Interview With a Jewish Vampire

I
nterview with a Jewish Vampire

A Novel

Erica Manfred

©Erica Manfred 2011

All rights reserved. Except by way of fair dealing for review purposes or study, no portion of this publication may be transmitted, entered or stored in a retrieval system, photocopied, or reproduced in any way or by any means whatsoever, without prior written permission of the copyright holder and publisher.

Published by

Fredonia Communications

19 Mosher Place

West Hurley, NY 12491

ISBN -
978-0-9710968-2-0

This is a work of fiction. All characters and incidents are imaginary, and any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

To my late mom, Freda, and the “goils.”

Acknowledgments

I am eternally grateful to my writers’ critique group: Rachel Pollack, Carla Reuben, Cynthia Sinharoy, Linda Gravenson Geuthe, Jillen Lowe, and Sharon Doane, without whose appreciation, laughter and incisive editorial suggestions this book would never have been conceived or written. I also want to acknowledge my editor, Chris Noel, who “got” what I was doing (despite being a goy) and helped me turn this book into a fully realized novel.

Preface

I’ve always been a vampire fan. I remember the delicious terror of watching Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee movies on late night TV in the 1950s, when I was babysitting—alone—curled up on a couch in the basement of a suburban ranch after putting the kids to bed. The movies were usually hosted by the wonderfully campy Vampira or Zacherly.

My favorite vampire novel was
Dracula
by Bram Stoker, because that’s the only vampire novel there was, until Anne Rice’s
Interview with a Vampire
came along. No one before or since has ever imagined such an intricate, brilliant vampire world or written such gorgeous gothic prose. Anne Rice’s fabulous undead creatures with their tortured souls and intense relationships mesmerized me. I fell for vampires and fell hard; a love affair that never ended.

Then vampires became a craze, and I became a fan of
Buffy
and
Twilight
. But as I got older I noticed that vampires kept getting younger. Most were in high school. Why would a vampire want to go to high school, I wondered? Most of us can’t wait until we get out of that hell. Rice’s vampires were adults, some of them even middle-aged when they were turned. I started wondering why vampires had to be young. I know teenagers are a lot prettier than geezers, and if you’re going to live forever you want to look good, but kids don’t fantasize about living forever. They think they’re going to live forever anyway. It’s us old folks who know we’re not immortal, and as death approaches maybe we’d like a second chance.

It occurred to my twisted brain that turning the genre on its head, with old vampires preying on the young, would be fun. The idea for
Interview with a Jewish Vampire
came from a fantasy of saving my mother from dying in her eighties, and still having her and her friends around to schmooze with. I wanted to pay homage to Anne Rice in a way that she might appreciate if she had a Jewish sense of humor (which, who knows, she might, even though she’s Catholic). I imagined what would happen if Anne Rice and Mel Brooks had gotten drunk one night at Grossingers and collaborated on a vampire novel.
Interview with a Jewish Vampire
is the result.

“
So nu?”
asked the vampire thoughtfully, as he sat down next to me at the Mitzvah bar on Orchard Street. “You must be Rhoda?” He’d picked me out of a line-up of twenty-somethings. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.

We had met through JDate. I was a Jewish divorcee of forty-one who claimed to be thirty-five and might be considered zaftig if you defined that liberally. He had been dead for a long time but I didn’t know that right away. I just thought he was pale. An undead double for Jeff Goldblum, he was tall, slender, with a mischievous smile, flashing green eyes and long black hair. His incisors were kind of pointy when he smiled and his skin was pasty white, but that didn’t put me off. Everyone looked pretty sallow in the dead of winter in New York City. I immediately wondered if I could drag him off to my lair later that night.

Despite the fact that I had a pretty face, I didn’t get a lot of action on JDate because I had checked “a few extra pounds” in the body-size box. “A few” was an understatement, which is why I always met dates at night in bars. I wore black and got there first so they would see me sitting down. My face was a lot slimmer than the rest of me. Jewish guys were the worst when it came to weight—and everything else. Only a Jewish supermodel who ran a law firm was good enough for the Jewish princes I met on JDate.

I was perched on a barstool too teeny to accommodate my rear end, which spilled over the edges. I peered at everyone else's barstools and felt worse seeing all those visible edges. I decided that from now on my goal in life would be to sit on a barstool and be able to see the edges. I tugged on my low-cut tunic top trying in vain to hide the bulges between chest and crotch which seemed to have a mind of their own, ballooning out despite my best efforts. At least I was showing some cleavage, my best physical attribute. He rescued me from what was rapidly becoming a severe fat attack.

