Annie of the Undead (23 page)

When I reached the Banana Grove door, Jonathon
was standing in it. He greeted me with woozy glee.

“Ooh, invite him in!” said Jonathon, peering
past me, “Oh, wait, he’s gone. Who was that tall drink of
brandy?”

There was really only one honest answer.

“An asshole.”

Night fell, and Miguel did not come. I wondered
where he was. He was probably hunting. It was early in the evening,
or was it late in the day? I was tired, and I wasn’t sure what time
it was to me. Was I supposed to be collapsing into bed or just
getting going? I’d been awake all day and half the previous night.
The day before that I had slept until evening. I’d been going
nocturnal, and then backpedaled. What was going on with me?

I did five hundred crunches. I was a machine. I
surprised myself. I’d only been working out now…How long was it? It
felt like a lifetime.

When I finished, I didn’t know what else to do,
so I showered. I still didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to go
out, but I didn’t want to be in the room, so I wrapped a towel
around myself and went out and sat on the iron staircase that wound
its way up from the courtyard. A party ensued below. All the doors
to the courtyard were open, and people were milling about in the
moody light, chatting, laughing together, trying in vain to do the
pop-and-lock justice to the sounds of Outkast. Lucas was down
there, arm in arm with another man. They traded a tender, lingering
kiss, then laughed as Hector and a young woman, barely dressed in a
short green sundress that had found its way half off of her
breasts, careened into the courtyard and began whirling in circles
like two kindergartners. They lost their balance and fell down,
laughing hysterically. The old woman from Raleigh made the mistake
of getting too close, and Hector nearly dragged her down with them.
They all looked so happy.

I sighed and rubbed my shoulders. Was it cold?
Why was I shivering?

Then I felt a cold hand on my own.

Miguel sat down behind me, wrapping his arms
around me and inhaled my hair. I immediately knew it was him and
not Andy. I just knew.

He had not fed this evening. He had come
straight to me.

“Why don’t you go down to them?”

“I don’t play well with others.”

“Can you play with me?”

“Maybe, but I thought fighting with you would be
a lot more fun. Andy threatened me tonight.”

“He is that way.”

“I don’t see how you ever had it for him.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Yeah, over two centuries. Just how old are you,
Miguel?”
His cold breath brushed my cheek.

“I knew the tsarina before the tsar knew
her.”

“The who and the what?”

“I knew the Medicis before they were known.”

“I’m not real up on the history of dairy
products.”

He ran his cold hands down and up my arms.

“I knew Ishmael Valdez before the Church knew
what he had done.”

“Okay, now I have just no idea who that is.”

He moved his hands up my neck to the back of my
head.

“I knew Vlad Dracula before the world knew
him.”

“Wait, you knew who-oooooh…”

His perfect nails were massaging my scalp, and
if you’ve ever had braids you know that when he started doing that
nothing else in the world mattered. The Banana Boys and their
guests were living it up below, and there was a war going on in
Iraq, and global warming was killing the polar bears, and I was
mostly naked with a really old dead guy, and none of it mattered,
because he was scratching my head. Scratching…my…head.

“Why don’t we go up there,” he said, looking up
to the roof and directing my head to do the same, “and investigate
this matter more fully?”

“What? The roof…?”

He scratched.

“…The roof sounds fine.”

He stood up, lifted me in his arms, and I felt
the velocity that I had felt that night he’d carried me out of the
snow and into another life, only this time I wasn’t beat up and
frostbitten and miserable, and this time I trusted him.

We landed on the roof, and he set me on my feet,
but he held me. I teetered on the edge in my bare feet, looking
down on the revelers three stories below, seeing Hector and the
girl in the green dress with a squeal tumble into the outdoor hot
tub. Then Vampire Miguel pulled me a step toward him.

His lips lingered near mine. His hand slid
beneath the towel and around my waist.

“I thought vampires didn’t have sex.”

“We have other talents.”

His fingertips followed the curve of my
spine.

“And other interests.”

He breathed against my neck, “Yes.”

He had not yet fed tonight. He had come directly
to me.

