Fire Nectar (13 page)

2012

Dani sat at her computer editing the photo of Josie and
Robert in Photoshop.
 
If Photoshop
could be applied to life, it would have started with her.
 
All of her nails were chipped.
 
Her hair was unwashed and tangled.
 
She wore sweats and a baggy shirt and
fuzzy socks that did not match.
 
Her
dinner sat half drunk beside her on the desk, dark spots of dried blood where
she’d spilled two days ago. It had been a week since she’d abandoned Adrian,
naked, in the bar.

Obsessively she worked on the image, removing fine lines,
enhancing the green of the gown, then reducing, then enhancing, and then once
more. She reduced the color of their skin, making them even paler. That seemed
to satisfy her.
 
She changed the
female’s hair to brown and stared at it.
 

A tone chimed in unnoticed and Angelica’s name popped
onto her cell phone with a text preview that read: Dani, can we talk?
 
Haven’t heard back from you.
 

It joined the long list of ignored messages.
  
Texts from Terri, Steph and Bruce,
a text, missed call and voicemail from Stewart plus two calls and four texts
from Ang.

A knock on her door broke focus. She looked toward it,
confused. “Hey Dani, it’s me,” Julian called through it. She hit “control Z”
which undid the action, returning Josie’s hair once more to strawberry blond.
She picked up the wine glass, yelled,
 
“Just a minute,” and drank it down.
 

 
“No rush,” he
called back.
 
She shot to the
kitchen and saw in the sink a stack of dirty wineglasses. “Shit,” she said
under her breath.
 
With her
preternatural speed she cleaned them, leaving each to dry slowly on a dishcloth
before she flashed to the door.

He betrayed no judgment of how she looked as she widened
the door for him to enter. He simply smiled in his casual way and walked in,
which she was thankful for.
 
It was
good to see him, she realized. She silently dead-bolted the door behind him and
walked to the desk. Following her, he surveyed the room.
 
It was tidy, unlike her. He looked at
the glasses on the counter, noticed the water dripping down their freshly clean
sides and looked back to her. At the computer, she hit “save” and closed the
image.
 
She was about to drag it to
the external hard drive icon when the Wacom Tablet’s pen, which she used
instead of a mouse, flew out of her grasp and across the room in her haste.
“Shit!”
 

 
“I’ve got it,
Dani. It’s my job.” He smiled reassuringly at her and guided her away from the
desk. She relaxed and accepted his help gladly.
 
She felt exhausted, her mind ravaged.

 
“I’m
sorry.
 
I’m a little on edge. Of
course it is. That’s why I have you, isn’t it? So I don’t have to deal with the
things that frustrate me,” she forced a smile and sat on the couch.

He nodded and kept to himself that he’d never before seen
her frustrated. He smoothly recovered the “pen” and went to the computer,
expertly using it to drag the folder to the hard drive’s icon and drop it in.
He hesitated, “What happened here?” he said, eyeing the dried blood spots.

She looked over, eyebrows raised in question. “What
happened where?”

 
“This looks
like blood,” he touched it as she watched him.
 

 
“It is.
 
I cut myself.” She saw him look at her
hands and added, “A few days ago.
 
It’s healed now.
 
Aloe Vera.”
She cocked her head in an attempt to look human and nonchalant.

He nodded and looked back to the blood.
 
Changing the subject seemed wise. “What
do you want to name the layout?”

 
“It’s not
really a layout since it’s just one image,” she corrected, flatly.

 
“Right, but
they’ll probably put it as a two page spread since the image is horizontal.”

 
“No, tell
them I want it as a foldout – no damn staples or glue down the middle. I
want the whole image displayed when people look at it.”

 
“Okay,
that’ll be different. I think they’ll love it. What do you want to call it?” he
asked, clicking eject on the hard drive.

 
“Forbidden
Love,” she said and looked directly at him. He met her gaze frankly, holding
it. She looked away, saying, “I thought that’s what it looked like. Maybe she’s
an heiress and he’s an actor in a play she saw. I don’t know.” She stared out
the window at the clear night sky.

“That’s fantastic,” he said, disconnecting the USB cable
and putting the hard drive in his pocket.

 
“You think
so?” He thought she looked oddly vulnerable as she stared out the window.

 
“I do.”

 
“Why?” she
asked.
 

He ran his hand through his hair. “Umm…well, he is naked,
open, unashamed, offering himself to her and the world, but she is clothed, perfection,
almost hiding beneath the dress.” Dani listened to him so intently that it
empowered him to go on. “But she reaches for him; she tries and he doesn’t see
her. She wants him but she can’t have him. Even though she’s close,
so close
,
she can’t touch him. She may as well be miles away because something is
stopping
her.”He
smiled, and added, “I think the
magazine will love it.”

The word “magazine” sounded odd in his revelatory
description. “Oh. Right. The magazine. Yes. I’m sure they will. Well, let me
know when you’ve given it to them, and tell them no more retouching. I’ve
touched it up exactly how I want it.”

 
“You know
Doug will want to …”

“I know. Tell Doug if he sets his team on my photo and
deforms my models to look plastic like he did the last time, it will be my last
job for Elle. I’ll shoot for Vogue next time.
 
Or W.
 
W is doing a lot of really amazing work
lately. I should have gone to them first.” He laughed because it was true. She
smiled, staring at his pocket. “Look at my computer backed up onto a tiny box
they decided to call a ‘hard drive,’ so small that it fits inside your pocket.
It’s simply amazing how far technology has come,” she said, wistfully.

