Slices (4 page)

That
was when she’d reached inside her purse and pulled it out and
showed it to me, the cream-white, gilt-edged invitation, folded many
times and cherished and kept. Eva Radcliffe, it read — and
Guest.

Tonight
I was the guest, and she led me by the hand again, this time across
the crowded dance floor over to the stereo.

The
press of the crowd and the cry of our music was disorienting. I
lost track of where I was and almost who I was —

We
emerged on the far side of the crowd and there was no one there but
the small man, alone, sizing me up nervously, looking as if he was
trying to decide if he should run from me. He was shaky and twitchy
and looked as if he hadn’t eaten in days.

Flies,
was the first thought that came to mind. Shouldn’t he be eating
flies? Like Dracula’s Renfield?

Where
is he, I was about to ask, and then arms snaked around me from
behind, whip-thin and confident, a cigarette dangling from one hand
and a drink from the other. The smell of the cigarette hit me,
intoxicating, strange spices mixed in with the tobacco, and a warm
voice breathed past my ear: “Who’s your little friend,
Eva?” The arms drew me possessively close.

“Nikki
Velvet,” Eva said, looking past my shoulder into the eyes I’d
seen staring at me. “She’s the one I said I’d
introduce you to.”

“Really.”
He let go of me, held his cigarette out to the small man, who took
it. His hand freed, he placed it gently on my shoulder and turned me
around to face him. “The Nikki Velvet?”

It
was him. I almost wanted to look away. “That’s me,”
I said, making myself meet his eyes.

The
CD went on to the next track. I knew the song immediately,
Hand
Grenade Heart.
I’d done something to the guitar to make it scream.

“This
is you?” he said, pointing up, indicating the music. I only
managed to nod.

He
smiled, and it was like a brilliant full moon coming out from behind
the clouds. “How perfectly delightful.” He took my hand,
held it to his lips, and kissed it.

I
was already his.

He
led me away from the party. I don’t remember what he’d
said, what gesture he’d made, but he led me all the same.

I
hope I had the presence of mind to be polite enough to say good night
to Eva. I really can’t remember. But I hope I did. I never
saw her again.

He
took me down, buried and descending in the confining elevator, the
three of us pressed together. He took me down and out into the
afterlife of the brightly lit streets, a haze of rain around each
streetlight like a galaxy, the whole street a universe spread out
like a banquet.

A
long car, just modest enough not to be a limousine, waited for him,
valet driver surrendering the keys to his small companion. The little
man opened the doors for us and settled himself in the driver’s
seat. It was easy to imagine that he wasn’t even there, that
the car moved by magic, and that I was alone with my rescuer.

My
ghostwhite angel held me in his eyes again, sitting across from me as
the car pulled into the street.

“So.”
He said.

I
held my breath, waited, nothing but attention.

“Eva
tells me you wanted to meet a vampire.”

I
nodded.

“There
are only two reasons,” he said, his voice liquid, flooding the
space between us, “that I can imagine for wanting to meet a
vampire.

“The
first is that you want to die.”

I
didn’t answer, and my silence was my answer. He sat forward,
anticipating, listening to my silence, then settled back in his seat
and nodded.

“The
second reason,” he said, “is that you
don’t
want to die.”

“Not
ever,” I said, and my voice was harsh against the musical sound
of his voice. Yours was always the voice, Gabe; you were the one who
sang. I could never talk without a guitar. My words were two short
sharp scratches, scarring the air. Not ever.

“You
want to be a vampire. You want to live forever.”

I
let out the breath I’d been holding. I nodded again.

“Tell
me.”

“I
— yes.” I couldn’t look at him; I couldn’t
stand to look away. “Yes, I want to be a vampire.”

His
turn to nod. “I can arrange that.” He reached inside his
jacket — he was dressed just as he should be, just as I’d
pictured it, all black velvet and white silk — and pulled out a
small, elaborately engraved metal case. Too small for cigarettes.
Business cards?

He
opened it, held it out to me. A single razor blade immaculate on a
bed of rose petals.

