A Drop of Scarlet, page 13
part #4 of Voice of Blood Series
“You needed this,” I told him. And he agreed.
I’d needed this, too.
“So you’re a model,” he said during our first break from shagging. The sunrise had already come, and a painful glow assailed my eyes from underneath the hems of the velvet curtains at his windows. I resolved to put something in front of that leak as soon as I was able to tear myself away from him.
“I was a model,” I corrected him with a yawn. “I got scouted, hanging out in a nightclub with some girls who I’d just met. I think it was because I was about half a meter taller than all the other girls, and I was wearing this pink leather jacket I found in Amsterdam, so I was rather visible from across the room. And no, I don’t still have the jacket. Get over it.”
“I didn’t say anything,” he grinned, and squeezed my breast. “Why would you want to be a model, though?”
“I felt like making a little money. It’s actually quite a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. Mostly it’s holding very still, or walking ridiculously and holding the same dying fish expression on your face. In ridiculously high heels. I tried it as a joke. But I was good at it, and it was a fun physical challenge. I got asked back. I was even treated quite well for what I was. Money was good, but it wasn’t everything. When it stopped being fun, I took off.”
“So what’s this?” He glanced over the wrinkled, creased pamphlet that had signaled my presence to him over on the Spanish Steps. At last, I had found a justification for my sentimental attachment to the stupid flier; I looked laughably absurd, as did all the other girls, and the clothes were awful, but still, it was in print, a concrete proof that I existed.
“That was from last season. I paid the kid ten lire to drop it in your lap. I’ve probably done ten shows for that same design group since that one. I did three shows last week in Milan. Easy, small-stakes stuff, made in Milan for the consumption of the Milanese. But as soon as that one was finished, I left without even bothering with a good-bye. The great thing is, I’m probably already forgotten.” I smiled and touched his chest with my palm. “They won’t find out anything. Name, residence, country of origin—they think I’m a Kazakh named Anna. One of those tall skinny girls who ran away, who keeps her identity a secret because she’s on the run.”
“You were always a master of invention,” Orfeo said with a smile.
“It’s fun to pretend. They don’t need to know more than my measurements, my shoe size, and whether or not I’m psychotically evil. I took my payments in cash; it’s not that unusual.”
“You ought to be careful how much of yourself ends up in the magazines, my dear Georgie.”
“I am not particularly memorable,” I said. “There are so many thousands of faces in magazines, who could possibly remember them? Any particular woman’s appearance is a disposable commodity, and the world takes no notice of it if it’s not explicitly told to do so. It’s no longer anything to do with talent. I was curious about this process, and also just bored and susceptible to flattery.” He trailed his finger across my neck, stroking the short edges of my hair at the temples. “It was something to do, you know. Something I hadn’t done before. And you?”
“I am extremely dull—I only ever do the same things,” Orfeo said.
“There is no shame in consistency. You still paint? Write poems?” I asked him, and he nodded. “And I am doing the same thing, too. I do something different constantly. It’s how I get over being disappointed. I wouldn’t stop if I could. Oh, Orfeo, I’ve done so many things; I’ve seen so many things.”
“As have I,” he said, still smiling, “without making any particular effort.”
“Ah, but how much have you enjoyed what you’ve done and seen, in this life where you seek no variety?” I parried.
“And how much have you?”
At such an impasse I would kiss him into silence.
He would discover all in time, and the more I kissed him, the sooner he could know. Of course, this let him in to me, too. I tried to prepare myself for the opening of the floodgates of his memories, but I found that I was helpless against his pain, his rage, and his shame. At least one aspect of him had changed in the intervening years: his sense of personal terror and uncertainty had become so muted that I could barely perceive it, and it was no longer his own safety he feared. I had felt all of this in him, distant and vague inside me all this time, but I found it more convenient to classify it as a feature of my past, and try to ignore it and continue on with the specifics of daily life. But Orfeo was not in the past; he existed in the present, in my own world, a part of my body and soul, retaining his attachment through the physical distance of thousands of miles. I knew about his Berlin, I knew about his Hong Kong (and resolved to share some of my own stories of that place), I knew about his repeated attempts to return to the earth for a final sleep, all of which had been thwarted by the clumsy meddling of human hands. I knew that he had created offspring, one of whom had gotten himself killed, one of which was broken and mad.
What was strange to him was that I wouldn’t judge him for anything he had done. He had to relearn that. I had never judged him before—why would I begin now? He was my creation and I loved him unconditionally. As long as he forgave me for walking out on him—and I knew immediately that he had—there was nothing to be concerned about, and we could loll around in bed, working through all the ways that we could remember to make each other come.
Unfortunately, no lovers can stay in bed forever, else I am confident that Orfeo and I would still be there. Eventually hunger kicked us out of bed. We went through the same decision-making process as human newlyweds—just a quick bite on the corner, or a leisurely meal in a chic atmosphere?
Orfeo chose the latter, his desires continuing to run concurrently with mine. I chose some fresh clothing from my knapsack and pretended not to notice as he gazed longingly at me as I dressed. “What are you staring at?” I asked him.
“Oh—you,” he answered. “Your style. You do wear clothes very well.”
