can get from any Biff, Chip, Dick or Harry, but this should be something special, something unique. I just worry that it might not be as good for you.”
I laughed heartily at that. “Do not worry about that, my sweet. What I will experience far surpasses the vulgarity of a grunting, slavering male’s ejaculation.”
And then we resumed, our bodies merging as one through the touching of skin against skin, the exploration of fingers, lips and tongues, and when my fingers reached downward to her cleft of mystery, she was wet, her voice suddenly speaking like it was the wind urging me onward, telling me, “Yes, yes, yes.”
I moved between her legs, exploring this mysterious land with my tongue, reveling in her scent, her taste, which was clean and salty-sweet, so very, very sweet, like the sweet taste of the sweetest of sweet, sweet blood.
Then, the time had just about arrived, and I removed my mouth from where it was, leaving my fingers in its stead, urging her forward to the inevitable conclusion, my lips kissing her soft neck, tongue licking her flesh, mouth opening, fangs finding their spot, pressing against the skin, lovingly caressing the spot where we would join.
She gasped loudly, her body shuddered, then fangs pierced flesh. Hot blood shot into my mouth. The room disappeared into blackness. Whiteness pulsated in the distance, pulsated like a beating heart, growing, moving closer, more and more quickly.
Growing, growing. Moving closer.
Exploding.
A mammoth chrysanthemum exploded from bud to fully bloomed white blossom with plump petals, this flower obscuring all sight, all sense, all everything before wilting and fading, something distant pulling it away, then replacing it with another pulsating speck of white light. A speck, a dot, a sphere, again moving closer, growing. And exploding, another white chrysanthemum, with such plump, juicy petals.
Again and again, for an indeterminable period of time, until finally the flowers began to get smaller, their explosions blossoming with less fury until they would bloom no more.
“Flowers,” Nicole said, her breathy voice again like the wind.
“Yes, flowers.” I kissed her softly on the lips, enveloping her in my arms. We lay intertwined together for a long time, silent, with no words needed, for our bodies had spoken, as had our souls.
Finally, Nicole’s laughter broke the silence. “My boyfriend the vampire.” More laughter. “I like the sound of that.”
Chapter 14
The Vampire Cabbie Falls In Love
Nearly a month had passed, a month of sheer bliss as spring truly arrived, with love blossoming just as the parade of flowers had gone from mere buds to full bloom. Flowers! It was a marvel to witness those amazing creatures as they grew fleshy appendages, stretching, reaching for life-giving sun. And there could have been no better way to observe the spectacle than from the vantage point of a moving taxi, all those blossoms clearly visible to my eyes, even in the thickest darkness.
First, the magnolias, their fat white blossoms tinged with pink, looking like overgrown tulips, then the cherries and crabapples, building canopies of white, pink and deep, dark purple.
And when the peonies dotted the city, round and fat, white and magenta, I knew one can never be too old or too damaged to fall in love again. Everywhere I drove, the fragrance of those flowers washed over me, and no matter where I was, what I was doing, her scent was with me, sometimes because it still stuck to my skin, other times because it was imprinted within the very core of my being. Even while driving cab with maximum effort, it took little to bring her scent to the forefront.
Ah yes, you laugh, you scoff at these musings. Call them ridiculous? Retrospect might find your observation correct, but how dare you cast a pall over even a moment’s joy with your biased assumptions. I have unique needs, yes, but I still possess certain emotions which, like all these exploding blossoms, will whither and die when needs and wants remain unfulfilled.
“Simmons, party of one, at the Geisha House,” Dexter said, interrupting my musing, “comes up.”
I subdued my recollections of the previous night’s glorious lovemaking and acknowledged the call, shortly guiding the cab between the two twenty-foot steel posts that supported the sign that spelled “Geisha Bath House” in lurid, quasi-oriental letters. A fat, balding man in his mid-forties sat on the front steps. He looked up as the cab’s headlights struck him in the face and stared blankly into the twin beams before slowly rising and waddling to the cab.
Kern had explained that Madison had formally been known as the Athens of the Midwest, attracting businessmen not for the opportunity for education, but for the depravity. Decadence, Kern said, had taken a back seat to commerce, but apparently this fellow was from the old school, having sought the halcyon atmosphere of yesterday’s Madison . Surely, he had enjoyed a night at Vision’s, Madison’s lone remaining house of burlesque, reached a critical mass of excitement and walked across the street to the Geisha to relieve his tension. And on a Tuesday night!