“Bleed
for me,” he said softly.

I
took it, forcing my hands not to tremble. Just like stage fright,
just like making myself hold the guitar, I made myself take the blade
and hold it.

It
was the first time I’d held a razor blade in years, since
before I’d first met you. Since before I knew the world could
ever hold anything as dark and magical as you and I didn’t want
the world anymore. Back when a razor blade had been a constant
friend, my ticket out of here; nights spent opening my wrists, first
across the wrist and then, when I’d learned better after having
been rescued too many times, down the wrist, trying to open up a
whole vein instead of just slashing across it. I’d never
managed to bleed enough to die, not then. But the attempts had left
me with cruciform scars, a perfect cross on each forearm.

I
held the blade above one vivid white old scar and with one quick
motion made it into a wound again.

“Good.
That’s good. You didn’t hesitate.”

The
fresh wound stung and burned and his words were like a salve.

“I
imagine,” he said, “that you have many questions.
Questions about what it’s like. To be a vampire. About what’s
involved in becoming one.”

“Yes,”
I said, watching the first drop of blood hit the floor of the car.
The world was a blur outside the rainstreaked windows.

“Questions
I’m not going to answer.”

I
looked up at him. His hand reached out to catch the drops as they
fell.

“You
lived another life before this one,” he said. “Nine
months of warmth and comfort and security and silence and nothing
anyone said to you then, if you could even have understood the words,
could possibly have prepared you for this life. You wouldn’t
have known what it meant to go from floating to crawling and walking;
you wouldn’t have understood what it was to breathe. You have a
hundred questions, I know. But you were born once without any
knowledge at all of the world you were being thrust into. And you can
do it again. You’ll have to.”

“I
— I understand.”

He
smiled a crooked and cruel smile. “No. You don’t
understand. But that’s all right.” The blood was pooling
in his hand. “Now — knowing that you don’t know,
that you can’t know what’s ahead of you — do you
consent to it all the same? Do you still want this?”

“Yes.”

He
looked at me for a long moment, the light from passing neon signs
running hazy and soft over his perfect features. “Then it will
be done,” he told me.

And
those were the last words he spoke to me that evening. The car took
me home; he hadn’t asked where I lived, and I hadn’t told
him, but I was home just the same. His driver opened the door for me,
a look on his face like pity or sympathy or hunger, and I got out and
walked away without a look back. He’d find me. I knew he would.

And
without looking back, I could see in my mind as clearly as if I was
watching it myself, what I knew had to have happened next; his
blood-filled palm raising to those perfect lips, tasting me at last.
It had to have happened.

I
fell asleep that night with my window open, windswept rain falling
into the room like a blessing. Face down on my bed, still dressed, my
mouth pressed gently against my own wrist.

I
still had the razor blade, and the next day, I used it to slit open
the envelope.

It
had taken me a while to remember where I’d put it. I’d
given up on the idea, many months ago, and had hidden the envelope
away. I found it on a bookshelf, tucked behind a patchwork collection
of children’s books and Kathe Koja novels, sheltered and dark.

I
slid the razor under the flap of the huge, bulky envelope, opened it
like a vein, and spilled the contents onto the table. A half a dozen
smaller envelopes stared stillborn up at me, their pale faces bearing
addresses, but no return address. I never intended to get an answer
to these letters.

Understand
— I didn’t mean a word of these as I wrote them. Back
when I was still suicidal, I never cared enough to write a suicide
note. So when I wrote these, I knew I was lying with each word.

A
few whispered goodbyes in the right ears, I thought to myself,
feeling the paper crinkling under my fingers, and the world would let
me disappear.

I
wrote these just after you’d killed yourself. When the world
wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d just simply followed
you. When I didn’t want to die, not even then, but when I was
seriously considering letting everyone think I had.

I
left the envelopes sitting on my table, and went into the bathroom
with a huge pair of scissors and a bowl full of hair bleach. I hacked
off my long tangles and turned what was left a faded photograph
blonde.

