Annie of the Undead (11 page)

The man catapulted down the stairs, leaving the
front door reeling behind him, and skidded lightly off of the front
bumper of the SLR into the center of the street where he launched
into a series of inebriated pirouettes. His head was covered by
curly black hair, as was much of the rest of his ample flesh, but
not enough to completely conceal his madly flapping penis, which
cavorted inharmoniously with his every move.

When Big Baryshnikov had finally twirled himself
out of his equilibrium and onto his rump on the pavement, he
reached his hands to the sky and screamed to the heavens.

“STELLA!!!”

A dog immediately started to bark somewhere down
the street.

“STELLA!!!”

On the second story balcony of another house, a
window opened and a woman in her nightshift poked her head out,
screaming obscenities at the marauding sasquatch.

“STELLA!!!”

The lady threw a pot, which crashed onto the
roof of a car parked directly beneath her, spilling earthenware
shards and Boston fern in all directions.

“STELLASTELLASTELLA!!!”

Three more lovelorn cries and lights were coming
on all up and down the street. Big Buck Baryshnikov proceeded as
though no one, especially not his enigmatic Stella, heard his
cries, even though the neighbors were all having conniptions and
every canine in Marigny was trying to revive the Baha Men’s one
rowdy hit.

Then, Miguel turned again to the Grove’s door,
just before it burst open.

Out from the brightly lit corridor shot a young
man, hard of body and fair of countenance. He made no notice of
Miguel and me as he barreled past us. Perhaps his name was
Stella.

The twentyish young man wore no clothing except
a brilliant floral man-skirt and a pair of yellow flip-flops –one
of which he promptly lost on the stair, to leave the other snapping
loudly with each rapid stride. A plastic barber’s frock hung from
his neck across his otherwise bare chest, and he wielded in his
hand, quite menacingly, a pair of steel barber’s sheers. In his
wake, the skirted man left a cloud of freshly clipped sandy-brown
hair and the unmistakable toxic cinnamon odor of Goldschlager.

Bounding Bigfoot must have been especially
attuned to the sound of a lone, angry flip-flop, for he turned with
a start and, upon seeing the approaching Demon Barber of Royal
Street, struggled to his feet and ran full tilt down the road,
manhood waving in the breeze.

People up and down the street started to cheer
and clap for the man who sent their histrionic antagonist
a-runnin’.

Two more men came to the doorway, a tall, heavy
brother in a blue bathrobe with a martini in his hand, and a more
slender, more dressed man a little taller than myself. Both had
neatly trimmed beards, the former with dark hair and the latter
with auburn.

The slender man called after the mad barber,
“Oh, honey, let him be! He’ll quit on his own!”

“He’s really serious this time,” commented the
larger man, whose soft, peaceable voice seemed an ill match for a
man of his girth.

“And with those scissors,” worried the other.
“I’d better go after him –or he’ll be sleeping behind bars
tonight.”

With that, the smaller man headed off down the
street on the trail of the madness.

“You’ll never catch Hector,” the big man called
behind him, leaning against one of the architectural pillars.

By now the pursuant pair was a block away and
still going. The woman on the balcony cheered skirt-man on, her
language still laced with colorful metaphors. Other people had
appeared from their various domiciles to concur.

“Hector’s a mad dog,” said the big man over his
shoulder to us as he nursed his martini. “We try to keep him on a
leash, but sometimes he just lets it all loose, and there’s nothing
we can do about it.”

“Him? What about Shouting Sasquatch?” I jabbed a
thumb

“Stanley?” asked the jovial man, looking at me
for the first time. “Oh, he used to be an actor. He swears Marlon
Brando stole a role from him that would have made him famous
instead of Brando. He’s even got an Oscar on his mantel. Nobody’s
really sure where he got it. But he’s harmless. He usually goes
back to bed eventually.”

From the reactions of practically everyone else
on the street, I gathered that “eventually” was usually quite a
long time.

There was a frantic shriek from one of the
anti-dynamic duo, who had been playing ring-around-the-lamppost at
the next street corner. Then, they headed down a side street, the
third man some ways behind.

Then the big man finally saw Miguel for the
first time.

“Hello, Desperado,” he said, looking up and down
approvingly. “Take what you want; the door’s open. I won’t try to
stop you.”