Layered smells
emanated from the gentleman, washing into my nostrils, and he was not yet within the confines of my cab. Porcine perspiration. Cheap whisky. A potpourri of sex, cheap perfume and baby oil.
And blood.
Damn this pathetic mortal for obscuring Nicole’s sweet scent. He opened the front door and wiggled into the cab. I flared my nostrils, trying to recall the sweet scent of my love, only to have the man’s aroma wash over me, alcohol-tainted blood overwhelming all the other smells. The man’s heart thundered inside my skull, pumping blood through clogged arteries. He had a strong heart, but high blood pressure—a massive coronary awaited, but tonight the organ was working just fine.
“Where may I take you, sir?” I asked.
The man closed the door and paused a moment until his eyes focused. “Ish thish Madishun?” he asked.
My head cocked to one side. “Excuse me?”
“I said … Ish! Thish! Madishun!”
“Yessir, it is. This is the east side of Madison , but only a few miles from our beautiful downtown. Where may I take you?”
“Inn!”
“Which one? Madison ? University? Badger?”
“Thass the one.”
“Wh—” I stopped myself. “The Badger Inn?” The man shook his head. “The Madison Inn ?” He shook his head again. “The University Inn?”
“Yeah, i’s that one.”
“I will take you there.” As Dexter was so fond of saying, our drivers are totally fluent in drunk. Certainly, I had mastered that skill with relative quickness as exhibited by my handling of the four drunk Norwegians who I had been assigned to pick up at Vision’s one evening. I was told they were going from Madison ’s only strip club to the Concourse Hotel, but when they got into my cab, they seemed to have a different plan.
“Ya,” the man sitting in the front seat said. “Squveezers. You take us to Squveezers.”
Laughter came from the back seat. “Squveezers. Ya, we go to Squveezers.”
“Where?” I asked, knowing no such establishment existed, either called Squveezes or Squeezers. Though a mere rookie, I knew this with utmost certainty.
“Squveezers! Ya, You take us to Squveezers.”
I considered asking the dispatcher for help, but knew the response would more than likely be, “Count, are you not fluent in drunk?” I was determined, by Satan’s beard, I would solve this mystery on my own. I carefully turned around in the parking lot, stalling for time really and gave the matter consideration. Context, I thought. Context is everything. I picked them up at a strip club. Where would they want to go if they were not going back to their hotel?
“Massage parlor!” I blurted out. “You want to go to a massage parlor?”
“Ya! Squveezers! Squveezers! You take us to Squveezers!”
I sighed deeply and took them to the Rising Sun. I hoped Jasmine would be grateful.
Thus, I learned how to be fluent in drunk, and this is a skill that does come in handy. Hastily, I turned the cab around, eased out of the parking lot, activated the meter and carefully merged onto East Wash.
“Have you had yourself an enjoyable evening, sir?” I asked.
“Yeah, you betsha. Saw some bitches with great tits. Got laid. Besht goddamned night of my fucking life.”
My smile was perfunctory as my thoughts drifted back to Nicole. But it was no use; my body had already begun to tingle, that unmistakable feeling that every single nerve ending was being plucked all at once by invisible fingers, all with the aplomb of a world class harpist.
As the Americans say, especially those provincials who drive tractor-trailers, I put the hammer down, watching the Capitol dome grow closer and closer, nodding politely as the man babbled incoherently about rubbing “snatches” while shoving ten-dollar bills down g-strings.
At First Street , we topped a rise that afforded an unobstructed view of the Capitol. It was quite the quiet night; there was not a single car between First and the Square. Where were the drag-racing, hormone-addled adolescents? A quick check of the rear-view mirror showed that no cars approached from behind. When the light turned green, I feathered the accelerator.
“Like I wush saying,” the man continued, “there’s beaver, and there’s beaver, and there’s—”
“Sir!” Vulgar bastard! How could he reduce something so sublime to a mere, inanimate piece of meat?
“W’ya faggot or something?” He turned, his expression angry. Our eyes met, then his face went slack, eyes turned blood red, the echo of his beating heart growing louder and louder within my skull.
Ahead, behind, no other cars. As the cab sped forward, I grabbed the man by the back of the neck, pulled him to my chest and chomped down on his throat without even lifting my foot from the gas pedal. Yes, I had sworn not to take blood from passengers, but as the Americans say, there is a first time for everything.
He did suffer from hypertension. Hot blood, fouled only slightly by what the man had drunk, gushed down my throat. Fortunately, his taste was not as bad as his smell. After taking about a pint, I gently eased him to his side of the front compartment and enjoyed the peace and quiet.
