Blood Lite II: Overbite

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “If only she’d stop reading all those idiot vampire romance novels and assuming I’m like that every time I go out, we’d get along fine.”

  “When’s the last time you brought her a present to show you cared?” asks Morton.

  “I took her to the dressing room after the hockey game last week and gave her first choice,” says Otis. “I got the leftovers. How’s that for a present?”

  “That’s nice,” says Morton in a voice that sounds less than sincere. “But when’s the last time you brought her flowers?”

  “She can’t eat flowers,” replies Otis.

  “Neither can the other fifty million women who get them from time to time,” says Morton.

  “Right, mate,” Harold chimes in. “She’s more than just an appetite, you know.”

  Otis looks thoughtful for a moment. “Okay,” he says at last. “I’ll give it a shot.” Then: “Live ones or dead ones?”

  Morton sighs. “Talk to some florists. They’ll figure it out.”

  Basil starts howling again. There’s no sense asking why, because the moon is full in the sky and his humanity is buried beneath a wolf’s exterior. I look out the shop window, and sure enough there is the incredibly shapely silhouette of Hepzibah McCoy closing her curtains. I find myself sympathizing with Basil; that is one hell of a view to be deprived of.

  Everyone but Goldberg is looking mournfully at Hepzibah McCoy’s darkened window. Goldberg is gazing intently at my bleach bottles. He senses my curiosity and glances up with a small smile.

  “Tried that,” he states simply.

  “Acid?”

  “It just cleanses my insides.”

  “Jump into any active volcanoes lately?” I ask wryly.

  He sighs deeply. “Not since Pompeii.”

  The subject seems hopeless, so I turn my attention back to Basil’s ears. Then I hear the most enticing voice I have ever heard, but it does not sound like it is in an enticing mood.

  “What does a girl have to do to get a good night’s sleep around here?”

  I turn to see the most luscious creature I have ever laid eyes on standing in my doorway. My heart starts pounding. My throat goes dry. My palms start sweating. She is to the average beautiful woman what Shaquille O’Neal is to the average midget. My first thought is that the Church should hire her, because once a man sees her there is no way he cannot believe in God.

  Basil starts panting and drooling at the sight of her, so I cuff him over the head. It is a reflex action, because I am still unable to pull any coherent thoughts together.

  Morton hops out of his chair with an enthusiasm I’ve never seen in him before, and instantly offers it to her. This makes me realize that she might actually be a patron, and that in turn brings me back to the here and now.

  “Hello,” I hear myself say in a shaky voice. “Welcome to The Close Shave.”

  She doesn’t immediately respond, but instead runs her hands sensuously along the arm of my leather chair before turning back to me, all business. “How hard can it be for you to find a muzzle for your mutt?” she asks, glaring briefly at Basil before turning her hypnotic gaze my way again. “Every time I go near the window he howls . . . and my bed is beside the window.” She pouts, and I feel my heart beating in triple time. “It’s late,” she continues, “and I need my beauty sleep.” She puts her hands on her hips to emphasize her comment, but all it does is emphasize her small waist leading up and down to the generous curves that her flimsy dressing gown has slid open to reveal.

  “You don’t need any beauty sleep, Sheila,” states Harold suddenly, with a little too much warmth in his tone. “That I can guarantee.”

  She throws him a cold glance—at odds with the heat radiating out from her body—and states, “I’m known as Hepzibah, not Sheila.”

  “Don’t get your knickers in a knot, love,” says Harold. “Sheila is just an Aussie word for ‘girl.’”

  “You think this—” she opens up her robe—“is the body of a mere girl?”

  I’m frozen to the spot, staring. So is Morton, and Basil, and everyone else. Well, everyone except Harold’s snakes.

  “You’re all woman to me!” one yells.

  “Let me show you what a night of sleaze and slime can be like!” yells another, as they all squirm excitedly.

  Hepzibah smiles, and walks—well, undulates—over to Harold, all her parts moving in thrillingly perfect sync. She reaches out a hand to run her fingers through Harold’s hair, causing snake after snake to shudder delicately. “I like excitement,” she whispers to them, “and different experiences. Do you think you could . . . amuse me?”