“But…don’t you have,” he traced the edge of my
jaw with the edge of one nail, “…self-control issues? How do I know
you won’t suck me down to the shell like an oyster and throw me
away?”

“You have no conception of my self-control.”

“Andy become unlovable now that you have his
blood?”

He gripped me hard and kissed me on the
mouth.

It was the deepest, longest, hardest, and, I am
convinced, only real kiss I had up to that very moment ever
experienced, and he didn’t even cut me.

Then, he abruptly let me go –completely let me
go. I lost my balance and almost fell to my premature death, but at
the very last moment, he caught me by the hand. He let me teeter
there, cooling my heels in midair, with an evil grin on his toothy
face.

“This…” I gasped, “is where Roy…regrets keeping
a tiger for a pet. I’ve learned my lesson…I’ve learned my
lesson.”

He drew me back in.

Our eyes locked. There was only one cure for a
ruffian like this. With my free hand, I ripped off the towel and
let it drop over the edge. Then I dove into my tiger and spent the
next two hours not trying to tame him but show him that this
tigress had a few talents of her own.

He showed me a few of his too, and they were
magnificent.

Miguel took less of my blood than donation
people take, and it hurt even less. His teeth were like razors, and
the slit he made in my arm with one healed so well you can’t even
see the scar from it. He did not drink from my neck. I didn’t think
to ask why, but I later learned that going for the jugular is for
him the killing stroke, and that is one way he controls his
actions, through routine and long practice. If I’d known about the
jugular thing earlier, I would have been a little more
realistically edgy about all that hovering around my neck he’d been
doing.

The party was a huge success, as parties at the
Banana Grove always were. Lots of people got drunk, some went off
together and got laid, and those who weren’t safe to drive were
welcome to sleep anywhere they could find a nook and a pillow or a
bosom for a pillow. Lucas was one of the ones who got laid,
Jonathon was one of the ones who got s-faced, and Stanley did his
Marlon Brando routine in the street, and nobody noticed except
Esmeralda, because everyone else was at the party. Hector never
figured out who threw the towel on his head while he was in the
Jacuzzi with the woman, but he figured it was one of the guys
razzing him for batting for the other team that evening. The
raccoons that made so much noise on the roof that night didn’t come
back, so no one had to call the pest control people. Life was
good.

I slept like the dead from about midnight until
after noon the next day, and when I woke up, I didn’t feel a pint
low. I felt fabulous.

I came down to breakfast at one in the afternoon
in a bathrobe and sunglasses and came face to face with Lucas who
was wearing exactly the same thing.

He smiled at me knowingly and wandered out.

I stepped outside into the swelter and sat on a
porch chair to put on my running shoes. I was going to run an extra
mile. I could feel it. It was just that kind of day.

I heard the swish-swish sound of sweeping and
looked over to see Old Man, at it again and as usual, cradling his
urn and wearing out his broom, but this time he was using a brand
new, hand-bound, art-shop broom, and when a passing car kicked a
breeze my way, I could smell cinnamon in the air. He didn’t look up
at me, and he didn’t look happy, but it was something.

I spent the day pushing the envelope, seeing
just how far I could take it, just how many miles, how many
crunches, pushups, and pull-ups, how fast I could hit the
speedball. I didn’t fight anybody. I fought myself, which can be
the hardest workout of all.

I ended my run at the Spanish Plaza, that place
where Miguel had invited me into eternity, the place where we had
first really kissed. I did some stretches and plopped down on a
bench, enjoying the cooling spray from the fountain. I had thought
his trajectory that night had been unintentional, but now I began
to think otherwise. The colors in brick were not the red, white,
and blue of American patriotism, but the red, blue, and white of
Spain. On the benches all around the circle were coats of arms
rendered in tile, valiant figures, fierce animals errant. I read
the nearby plaque. It said that they were coats of arms of all the
Spanish provinces. Huelva, León, Asturias, Vizcaya, Las Palmas…. I
wondered if Miguel’s home, his first home, was represented here.
For the first time, I found myself really wondering, really caring,
where my vampire had come from, where he had been, and who he
was.