The cab remained centered within the proper white lines. I licked the blood off my lips and wiped my mouth with a handkerchief, then dabbed the blood off my passenger’s neck.
The fellow’s loud snoring brought a smile to my face; he would not awaken until we reached his motel, allowing me to peacefully listen to the radio and hopefully get dispatched another call before arriving at the destination. Additionally, my musing could resume, my favorite smell could return to the forefront and my favorite image could dance before my mind’s eye.
Ah, Tuesday night, the one night where Nicole and I both worked, which meant we could go home together at shift’s end. I worked Tuesday through Friday, and she worked Sunday to Tuesday, allowing the rest of the week for school work. I had dropped Saturdays to allow more time together. As for the other nights, we could rendezvous if she managed to stay awake until my shift had concluded, or if she felt like seeing me at the conclusion of her shift.
“West near West Towne. Near the West Side Depot. Crystal Corner.”
I hit the bid button, lifted the microphone from its cradle, held a thumb poised over the talk button and patiently waited for Dexter to call my number.
“Eighty-four.” Pause. “Sixty-eight.” Pause. “Ninety-seven.” Pause. “Sixty-seven.” Pause. “Sixty-three.”
“Pinckney and Gorham to the University Inn,” I answered.
“Stand by sixty-three and ninety-seven. The call’s at the Wash Hot. You’re both dead even. I’ll get back to you both soon.”
I glanced at the passenger. Still asleep. He would wake up woozy, but then again, he was already woozy. I pressed the accelerator to the floor, crossed Wisconsin Avenue under a yellow light and sped toward State Street . Ahead, the green light grew quickly stale. A couple of drunken woman stumbled into the intersection, but saw my cab and scurried back to the corner.
“Where now, ninety-seven?” the dispatcher asked. Pause.
“Where now, sixty-three?”
The cab flew around the curve where Gorham becomes University, my passenger jostled, but still asleep. The light at Frances was green. I turned right onto Frances just as the light turned yellow, then keyed the mike and spoke.
“Frances and U to the University Inn. I am clear of the light.”
“Sixty-three, get the Wash Hot. One Lisa on U-Ride number fifteen. Goes to Frances Court .”
My acknowledgment was chipper, but I groaned inwardly. It would surely take far less time to actually drive the three blocks to the destination than load the passenger from the Hot Wash or Wash Hot—cab slang for the Washington Hotel, a large, once venerable hotel which housed a late-night restaurant, a rock ’n’ roll club, a bar known for fancy drinks, a gay discotheque and a gay bar frequented by men in black leather.
I smiled sardonically as the cab came to a stop in front of the motel. All calls are good calls, but apparently, some are better tha
n others. I reached over and gently roused the passenger.
“Where?” the man said.
“Your motel.”
The man looked up, looked outside toward the motel’s entrance and looked at me, his expression disoriented.
“That is ten fifty.”
The man fumbled through his pockets, front, back, hip, breast, chest until he found his wallet. He finally handed me a ten and a five. “Keef the change and gimme a receipt,” the businessman said. With surprising aplomb, he took the receipt, opened the door and climbed out of the cab.
He was about to close the door when he reached toward the wound on his throat, rubbing it with his fingers. “Jeshus Chrisht! Wha the hell!?”
I smiled sheepishly.
“Ya got some pretty big fuckin’ mosceetoes around here.”
“With all the rain we have been having,” I replied, “they have been growing to the size of small dogs. They have been known to fly off with young children.”
The man stared incredulously at me for a moment, then shut the door and stumbled off.
I tucked the bills into my shirt pocket, watched the man enter the building, then proceeded to my next call.
Apparently, all calls are good calls.
———
Nicole’s face fascinated me. She never seemed to mind my staring at her, though she would shake her head, this embarrassed expression on her face, but how could I not stare? Those dark, almond eyes. Those long, shiny, raven tresses. Those long, graceful jaw bones that came together at her chin to form her lovely angular face. All those womanly curves, unlike these other American women who looked as though they never ate. Looking at Nicole was almost like looking at a woman from the old country, and as good fortune had allowed, at shift’s end, Kern had vacated the seat directly across from where Nicole sat struggling with her paperwork. Apparently, she had too many charge slips for a spring night. Ah, but it was a Tuesday night, the one night we both worked. As soon as we both completed our paperwork, we could enjoy each other’s company for the few hours before sunrise.
“How was your night, Count?” Kern said, interrupting my meditation.
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