“Yes, and I only had to wait two hundred years to get a pair of trousers that fit.”
He was staring at me and thinking jealously of all the women I’d had in my lifetime. The number of women Orfeo Ricari had ever fucked could be counted on one hand, without bothering to involve the thumb. It was slightly stupid; he could have any woman he wanted, quite a few of them without having to resort to hypnotism, but his inner core of faith prevented him from following through on his carnal desires toward women, or even taking them particularly seriously. Of course, he had no such moral barrier separating him from his desire for men. Again, nothing that I could really comprehend, as I had no moral barrier between me and anything, or any one, that I wanted. I had always loved his contradictions.
We went together to a nightclub that neither of us had ever visited before, and to which we would never come again. We drifted gently through a crowd of limousines and half-dressed, eager people until we reached the front of the line.
“Does this place have a VIP area?” I asked the doorman in a gritty Detroit drawl, cocking my hip and doing my best to resemble the models who had so recently been my comrades. It wasn’t so much for the doorman’s benefit—he was trapped between my will and Orfeo’s, and he would do whatever we suggested to him—but for the benefit of those still standing in line waiting to get inside. I had long ago learned that if I wanted to steal something, it was best to look utterly confident and relaxed, as though what was happening was the most natural thing in the world.
The doorman nodded numbly, let us pass by, and tapped the shoulder of another hulking guard. “Show these good people to the back,” he said to the guard.
Once in back, Orfeo and I split up, made rapid acquaintances, and took our time satisfying ourselves with the blood of the Very Important People. It tasted exactly like the blood of the Less Important, just with different chemicals and a different flavor of stress byproducts.
Shortly, Orfeo and I found ourselves back together again, leaning against each other on a gray velvet sofa. “I wish I could enjoy this even more,” he sighed heavily. “I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“Yes,” I agreed reluctantly, “I can hear her, too. She’s feeling an increasing sense of panic—it’s as if she doesn’t care who hears her. Someone should probably assist her soon, or someone else, someone without any emotional investment whatsoever, is going to silence her.”
His shocked expression told me all I needed to know. “Silence her?”
“Orfeo, think of how grumpy you are when her unhappiness disturbs your sleep—and you love her. There are others, you know—so many others, ones we have never known. As it was, in those first few years after I left you, I met several, previously unknown to me, whom I had to persuade against tracking you down and chopping your head off, so they would be spared the perception of your grief.” I squeezed his hands to take away some of the sting of my words. “There are many. Some of them ancient and sensitive. Some of them botched and psychotic and unable to protect their own minds against those of others. As it is, you have left her in danger. You have no idea of the other vampires surrounding her, or of their levels of restraint.”
“But . . . but she’s formulating something to help the mad ones,” he said. “If it’s even possible, she’ll be the one to do it. Perhaps she can redeem herself.”
“Oh, her usefulness was never in question. Her discretion . . . her self-restraint, her maturity, another matter entirely. I’m just telling you that she is at risk. She wants your help.”
“I don’t want to go,” he murmured. “I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to see John.”
I grinned and stroked his hair back from his brow. “I didn’t want to see you, either,” I informed him. “I didn’t ever want to see you again. Not because of what you are, but because of what you symbolized. I can never see you without also seeing Maria, without grieving for Maria, without feeling betrayed by Maria. And yet I would not now trade the sight of you for—” I stopped short, unable to think of anything else that would compare.
“For a swift and easy death?” he suggested, smiling vaguely.
I averted my eyes. “I don’t long for death,” I said. “You and I are different in that way.”
“Haven’t you ever?”
“Oh, of course I have. But not to any practical extent. I realized that my wishes were childish, just a wish to get out of doing something that I didn’t want to do, something I didn’t want to acknowledge or take responsibility for.”
“I understand the true meaning of your words,” he said stiffly.
I had to laugh. “Oh, Feo, everything is about you, isn’t it?”
He gave me the kind of look that meant that he wished he had a drink to throw in my face. The only thing I could do was kiss him, because the expression was adorable and made my heart swell enormously with love. He squirmed away from the touch of my lips, his face burning hot scarlet like he had been slapped on both cheeks, in the same places where he blushed when he was a young human barely old enough to be called a man. I grabbed his wrists, held him still, and gave him another kiss. “Stop being such a girl,” I said.
“Someone has to be the girl,” he sniped, “and we all know it won’t be you, George.”
I moved one of his hands to my breast and the other to my crotch. “You’re mean,” I purred. “Nobody has to be the girl. We can both just be people. I am not condemning you, don’t you understand?”
He kissed me on his own then, his fingers gently clasping my erogenous zones. “Would you be willing to go?” he asked.
“Go? To Ariane?” I laughed. Now I wished I had a drink to throw into his face. “She doesn’t know me from Adam.”
“She knows you,” he insisted. “She has seen you in my mind. You are my maman, and her great-grandmaman.” I shrugged a little, not caring for the terminology, and he lightly brushed his lips against mine. “You are related, and she knows that you are beloved to me. Go to her. Comfort her. Let her know that my heart is with her—and find out for me what’s really going on there. You’ll be so much better at it than I. You are such a good detective.”
