All American Boy (20 page)

“What kind of Christian are you?”

“What kind?”

“Yes. Are you Anglican? Catholic?”

“Lutheran.”

“Ah. The German Protestant.” Mr. Horowitz closes his eyes. “They hunted us down, but that was many years later. I was living with my sister and her husband then. I had never married, of course. Who would want me? I had been defiled. We had been driven from Russia by the Communists, but Germany wasn't far enough away to save me from a vampire. He still haunted my dreams. He could have found me, come to me, drank my blood again, if he had so chosen.”

“Mr. Horowitz …”

“So leave if you don't want to hear! Why do you stand there, if what I tell you so disturbs you?”

“I'm concerned that you may be upsetting yourself.”

“Upsetting myself!” The old man turns his head away from Regina. “I have felt this way for ninety years, as I hid not only from the Russians and the Germans but also from a creature of the night who was even more loathsome. I have feared death because of what it could mean to me. When the Germans forced us out, when in the black of night my brother-in-law huddled us under blankets and drove us to a waiting train so we could escape to America, I rejoiced. For so long I had wanted to come here, for only here, across the ocean, across the moving waters, would I be safe.” He pauses. “You see, a vampire cannot cross moving water.”

Regina has taken a seat beside the old man's bed. “Yet you are still afraid,” she says, caught now by his tale.

The old man closes his eyes. “Yes. There is no escape. He could not get to me here, but in my blood his taint remains. I can't go on living forever! It has been an act of sheer will to live this long. I have kept death at arm's length for nearly a century. I have refused to open the door when he came courting, and he has come many times, Miss Gunderson. But I grow tired. I cannot hold out much longer. And when I die …”

“Yes?” Regina can stand it no longer. “What will happen when you die?”

“On the night of the third day, I will arise, out of my grave, a vampire myself, returned to feast on the blood of the living.”

Regina Gunderson has placed her hands over her mouth. She cannot speak.

“Hey, stop that!”

Rocky is standing in front of the mirror again, wearing nothing but her black bra and red panties. Chase, her boyfriend, is on his hands and knees on the bed behind her. He's snapped the back of her bra strap so that it makes a sharp sound slapping against her flesh.

Regina pauses in the doorway. “Are you all right, Rocky?” she asks.

“I will be, if this lecherous monster leaves me alone.”

Chase growls, making bear claws with his hands.

Rocky giggles. Regina turns to walk away.

“Hey, Gina,” her sister calls after her. “Maybe you ought to go stay with Aunt Selma and Uncle Axel while we're away.”

Regina pauses. Perhaps. Perhaps that might be best.

Chase laughs. “Oh, don't be ridiculous, Rocky. You act like Gina's the baby sister, instead of the other way around. She'll be fine. Won't ya now, Gina?”

Regina looks at him. A broad, dimpled grin stretches across Chase's face. All at once he pounces off the bed and lands in front of Regina. She makes a little yelp in surprise. Chase places his hands on her hips, drawing her in to give her a quick kiss on the nose.

Regina hates it when Chase does things like this. But she doesn't pull away from his grip. She just stands in front of him, not an inch separating their lips. She can smell his breath. Sweet, like candy.

“You just need to remember a few things,” Rocky is saying, pulling on her lacy white blouse and buttoning it down the front, her black bra showing through. “Dicky, the paper boy, needs to be paid on Thursday. I've left the money in an envelope. And Mr. Otfinowski, the milkman, gets paid on Friday morning. Make sure you leave his money in the crate on Thursday night, because otherwise he comes so early you'll never catch him. We'll be coming back Friday afternoon, but by the time we get a cab from the airport and get dinner, it'll be late, so don't wait up.”

“Okay,” Regina says softly, nose-to-nose with Chase.

“Gosh,” he says, studying her, “you've got pretty eyes.”

She yanks away all at once and hurries down the hall to her room. She can hear her sister shushing Chase, saying he shouldn't have said that, that he knows Gina is shy around men.

“But I never noticed how
blue
her eyes were before,” Chase is saying. That's when Regina turns on her radio very loud, singing along in her head to Pat Boone's “Ain't That a Shame.”