  “Absolutely!” “You betcha” “In a heartbeat!” say three of them.

  “How pathetic,” says another.

  Hepzibah’s hand stills, and there is a dangerous glint in her beautiful eyes. “Who said that?” she asks softly, but with deadly intent.

  One defiant snake slithers out in front of the rest. “I did,” comes the reply in a distinctly feminine voice. “I’m sick of the vulgar display my brothers make of themselves whenever they see a cute bit of tail.” She pokes Hepzibah’s hand in disgust. “It’s degrading, and embarrassing—and it gives us a bad name.”

  “Like biting and killing people haven’t contributed to that bad reputation,” observes Basil wryly, the moon having slid behind an incoming storm cloud.

  “It’s you!” comes an awestruck voice and we all turn to see who belongs to it—and, believe me, turning away from Hepzibah even for a second takes a major effort of will. And it so happens that the voice belongs to Goldberg, who is staring wide-eyed at her. “After all these years, it’s Salome!”

  She gives him a good hard look. “I know you,” she says. “You’re that guy who hooted and hollered louder than anyone when I did my dance.”

  Goldberg nods his head. He tries to say something, but his voice starts to break.

  “Two thousand years and your throat is still hoarse from all that screaming?” she says with a smile. “I consider that a high compliment.”

  “You’re as beautiful as ever,” he manages to say.

  Which is an understatement, because she is even more beautiful now than when she entered the shop, but I decide not to contradict him, and besides my throat is so dry I probably can’t get the words out.

  Just then the Grim Reaper emerges from the back room.

  “Don’t be afraid,” said Goldberg. “I won’t let him touch you.”

  The Reaper takes one look at her, grabs his stomach, bellows “You’re here, too? I’m gonna be sick again!” and runs back to the bathroom.

  “‘Too?’” she repeats, looking at Goldberg with renewed interest. “You’re immortal?”

  He nods.

  “Well,” she says, “we have a lot to talk about.”

  “You’ll actually talk to me?” said Goldberg, barely able to contain his excitement.

  “Talking’s not my long and strong suit,” she replies in sultry tones. “But we can start by talking.”

  Basil has to repress another howl. Harold’s lady snake looks shocked. Morton tenses, which is harder than you think for a skeleton. Otis merely salivates.

  “So do I call you Hepzibah or Salome?” asks Goldberg.

  She shrugs, and Basil and Harold almost faint before the last of the shrug fades from view. “Or Eve, or Lilith, or Helen, or . . .”

  She goes on and on, and I begin to see that this is not only the most beautiful and exotic creature in the history of this and every other universe, but also a well-named one (or at least a multiple-named one). Not only that, but she’s got a real head on her shoulders or she couldn’t remember more than half those names.

  “It was Salome I fell in love with, so it is Salome I shall call you,” says Goldberg. He continues staring at her, his mouth open (which is not always a good idea in New York City, as you never know what might fly into it). “What are you doing here?”

  “Telling this wolf to shut up and let me sleep,” she an
swers.

  “I mean, in New York. I have been searching for you for two millennia, and this is the closest I’ve ever gotten.”

  “Really?” she says. “I’m flattered.” Which is wrong, because take my word for it, she isn’t anything with the word “flat” in it. “Who are you?” she continues.

  “I am a man who has been cursed with wanderlust,” answers Goldberg. “A man who has loved you for two thousand years and has forsaken all other women.”

  “All other women?” says Salome, clearly pleased.

  “Yes,” he says. “Just as I know you have kept yourself pure for me.”

  “Well, within reason,” she says with another shrug.

  “I am doomed to wander the world,” says Goldberg. “Please tell me I no longer have to do so alone.”

  “To tell the truth, I am getting tired of New York,” she says. “Sure, I’ll come away with you.”

  “I’ll wait here and count the minutes while you pack your clothes,” says Goldberg.

  “You’ve counted enough minutes,” says Salome. “Besides, who needs clothes?”

  Basil starts whining piteously.