One
last look around the old place, walking around and looking at ghosts
while the bleach ate away at the color of my hair. Still-frame images
in my mind, superimposed over the evening sunlit room. You standing
in my doorway, a hundred goodbyes after a hundred practices, leaving
when I wished right down to my bones that you’d stay. You in my
kitchen, trying to teach me how to cook, laughing as I burned the
last egg out of a dozen. You dancing around my apartment, arms and
legs flying in a free and furious tangle — we’d gone out
that night, bought fifty TVs and fifty DVD players all on credit, and
we’d return them the next day but that night, that night they
were all ours and the whole world was all ours and fifty horror films
lit up my walls, Winona Ryder licking the blood from Gary Oldman’s
chest and Catherine Deneuve taking off Susan Saradon’s shirt
and Anne Parrilaud breaking her handcuffs, and you were my friend,
just my friend, but you were mine, that night.

You
believed it all. All the lyrics we wrote, everything you sang. The
beauty of death and the tranquility of the graveyard and you believed
it and you left me, I came to your hotel room that night on tour,
banging on your door to tell you it was time to go, knowing, God help
me, knowing what was on the other side, what I’d find when I
had the manager let me in. You. Dead in the bathtub, razor cuts all
the way up your arms.

And
you know what? You know something, Gabe, you poor, sweet, stupid,
stupid son of a bitch? There wasn’t anything beautiful about it
at all.

I
rinsed the stinging bleach out of my hair, got dressed, grabbed the
envelopes, and shrugged into a huge coat. I took the envelopes out
into the cold, walked five blocks down to the nearest mailbox, down
to the river.

The
skyscrapers of the city had finished scraping all the sky away, and
the clouds overhead were exactly the color of concrete and I was safe
and cold in a canyon of glass and steel.

I
held the envelopes tight in my hand over the open door of the
mailbox, one last hesitation, then let go of my old life. I sat
down on a bench by the side of the river and watched the boats go by.
Watched everything go by. Then watched the clouds on the horizon
bleed red, watched the sun gather up the last of its light and leave
quietly, without even saying goodbye.

It
had only been dark for a little while — and cold, although I
hadn’t noticed the cold until he spoke — that I heard
the now familiar voice behind me.

“One
last sunset?”

The
voice surrounded me, cold and liquid, and I closed my eyes and
imagined that his voice was the river and I’d thrown myself in.

“One
last sunset,” I agreed.

“Are
you ready to come with me?”

“Yes,”
I told him, but he’d already known the answer.

His
name was Sylvan. At least, that was the name emblazoned in black
wrought iron on his front gate as we were driven up to his house. My
lips formed the word silently, Sylvan, as the car floated up the long
driveway.

The
house was what I’d imagined it would be. Just short of a
castle, overlooking the city below us. He led me through it, and I
followed him, lost in a dreamlike haze. I felt like I’d been
awake for days, I felt like I’d been drinking nonstop; I had no
body, just my eyes drifting along above the ground.

And
somewhere ahead of us, his manservant, lighting candles to light our
way.

The
bedroom. What should have been the bedroom. The far wall was just
glass, all windows, the almost empty room staring blindly out into
the city.

In
the room, no bed, no furnishings; just my picture, old publicity
photo, poster sized, in a huge gilt frame — your picture was
missing, I could just see your arm in the shot, where your half of
the picture had been cut away.

There
were flowers everywhere. Wreaths. And to complete the mortuary image,
a coffin, gleaming white and pristine.

“Welcome
to your funeral,” Sylvan said.

“I
don’t understand,” I admitted, when it gradually became
clear he was waiting for me to say something.

“No.
I told you you wouldn’t.” He opened the lid of the
coffin, and waved a hand toward it.

There
was no misreading the gesture. He wanted me to get inside.

This
time I hesitated. Only for a moment. I stepped forward, and the
little man, unsmiling, helped me up and into it awkwardly while
Sylvan watched.

“Do
you like it?” Sylvan asked. “The way death feels, close
and warm and white around you?”