“We are hoping for a room,” Miguel said.

“Yours or mine?” he laughed and then added in
answer to whatever expression was on my face. “Just kidding. I
wouldn’t dream of stealing your man, honey,” he added with a wise
smirk. “But I might dream of him stealing me.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Miguel
answered.

“Ooh, and you’re a feisty one! Of course we’ve
got a room for
you
. That is, if you think you can stand the
occasional outburst from our resident thespian.”

“I do not wake easily,” Miguel answered.

“And I don’t sleep much,” I added, glaring at my
vampire.

“We will not be in much at night anyway.”

“All right, I got you,” the big gay Santa
answered with a wink. “We don’t trust anybody who doesn’t sleep
past noon around here. We figure they’re spies for the other
side.”

“I promise to sleep past noon every night that I
manage to return before dawn.”

Miguel matched Gay Santa’s wink.

“Then let those good times roll,” the other
replied, making an upwardly spiraling motion with his martini,
engaging the two olives within in a vortex, “My name’s
Jonathon.”

“Manuel Mendosa,” Miguel said, and the two
clasped hands. He opened his mouth to introduce me, but I preempted
him.

“Annie. Name’s Annie.”

I did not offer Jonathon my hand.

“Say, is that your ride out there?”

He gestured with his glass toward the
spaceship.

“It is,” Miguel answered.

“What a car! Hey, I wouldn’t park it there if I
were you. You got lucky tonight, but Stanley is likely to squash it
one of these nights if you leave it between his door and the
street. Oh, yeah, and I wouldn’t park it under Esmeralda’s balcony
either.”

He gestured to the house next to Stanley’s,
cattycorner to where we were standing. You saw what she does when
she gets her panties twisted. Sometimes she throws whole chairs
over the railing.”

“Where do you suggest I park it?”

“Park it in front of the Old Man’s house,” he
said, gesturing to the house next door where the scarecrow had been
sweeping. He was gone now. “We don’t know his name, but he’s really
quiet and keeps the sidewalk really clean. And there’s usually a
spot open there because he doesn’t own a car. Oh,” he added,
remembering he had not completed the introductions, “You saw my
housemates, Lucas and Hector. Hector’s the one on the rampage, and
Lucas’s the one trying to stop him,” he said brightly.

“I’m seeing them again,” said Miguel, looking
down the street –in the opposite direction from where the men had
run.

Jonathon leaned around the column, peering down
the street.

“Are they out there?”

Sure enough, a moment later, they appeared.
Lucas supporting Hector with an arm over the shoulder, consoling
him as though he was a disgruntled child, and Stanley following a
little behind, skipping and frolicking back to his house and
singing something blissfully to himself. Skipping does interesting
things to unfettered blubber.

Lucas was holding the scissors in his free
hand.

“You must have run all the way around the
block!” Jonathon called.

“All the way,” Lucas gasped as they approached
the stairs, “There was a patrol car over on Chartres, and I told
our boy that he’d better cool it if he didn’t want to take a ride,
and he came to his senses. The cop didn’t see Stanley, thank
God.”

“But he keeps yelling ‘Stella’,” Hector
complained drunkenly.

“And he can yell it as much as he wants,” Lucas
continued consolingly, rotating Hector’s windblown frock to face
front, “because we don’t want to end up in the big house because we
trimmed more than just hair with our scissors. I admit old Stanley
is crying out loud for a new do, but we’ll leave that case of
bushwhacking to a salon. We don’t want to have a run-in with the
mean men in uniform, do we?”

“Don’t want a run in…I’ll call the cops on him!”
Hector declared.

“No you won’t,” Jonathon chided. “Don’t you dare
get Stanley into trouble. He’s a good neighbor. He’s not hurting
anyone. They’d lock him up for sure. You know how hard the city’s
gotten on people like him.”

“And people like us,” Lucas added cheerlessly as
they reached the stairs.

“Screw the city,” grumbled Hector in a Texan
drawl. He went on, “I don’t even want to live here anymore. City’s
ruined. Neighbors are gone. We’re almost gone too. Goddamn Renewal
Union can kiss my ass. Goddamn shakedown…”

Hector suddenly stopped bitching mid-bitch, for
Miguel had knelt down beside him with vampire grace and gently
slipped the errant flip-flop onto Hector’s bare foot.