  “Then shall we leave right now?” asks Goldberg.

  “Why not?” she says, linking her arm in his. “Where shall we go?”

  “The Riviera is beautiful this time of year,” says Goldberg.

  She shakes her head. “I was just there last summer. How about Tahiti?”

  “It’s not what it was back in Gauguin’s time,” he answers as they walk slowly toward the door. “How about a fling at the gaming tables in Monaco?”

  “Been there, done that,” she replies. “Perhaps dinner at Maxim’s after we tour the Louvre?”

  They are still trying to find a place they haven’t both been, or at least aren’t tired of, when they walk into the night and out of sight.

  “Are they gone?” rasps the Grim Reaper from the back room.

  “Yeah, you can come out now,” I say.

  He comes back into the shop and glares at me. “You got any more surprises for me, an honest hardworking guy who’s never done you any harm . . . yet,” he concludes meaningfully.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” I say. “You want a trim while you’re here?”

  He shakes his head and walks to the door. “This has been a very upsetting experience. I’ve got to go out and find some stale air to breathe.”

  As he leaves, Harvey the yeti, his shaggy fur dripping ice water, brushes by him on the way in. The Reaper mutters something, and Harvey yells after him, “Yeah? Well, I’m not half as abominable as a guy who takes our starting quarterback three weeks before the playoffs!”

  “Hi, Harvey,” I say as Basil gets up and the yeti takes his place. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve come for a blow-dry,” he says in his deep gravelly voice. “I’ve got a hot date with a fire nymph in a couple of hours.” He looks around the room. “I’ve never dated one before. Anyone got any tips?”

  A moment later Otis is telling him how to find a fire nymph’s jugular, Basil is explaining which cut of her goes best with mashed potatoes and glazed carrots, and Harold’s snakes want to know why a fire nymph would prefer a yeti to them.

  It’s just another night at The Close Shave.

  Shaggy Dog Story

  STEVE RASNIC TEM

  You probably remember that poem from one of those old Lon Chaney Jr. movie classics. The gypsy woman, her face looking like that road map your dad wadded up after one too many wrong turns and shoved into the rear of the glove compartment with last month’s missing Beer of the Month Club bill, fetchingly played by the great Maria Ouspenskaya, her eyes as luminous as two cheese crackers on a hot radiator, tells the somewhat put-out Chaney what he can expect every time the moon is full and the Wolfbane blooms.

  Not exactly what you want to hear after a homeless man wearing a floral patterned scarf on his head just took a bite out of you, but the threat of six rounds of rabies shots over a four-week period makes for exciting cinema.

  The poem invites numerous questions, such as what the hell is wolfbane and can I get some kind of spray for it? And what if the moon is only semibright? Hairy palms and a mullet?

  You should hear my Uncle Verge deliver those lines. Slow, sonorous, and full of angst—back in the sixties they got him laid. Now they get him an extra dose of meds at the nursing home.

  Uncle Verge’s shtick was always family history and legacy. He made that poem sound like some legendary summation of our particular family curse, instead of what the screenwriter threw together when he needed a poetic moment. Verge fed that line to hairless types in a cynical bid for some pity grooming. And he got it, until they got tired of flossing the hair out of their teeth.

  Yes, indeed, we’re a hairy bunch. The family orders its hair spray by the skid. Family reunions resemble a Civil War reenactment performed by beavers. My father’s father used to lose his house keys in his belly hair, along with the remains of three Jehovah’s Witnesses who’d knocked on his door before breakfast. And my Aunt Elona, that was one hairy woman. Even her unibrow had a unibrow.

  Uncle Verge wasn’t the first one in the clan to use the image of the tormented, misunderstood werewolf to his own advantage. You should have heard my mother when I told her I was dating a dog walker from Yonkers.

  See, that’s the way it’s always been in our family. We act like we’re above it all, like the normal rules don’t apply to us. Like it’s normal to offer a mail carrier as a door prize. But then we’re not above pulling that “poor wolfy” crap if we think it’s to our advantage, lie on our backs and beg to have our tummies rubbed (or as Uncle Verge used to call it, “stroking the pelt”).