And, yes, I have been known to be susceptible to flattery.
The next night, we went to yet another new nightclub with a VIP section, this one in the penthouse of a high-rise hotel. The restricted section was crowded with French and Italian film stars, models, and third-tier idle rich. It amused me no end to spend time in places such as these, dressed as I was, with my unstyled haircut, my rubber-soled running shoes, no makeup, no jewelry, no mobile phone, and yet to be gazed at and envied specifically because I was so minimal, so original, so simply chic. It was a joke that I could continue to laugh at, at least for right now. I had been dressing almost exactly like this for the better part of a hundred years, but until recently I was considered a transvestite, and, with a baggy jacket to hide my modest but unmistakable breasts, usually passed as a man. Of course, I turned this misunderstanding to fuel for my adventures.
How strange that in this day and age, I was considered a beauty without having to alter my appearance at all!
As I was moving on to my fifth blood donor of the night, I felt a sweaty hand settle on my shoulder. Under different circumstances, the owner of the hand would not have survived his next breath, but I already knew before I turned around that I had simply been spotted by someone that I knew.
“Anna! Oh my God! How fabulous! How have you been?”
It was Lila Jacobs. I was shocked and dismayed to think that she remembered me; I had assumed that since her thoughts were mostly concerned with herself, she wouldn’t need any psychic promptings to put little old me out of her mind. I had underestimated my own charisma, apparently—I hadn’t seen Lila for almost a year, since fashion week last September. I saw her in the house when I walked for Prinzi, or she saw me on the runway, and she’d barged backstage to harass Giotto Prinzi, and we’d gotten to talking. Then, in one of the makeshift dressing rooms, she let me fingerfuck her, and I was so pleased to have the opportunity that I’d forgotten to take her blood. She was a terrible person, but she was also a luscious dark goddess, and it wasn’t as though I was interested in talking with her. We duplicated the experiment twice more that week and then she disappeared, to Tibet or Phuket or something like that; I finished my work and took my money and went to check out the ladies in Stockholm.
I could have just silenced Lila Jacobs, but too many people were paying attention to us right now, and I didn’t feel up to the effort of wiping the minds of thirty people.
“Good, good,” I said, slipping back into my Russian accent as if donning a dirty silk robe. “And where have you been?”
“Oh, darling, everywhere really. I’ve been in Paris for the last week. I was in L.A. before that.” She leaned in close to me. “Isn’t it terrible what happened to Rachell?”
It took me a moment to determine who she was talking about. Lila assumed that I knew every single person involved in the fashion industry on a first-name basis, just because she did. Still, if there was a single vague first name that I could twig, it was that of dainty drug diva Rachell Reed. “Oh, I have been in a sex cave for the last few weeks,” I said. “What happened?”
“Oh my God—oh my God, you don’t know? It was everywhere in the news. You really were in a cave. Or dead.” She actually looked slightly green. “I don’t know how you could have missed that. Ugh.”
I pushed the hangers-on away from us and led her over to the entrance to the service hallway. I felt Orfeo creeping up on us, listening hard with those big rabbit ears of his. Lila glanced around the room, her blue contact lenses clicking against her expansive false eyelashes. “It was horrible,” she whispered. “There was a bad batch of ching they got hold of. It wasn’t just her—it also killed August Beagle and Debbie Hayes and a couple of total strangers.”
“Killed?” I said. “That bad?”
Lila suddenly gave a gigantic sniff, as if being reminded of cocaine immediately made her want some. It was strange; it didn’t smell like she’d had any at all recently, unheard of for Lila. She had been doing plenty of chain-smoking, though. “There was something like . . . like Drain-X in it,” she said, still whispering. “Some kind of nasty industrial chemical. They were all dead within minutes. It’s crazy. I don’t know what was going on there. All of a sudden, a lot of kids I used to hang out with started OD’ing and turning up dead.”
This immediately piqued my interest. “Who else did you hang out with?”
For a moment, I saw the person, the apprehensive young woman, underneath Lila’s façade of bitchery and wealth and taste. “You might think this is crazy,” she said.
I grasped her shoulder and stared into the black circles in the center of the bright-blue plastic disks on her eyes. “You can trust me,” I said. “I won’t think it’s crazy.”
She swallowed, her eyelids fluttering as she tried to keep me out of her mind. There could only be one reason why she was able to keep me out of her head: something or someone had put up a barrier between a truth inside her and her ability to verbally express it.
“They’re vampires,” I said on her behalf.
Lila nodded.
“They drink your blood,” I said. “And it’s all right, isn’t it? It doesn’t hurt or anything, does it?”
With difficulty, her tongue curved and lifted. “They’re real,” she said.
“They didn’t get you,” I guessed, talking mostly to myself. “They got everybody else, but they missed you.”
Lila shook her head, breaking eye contact with me. I didn’t need it anymore; she wouldn’t keep anything from me. “Yeah,” she agreed, too shocked yet to be frightened. “I guess so. I just got lucky. I happened to not be there. And it’s enough to make me wonder about Young Lad. They say he died of a stroke, but that is odd. It’s too soon. They were really the only connection we all had.”