“Your slipper, my lady?” Miguel said
sweetly.

“Oh…gosh,” said Hector, Miguel’s presence
dawning on him for the first time with breathtaking effect. His
imperative frustration was immediately forgotten.

“You see, Hector? Now that’s manners!” said
Jonathon.

Lucas looked to Miguel appreciatively and patted
Hector on the back, “There you go, Cinderella. All better? Now you
see, everyone should be nice to each other.”

So Miguel’s foretold opportunity had presented
itself. He had won over the natives. I wanted to puke from all the
saccharin –but not before I beat some sense into my vampire.

“Lucas,” Jonathon said as though he was about to
give him a new car, “This is Manuel and Annie. They’re going to
stay with us. Isn’t it great? What rooms do we have open?”

Finally, down to the heart of the matter. If I
had to listen to this big gay porch party any longer I was going to
start screaming and running down the street with all kinds of
things flying in the breeze too. Man, I couldn’t wait to get whip
this soft body into shape. I could run outside down here and not
freeze parts off.

“Oh, we’ve got at least three open right now.
We’ve got the big one in front –that has access to the upper
balcony and an attached bathroom –and a king-sized bed,” Lucas told
us brightly, “and we’ve got the one at the top of the stairs; it’s
a bit bigger, but it’s bathroom is just a step across the hall.
This is a restored house with all the original rooms left intact,
so they’re kind of all over the place…”

“Do you have a room available across the
courtyard?” Miguel asked.

“We do, but they’re smaller than the rooms in
the main house. Those are the slave’s quarters,” Lucas said with a
thrill in his voice. “But they all have windows and queen-sized
beds. They’re connected to the main house by an outdoor staircase,
and there’s a hot tub in the courtyard you can use…”

“The slave’s quarters sound ideal,” Miguel
said.

“How could we stay in New Orleans and not stay
in the slave’s quarters?” I added, realizing the appeal that a
privately situated room opening directly to the courtyard must have
to a vampire.

“Well, come on then, kiddies,” Lucas said to
everyone, helping Hector up from the wicker chair in which he had
plunked down. “Don’t want to be loitering out here in the dark
where the werewolf can get us.”

“Werewolf?”

I looked at Miguel. He didn’t seem
interested.

“Oh, you haven’t heard? The state has its own
serial killer now, on top of everything else. He rips people’s
throats out. He’s killed at least eight people since the hurricane
–that we know about. They call him the Louisiana Werewolf…”

“Come on, Jonnie Boy,” sighed Lucas. “Are you
trying to scare away our new guests before they even get checked
in? Next you’ll be telling them we have the ghost of a confederate
soldier pacing the halls. Here,” he presented the larger man with
the scissors he had confiscated from Hector. “You can finish giving
our little brat prince here a haircut while I get our guests
checked in. Drinks anyone?”

Our hosts clearly would have loved to keep us up
until dawn, extolling the virtues of their beloved city, flirting
with Miguel, and getting me drunk. I did consent to drinking some
vodka-rich fruity concoction before bed, because the trio were
horrified that I had never been to the south or gotten drunk in it.
They assured me that I hadn’t lived, and I silently agreed with
them, though I seriously doubted they were up to the task of
rectifying that situation.

I noticed how Miguel politely accepted a drink
and then proceeded to look like he was drinking it without ever
making the level go down. Guess vampires don’t do the human stuff
at all.

After what seemed like days, decades, of gay New
Orleans gaiety, Lucas led us to the slave’s quarters and our
over-cordial hosts let the “lovebirds” be.

Our room was on the third floor above the
courtyard, the most remote and obscure room in what turned out to
be quite a sizeable complex, a main house and a rear house
connected by a roofed, outdoor staircase that overlooked a cozy,
dimly lit courtyard garden. Ours was the only serviceable room on
the third floor; the rest had not yet been renovated and at present
remained locked. No one ought to be on our floor except us.

The room was small and oddly shaped, but as
lavishly and traditionally furnished as the rest of the house, with
heavy, flowered draperies (good for blocking sunlight), a
fourteen-foot ceiling, a shiny, well-worn wood floor, and a
pleasant painting of what I would learn was a bayou in an ornate
frame above the headboard of the bed.