  It’s embarrassing. It’s a wonder I’m as normal as I am. Just don’t say “fetch” in my presence if you don’t want to see me pee myself.

  And if a person doesn’t look like the rest of the family, if he’s not as hairy as a bar of soap in a bearded ladies’ spa, well, he’s just an embarrassment. He’s just the “hairless rat,” the “naked coconut,” the “depilitated Cossack.” My cousins called me all of those names, and in a confusing attempt to belittle me even further, the “Jersey urinal.”

  Yes, I was born without the family curse, or as my mother so delicately puts it, “an overly generous beard.”

  I tried to hide it. In grade school I’d shave the family cat, sprinkle the clippings all over myself and tell everybody I had allergies. By the time I was fifteen, when my peers were all jumping into kiddy pools full of mousse and styling gel, I was hanging around barbershops with a vacuum cleaner and a bucket full of contact cement. After a while I decided to go right to the source and became the family’s in-house hair stylist, creating the most elaborate pompadours this side of Paris. (Well, Paris, Texas, at least.) But my mother recognized that something was wrong. Not once had I borrowed her industrial Bic Lady Shaver without asking.

  “What will your father say?” That was all she was worried about.

  “He’ll say ‘pass me the remote, it’s time for Jeopardy!” I replied, whereupon she slapped me across the face with a carp.

  You might think my escape from the family malady would be a cause for celebration, relief that at least one of ours wouldn’t have to spend his twilight years lugging around five gallon jugs of pet wee cleaner, but not my family. You’d think I’d deliberately piddled in the gene pool.

  I tried to reason with them. I attempted to appeal to my father’s thrifty side by explaining just how much I’d be saving in hair accessories and chew toys alone. It was a waste of time. It’s like taking a busload of monkeys to a Mahler symphony—they might sit and listen, but they’d much rather be picking their noses.

  My father appeared to consider what I’d just said, then explained how they’d all been very proud of their hair, they had lots of it, thank you very much, and they had no intention of braiding it and trying to pass as a bunch of goddamned Rastafarians. I thanked him for his wisdom and shoved a rawhide chew
into his mouth.

  It’s important to understand that although I did not have the family curse per se, I’d been thoroughly indoctrinated in family traditions, interests, and attitudes. I enjoyed a nice plate of raw meat, for example, with Texas toast and a modest side salad. I liked chasing things: cars, people, big shiny balls. I liked crouching naked in the park and howling at the moon—you meet some of the most interesting people that way. I was thoroughly werewolf, sans hair, sans dates on Fridays or any other night. I wanted to fit in.

  So it is a fortunate thing that a clan as old as ours has developed rituals, procedures for handling just this sort of occurrence. Although in our family this hirsute transformation is hereditary, a perhaps more familiar situation involves some poor clueless innocent such as a computer programmer or a tax accountant bitten by a full-fledged member of the Order of the Tooth and Claw (a kind of werewolf version of the Kiwanis Club).

  An essential aspect of this, of course, is that the bite be survivable, which is far less likely if the werewolf hasn’t yet done his grocery shopping. Youthful passion can be a factor, which is why the mothers in local towns often tell their sons to avoid heavy petting if the girl has more chest hair than they do.

  So when a member of our family is born without the requisite fur suit in his or her repertoire he or she must endure a bite from a more mature member of the household. Adolescent members of the family have referred to this practice, quaintly, as “getting geezer gobbled.”

  The desired result is a lycanthrope, the wolf who walks on two legs, when affordable public transportation isn’t available. But that “ideal” result doesn’t always occur, which highlights a particular misapprehension about our condition which has always bugged me, and which I’m grateful now to have the opportunity to correct.

  A common misunderstanding is that we are wolves. We are not wolves. Have you ever seen a wolf with dentures (I mean their own)? We look like wolves. Sometimes we act like wolves. We are “as if” wolves. The ontological “as if,” as in “I may look as if I’m a wolf but I know I am not one. At least I’m pretty sure. What does ontological mean again?” “Wolf” is simply a metaphor, like “gainfully employed.”