The Gunderson sisters live in a four-room flat in an old building on Pleasant Street, just off Main. It's one of the grand old buildings of Brown's Mill, with the elegant moldings and filigrees of the nineteenth century. From her window Regina can see the top of the next building, and just beyond that the steeple of St. John the Baptist. Up the hill toward the orchards, she can just make out the corner of the cemetery, where Mama and Mormor and Rocky's baby are buried.

She gets into bed but can't fall asleep. She tosses and turns, thinking about Mr. Horowitz's stories. She tries to think of something else, but she can't.

“Oh, Rocky, Rocky, Rocky …”

Chase's voice seeps through the darkness from the other room.

Regina doesn't want to hear it. Even thinking about vampires is preferable to listening to that.

“Oh,
yesss
.”

Now her sister's low, hushed voice comes through the wall.

Regina pulls her blankets up to her chin as she lies there in the dark.

I can still feel the warmth of his mouth and the coldness of his hands, here
.

Tomorrow her sister will be gone. Three days and even worse: three
nights
. And Chase with her.

“Oh,
God!
” Rocky's voice suddenly calls out, and Regina gasps.

“Yeah, that's it, baby,” Chase says, and Regina isn't sure if she really hears him or if his words are inside her head, a memory still burning from other times like this.

She flings back the covers and places her bare feet against the cold hardwood floor. The flat is dark as she stands and pulls on her robe. In the winter, with the windows closed, their building is utterly quiet. From two floors above, one might hear the soft chime of Mr. Goldstein's pendulum clock striking the hour. Or maybe the tinkling of Miss Wright's piano, or the radiators clattering with heat, or the buzz of electricity that one only notices when it's dark and still.

Regina scuffs her way down the hallway through the darkness. Flickering candlelight shines from the crack of her sister's door. It's enough to let Regina see the heaving of Chase's strong muscular back, Rocky's red-tipped hands laced around his neck. For several moments she watches soundlessly as Chase's back rises and falls, the bedsprings squeaking. Then she turns away.

In the dark bathroom, the tiles of the floor are even colder than the wood. Regina's feet react, wanting to run. But she stands beside the toilet, effortlessly finding the handle in the dark. She flushes.

The sound of the water rushing through the pipes in the great old building echoes among the rooms, as surely as they must have in each of the flats in the building. Somewhere above them perhaps Mr. Goldstein sits up in his bed and wonders who is awake at this hour. Below them maybe old Miss Wright opens her eyes and shakes her head in dismay.

When Regina leaves the bathroom, she knows the sliver of light from her sister's room will be gone, and the sounds will have stopped.

But still she cannot fall asleep.

Mr. Horowitz dies the morning Rocky and Chase get on their airplane and fly to St. Croix.

“Oh, no,” Regina says, arriving at the Hebrew Home.

Mrs. Newberg nods. “Poor old warhorse. He didn't want to go. He fought like a tiger right to the end. It was before the sun was up. That was why he was fighting so, trying to hold back.”

“I don't understand.”

“He said he wanted to see the sun, one last time,” Mrs. Newberg tells her.

“Oh.”

“Very sad, really. But he'd lived a long time. A very long time. You were close to him, weren't you, Regina?”

But Regina isn't listening. Somewhere overhead, an airplane passes, and it seems as if the building shakes.

The movie is
Son of Dracula
, and it is paired with
Son of Frankenstein
. Regina stares at the poster beneath the Palace marquee: a top-hatted vampire raising his cape and baring his fangs. As a child, Regina had loved coming to the Palace to see the latest Deanna Durbin picture, or Andy Hardy, or anything with Alice Faye. She and Rocky would walk to the theater together, two little blond girls with bright blue eyes, skipping and holding hands. Sometimes they'd stay at the theater all day, through newsreels, cartoons, trailers, and double features, waiting until they were sure Papa had passed out on the couch.

“Do you like vampire movies?”

Regina is startled by the voice. She looks up from the poster and sees a man standing next to her, an older, distinguished man with gray hair and mustache.

“Oh, I was simply—”

She feels her voice catch in her throat. The sun is setting. Rocky should have arrived in St. Croix by now.