At the end of the day I was beat and starved. So
when Yoki called at five-thirty and asked if I wanted to hit a
party at her professor’s house, and when she said there would be
“gobs of free food,” I was too hungry to resist, and when she said
that her Beetle was still in the shop and would I mind giving her a
lift, I was too pooped to be pissed. I’ve got all kinds of excuses
where Yoki is concerned.

I rolled into the parking lot just after dark to
find Yoki and Jesus Christ waiting for me.

“Halloo, old girl! Made any new friends, done
any good deeds lately? No? Well, one can hope.”

“There’s gonna be food at this party, you
said.”

“Yes, yes. Don’t worry your self-seeking little
head about it. Dr. Rathstein has more food at his parties than
anyone else I know. I’m sure he’ll even have something that an
alien like you will eat. By the way, where’s your beau? I was so
hoping to meet him.”

“Only two seats. You’re not bringing that?” I
asked of the Christ child, who was grimacing at me as usual.

“Oh, Jesus won’t pee en route. He’s
spaceship-broken.”

Food, I thought. There’s food at this party.
Lots of food.

“Fine.”

“Oh, brilliant!” Yoki squeaked, climbing in.

“Is that a beer?” I asked of the beer in her
hand.

“Why yes. I thought I’d start the party a little
early,” she said, taking a swig.

“Yoki, the last thing I need is to get
arrested…”

“Oh, it’s perfectly legal. It’s all right to
drink here, as long as you’re not driving.”

“It’s legal to have an open alcohol container in
your car?”

“Indeed. In fact, I think it criminal to go
anywhere without a to-go cup. This is New Orleans, Annie.”

“Yeah, it sure is,” I said, shaking my head.

I shifted and started out of the parking
lot.

“Oh!” said Yoki, digging in her tiny backpack,
“I have the perfect accompaniment for cruising around in a
contraption like this.”

She plugged her MP3 player into the dock in the
dash that I had previously been unaware existed. Then she turned up
the volume on the sound system to an appropriate level if one’s
intention is to go rapidly and completely deaf.

The testosterone-laden opening beat of Monster
Magnet’s “Space lord” thundered out of the windows of the McLaren
as we drove down the crowded streets of New Orleans. People stopped
dead in their tracks to gape. Yoki seemed to enjoy every single
second of it. I tried to tell myself that this is what fun looks
like.

“Is that actually what you’re wearing?” asked
Yoki, as we emerged from the car into the glow of the street lamps
in an upscale neighborhood north of South Claiborne Ave. It looked
to me like it used to be more of a downscale neighborhood, but
progress had taken a bite out of the population of dilapidated
homes that still surrounded this new development but were separated
from it by hedges and a high iron fence. At the entrance was one of
those “Ingress Development” signs I had been seeing everywhere.

“Apparently,” I replied. “What’s wrong with me
now?”

“Nothing, if you don’t mind looking like last
week’s lettuces.”

“I don’t mind,” I monotoned.

She hopped from the car with a summary “tsk” as
though I was some urchin she had passed on the street with whom
absolutely nothing could be done.

“Hey,” I said. “I just gave you a ride in my
spaceship, and if you want a ride home, you’d better be nice, or I
might ditch you out the airlock somewhere so you can die of
explosive decompression.”

“Why, Annie –explosive decompression? I don’t
even know what that is, but did you just betray your ultra-secret
smartness?”

She gathered Jesus Christ into her arms,
complete with a blackwatch plaid harness that made him almost
resemble a Scotty –a terrible, mutant Scotty. He was particularly
feisty this evening, almost bursting out of his mistress’s arms
with every third breath of his tiny lungs.

At the edge of Professor Rathstein’s immaculate
lawn we were greeted by a “Good Mister Goodwin” sign, placed
strategically next to its ally, a matching sign for the party’s
presidential candidate. I regarded the promotional paraphernalia
with a wary eye, and gave it the cautious berth that one might give
a hated adversary.

Yoki tramped along, oblivious to the inherent
dangers of political advertisements.