 
“It really
is.” He went to leave. She rose to walk him out, grateful for his comfortable
ease.

She reached up and surprised him by touching his shoulder
to stop him. She rarely touched him, but as they stood there, she put her hand
on his chest and rested it there as she spoke in a quiet and intimate voice.
“Thank you, Julian.
 
Thanks for not
saying anything about how I look.
 
And thank you for understanding my work. I appreciate your perspective.
I don’t really analyze things, you know. I just-”

 
“I know.
You’re instinctive. You go from your gut.
 
I wish I could do that,” he said.

 
“You can.
Just work from your heart.
 
From your gut.
It always knows the way. The problem is not that we don’t have the key; it’s
that we have it, but we don’t use it. You’re very talented, Julian. Don’t
worry. You’ll be leaving me to go on your own… soon.”

 
“Never gonna
happen.”

 
“It will,”
she said, sadly. “Goodnight.” She shut the door behind him.

He stayed in the hallway for a moment, staring at the
closed door, feeling very much that he was on the wrong side of it.

      
____________________

Outside Nectar, two guys and a girl handed over IDs to
the doorman, one shaking his hand in a familiar way, with a laugh. An unseen
figure crouched above them at the top of the building opposite, watching,
spying. If they had looked up they would have seen her, but people never look
up. Centuries of preying on the evil had taught her that.
 

A crow landed to her right and opened its beak to let out
an alarming squawk.
Elizabeth Jendring
hissed at it. It froze, beak
open, and stared at her before it flew away. She’d long ago lost the gowns and
dresses of times past, wearing now black Harley Davidson combat boots, black
jeans, a leather belt and a tank top with a cropped dark green leather jacket
zipped halfway. Her blond hair, no longer in ringlets, hung straight in a low,
no-nonsense ponytail. Around her neck hung the only evidence of centuries past
in the form of a locket, the same locket Dani had admired the night Elizabeth
turned her.

Her senses saw, smelled, and heard - everything.
The girl’s sweet vanilla perfume.
Her dangling earrings as
they tinkled. The way her eyes shifted from one guy to the other as she decided
which one she wanted.
The cold flick of plastic as the card
changed hands.
Eyelashes blinking. The bigger guy clocking the doorman
as his friend nervously shook imperceptibly. One of them was underage, she
knew.
 
They were fearful of being
caught and of public humiliation. A vibration from the doorman’s pocket
signaled an incoming email from a porn site, an educated guess and a good
assumption. Underneath it all, a hum of talking, music, laughter, dancing, from
within. She drowned out passing cars. And then there were the heartbeats
– forever beating, always ignored… unless she needed to listen.
 

Huddled low, she watched the threesome vanish into the bar,
the fake ID undetected. She heard the doorman pull out the packet of cigarettes
from his pocket.
The sliding of wrapper against jeans, the
shuffling for and discovery of the lighter.
The smell of vanilla
lingered.
Because she wanted it to.

A man in black pants and a black shirt, shoulder length
dark hair and a confidently sexual swagger, walked out with an unlit cigarette
lodged between his soft lips. He motioned wordlessly for a lighter from the
doorman.

 
“Hey,
Adrian!” called a guy amongst a crowd of five who walked up.

She tensed immediately. So this was Adrian, she thought.
She zeroed in on him. His eyes showed heightened intelligence. He greeted the
customers with what appeared to be friendly familiarity, but she could see was,
in fact, cleverly disguised disdain. She didn’t like his false smile and he
rocked a bit when he talked, laughed from an untrue place.
 
Was he comforting himself, or nervous,
anxious in his own skin? Yes. She could smell alcohol in his skin but she
didn’t give it a second thought due to his job title.

One by one the people showed their IDs and went in. When
they were gone, Adrian shared a telling look with his buddy, the doorman.
 
Both weren’t impressed
by those they had to serve
. She saw the paper of his cigarette turn to
ash, heard his breath intake the smoke.
 
Heard his heartbeat.

Then to her surprise, he looked up.
 

She ducked with vampyric speed and agility, away from
sight.
 
Had she not been paying
close attention, she was surprised to admit, he would have discovered her. She
lay back on the roof, hidden from view, and looked at the moon above, running
her hands through her ponytail, spreading it out against the tiles in
contemplation. What was it about this human that had so severely arrested
Daniella’s attentions? He looked normal to her, maybe a bit more masculine than
some, but she could see beneath his swagger an insecurity that even he didn’t
recognize. She chalked up the connection she had observed between them, to
chemistry which was ever
the
 
unpredictable
enigma. As she
mused about his looking up when she least expected it, the crow returned to
taunt her. It looked at her with a challenging eye and let out a loud caw.

 
“Another
time,” she said to it, and flashed down the back of the building.

When Adrian parked in front of his apartment it was
almost 7am, and cars passed on their way to a corporate world. Relieved to be
home, he rested against the headrest and took in a couple of long relaxing
breaths, listening to Elliot Smith’s angelic voice until the song came to an
end.
 
He took out the key, got out
of the car and dropped it into his pocket.
 

As he turned the corner to his apartment, he
stopped.
 
A bottle of Jameson and a
note lie in wait for him.
 
He picked
up the note written in graceful calligraphy of another era, and read, “My
apologies – D.”
 
He smiled.

His smile faded as he realized that he had never brought
her to his home.
 
He’d never told
her where he lived.