“It's quite good,” the man is saying. “But of course, no one can top Lugosi in the original. Have you seen that version?”

He has a slight British accent, or at least Regina thinks he does. “No,” she says. “Well, I don't remember. It's possible.”

“And here I thought you were a vampire fan.”

“Oh, no,” she says. “I'm not.”

“The matinee is starting in a few minutes. Would you care to join me?”

“No,” she says. “I'm going—going for lunch. I only have an hour.”

“Well, as it happens, I'm quite hungry, too. May I walk you to Henry's Diner?”

Regina thinks it odd that the man would know Henry's was her destination. But, after all, how many other lunch places are there on Main Street? She says nothing, just falls into step beside him as they make their way down the block.

“Of course, there is the German version.
Nosferatu
. A silent picture. Have you seen that one, Miss—Miss—?”

“Gunderson. Regina Gunderson.”

He opens the door to Henry's Diner. “After you, Miss Gunderson.”

They sit at the counter. Regina prefers it to a booth. A booth would imply they're eating lunch together, when they're not. This man is a stranger to her.

“I'm Stanley Kowalski,” he says, leaning in, then grinning. “No, not
that
Stanley Kowalski.”

Regina keeps her eyes cast down as she gives Lois the waitress her order for a grilled cheese and cup of tea.

“You seem nervous,” Mr. Kowalski offers.

“No, no, it's just that—” She pauses. “A man I knew just passed away. I'm a bit out of sorts.”

“I'm so sorry. Was he a close friend?”

She looks over at him. She can't help herself. It just spills out. The whole story of Mr. Samuel Horowitz and the Russian vampire count. Stanley Kowalski listens with rapt interest, nodding his head, lifting his eyebrows. When she's finished, he takes a long sip of his coffee, considering everything she's said. “No,” he announces. “It's not possible.”

“Of course it's not,” Regina agrees.

“I'll tell you why it's not possible,” Mr. Kowalski says, setting his coffee cup back in its saucer. “For a vampire to create another in his image, he must first
kill
his victim. If what Mr. Horowitz says is true, this Russian count forgot about him, as vampires must do the majority of their victims, otherwise we'd be overrun with the creatures. The vampiric taint wears off, I assume. Think of the Dracula story, my dear. Mina Harker was not going to turn into a vampire when she died. Poor Miss Lucy, on the other hand—she became a creature of the night because the count sucked her dry, so to speak, and killed her.”

Regina is shocked, and it shows on her face.

“I'm sorry,” Mr. Kowalski says at once. “Have I offended you?”

“I suppose I brought it on myself,” she says, taking a breath. “I brought the horrible subject up.” She slides off her stool. “I've got to get back to work anyway.”

“Let me pay for your lunch,” Stanley Kowalski offers.

“No, no, absolutely not.” She hands two dollar bills across the counter to Lois. “Keep the change,” she says, anxious to be out of there. Lois waves without turning around from the cash register.

“Think no more about it, my dear,” the man assures her. “I'm sure Mr. Horowitz is sleeping peacefully in his cold grave.”

Regina rushes out the door.

She had considered sitting
shivah
for Mr. Horowitz at the Hebrew Home, but something didn't seem right about it. Not because she was a Christian, but because, deep down, she knew
Mr. Horowitz wasn't really dead
. The corpse they had placed into the mausoleum was just waiting, waiting to live again. Three nights from now, it would claw its way through the satin lining of the coffin and break free of its prison.

“Stop this nonsense,” Regina tells herself, and she places both her hands on the Formica top of the kitchen table and closes her eyes tightly. “Stop this nonsense right now, Regina Christina Gunderson.”

When she opens them, she suddenly hears music: strange tinny music, as if from an old phonograph, somewhere in the building. It disturbs her, but she isn't sure why. She's just on edge because Rocky isn't here.

Poor Miss Lucy
—
she became a creature of the night because the count sucked her dry
.

The tinny music seems to be growing louder. Who could be playing it? It seems old, very old, as if it came from a Victrola—

Her mind flashes on an image: Mr. Horowitz as a young boy in Russia, with the great noble Count Alexei Petrovich Guchkov bent over, kissing his hand, a Victrola in the back, playing this very same music.