“
So, you’re a journalist…” he said, putting his elbow on the bar and turning towards me. I had listed that profession on my profile. “Do you have a tape recorder with you?” he asked, not realizing I suppose that tape was so last century and reporters now carried digital recorders.

“
Why do you ask?” Men had asked me a lot of strange opening questions on first dates but whether I had a tape recorder was not one of them.

“
I would like to tell the story of my life.” He leaned forward and gave me such an intense look I had to turn away. “Would you be willing to interview me?”

No, I wasn’t interested in the story of his life. I was interested in getting to know him in a more biblical sense. I figured he was just another narcissistic celebrity wannabe. As a writer, I was constantly getting hit on--not by attractive men--but by people who thought their lives were so fascinating they would make surefire bestseller material. All they thought they needed was a writer to tell their story which, of course, I would be thrilled to do on spec because they didn’t have any money. None of them realized that writers are not charitable institutions.

“
You will want to write my story,” he said urgently, “You’ve never heard anything like it before. It will make you rich and famous.”

“
Sure, sure. So what’s so special about your story?” I asked wearily, disappointed that he was only interested in my writing skills, not my body.

“
I’m a vampire,” he said matter-of-factly.

“
Sure, and I’m the Queen of the Damned.”

“
What will convince you?” he asked.

“
Hmm. Hold on a minute,” I said, playing along. I dragged a cross out of my purse, which I happened to have because I’d visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral with my niece earlier that day and got one for free. I held it up in front of him.

“
I’m a Jewish vampire. Doesn’t do a thing for me.”

“
How about a Jewish star?”

“
Don’t be silly, only Christians are afraid of the devil.”

I dragged out a mirror and held it in front of his face. No reflection. He said ‘
Ah’
and the mirror didn’t fog up. When he opened his mouth, I saw that his long incisors were, in fact, fangs. I shrank back, not thrilled about the notion of becoming dinner. I looked more closely at him, noting that like Anne Rice’s Louis, he was utterly white and smooth, as if he were sculpted from bleached bone, with brilliant green eyes that looked like flames in a skull. Unlike Louis, however, he was not wearing a finely tailored black coat but an overly long shlumpy one that looked like it came from the nineteenth century without a stop at the cleaners along the way. His full black hair, with waves combed over the tips of the ears and curls that barely touched the edge of his white collar, made me long to touch it. He was one handsome dude although his wardrobe could use some help.

“
So,” he said, “ask me some questions.”

He certainly had piqued my curiosity, so I decided to go ahead and interview him. If he really was a vampire, I’d have the scoop of the century, if anyone believed me. If not, at least I’d have the opportunity to flirt with a good-looking guy. Maybe I should have been more frightened, but I’d interviewed many dangerous types, including serial killers, so I was pretty nonchalant about the risk involved. Plus my life had been seriously lacking in drama lately and here was an opportunity for a little excitement.

I pulled out my pen and started making notes.

“
Wait a minute,” he said, sounding upset. “I thought you were going to record this”

“
I am recording it. This pen is a digital recorder.” I showed him my latest reporter’s gadget. “As I write, it records, so I can play back any part I want.”

“
That would have come in handy in Hebrew class when I was a kid. I was always getting lost during the rabbi’s Talmud commentary. Too bad I had to use a quill pen.”

He wanted me to give him a pseudonym so I’m calling him “Sheldon” after my ex-husband, who was a bloodsucker if ever there was one.

“
I didn’t know there were any Jewish vampires.” Actually, I didn’t know there were any vampires at all, but I was suspending disbelief for the moment.

“
Vy not a vampire? Vy a duck? Just kidding. I miss Groucho. We used to hang out at Grossingers in the heyday of the Borscht Belt.”

I laughed. In addition to being a hottie, he was a regular vampire comedian. You never know what will turn up on JDate.

Then he reached out over the bar towards me. I automatically recoiled. He clamped an icy hand on my shoulder and said, “Believe me, I won’t hurt you.”

“
I’m not worried,” I said, wishing he did want to hurt me—just a little bit, not fatally of course. “I’ve interviewed worse than you. I once interviewed John Gotti. Now
he
was scary.”

“
I met Meyer Lansky once. He didn’t scare me a bit.”