Vamparazzi (10 page)

“Wait, no, seriously. What's it like to work with Daemon ?”

“He's a fine actor, a true professional, and a great guy to work with,” I said, removing my towel-bib and standing up.

Tarr frowned and said to my companion, “That's exactly what you said when I interviewed you, Lei-guy.”

Leischneudel winced at the nickname.

Tarr repeated,
“Exactly.”

Leischneudel looked guiltily at me.

Tarr saw that, and his habitual grin broadened. “Ah, so the kid got that line from you, huh?”

“Let's just call it a consistent reaction among the cast, shall we?” I checked my appearance in the mirror, expecting to hear Bill's five-minute warning over the intercom at any moment.

Tarr chuckled and closed his notebook. “Okay. How about off the record, in that case?”

“Off the record?”

He nodded. “Yeah. What's it like to work with Daemon ?”

I realized Jane's lips needed a touch-up after my meal. I borrowed Leischneudel's makeup kit for that. “This is completely off the record?”

“Yep.”

I found the color I wanted. “Off the record . . . He's a fine actor, a true professional, and a great guy to work with.” I applied the lip rouge.

“Hey, you don't
trust
me?” Tarr feigned wounded feelings.

“Go figure.” I blotted Jane's mouth. “We're finished
now,
right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “So now that we're done with business, maybe we should go out sometime. Just you and me.”

“No, thank you,” I said. “Leischneudel, time for Act One places?”

“Yes.” He recognized this cue and responded with alacrity. “Absolutely. Let's g—”

“No pressure,” Tarr said to me. “Just a drink. We'll see how it goes.”

I sighed. So much for the tabloid prince leaving me alone now that I had given him his interview. Determined to nip this in the bud, I said, “I want you to listen carefully to what I'm about to say to you, Al.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You and I will not be going out together.” I enunciated clearly. “It will never happen.
Never.
”

“Hey!” He grinned wolfishly. “Do I have a rival?”

Involuntarily, I thought of Lopez.

Looking at (I was appalled to realize) my current suitor, an ill-mannered hack with the sensitivity of a bulldozer, I was suddenly swamped with longing for the attractive police detective whom I had refused to see again.

Actually, Lopez had dumped me first (or, as he put it, he had given me up); and I tried to keep that fact in mind whenever I wanted to surrender to impulse and phone him. But when circumstances (or, rather, Evil) had reunited us after he broke up with me, he evidently reconsidered his decision . . . or at least wanted to talk about reconsidering it.

“Is there another guy in picture?” Tarr prodded.

By then, though, I knew that Lopez had been right in the first place; we mustn't keep seeing each other.

I said, “Um . . .”

Now, as I gazed in bemusement at the man who was grinning sleazily at me, I was sharply reminded of my ex-almost-boyfriend, precisely because of all the ways in which he was nothing like Tarr.

“I mean, if you're not seeing Daemon or the kid . . .” Tarr said.

“Esther doesn't date actors,” said Leischneudel.

Not that I thought Lopez was perfect. Far from it. For one thing, he thought I was crazy and probably felonious (although, admittedly, he had his reasons for the former and was not entirely wrong about the latter). He could be a little cranky and rigid. He was also critical, and sometimes he was too cynical—though I supposed that this was a natural result of his profession. And I had a feeling I'd rather try to disarm a bomb than meet his mother (whom he clearly loved—though their mutual affection mostly seemed to express itself in exasperated arguments).

“Well, I'm not an actor,” Tarr said cheerfully. “So we're good to go.”

But Lopez was fun to be with, easy to talk to (well, most of the time), brave and reliable, shrewd about human nature, full of engaging quirks, very smart, and more patient that I usually gave him credit for. And when he looked at me a certain way, I felt sexier than the highest-paid screen temptress in Hollywood.

Whereas with Tarr looking me right now, I just felt underdressed.

“I know this piano bar where they play oldies,” the tabloid reporter said, apparently interpreting my awkward silence as a sign that I was weakening. “You'd like it.”

I self-consciously tugged my barely decent neckline upward while I avoided his gaze, feeling depressed and dismayed by how much I still missed Lopez after more than two months of trying so hard not even to think about him.

Tarr added, “And I have a coupon. I can get drinks half-price there if I bring a woman.”

My powers of articulation returned to me. “Tempting though that invitation is, Al, I must decline, on the grounds that I am studying to become a nun.”

“I thought you were Jewish.” Then his perpetual grin widened in appreciation of my sly wit. “Oh, I get it! Good one.”

Over the intercom, Bill called for Act One places.

“Oh, thank God,” I muttered.

“Esther and I have to go.” Leischneudel simultaneously slipped into his frock coat and herded Tarr toward the door of the dressing room. “We open the show.”

“I know,” said Tarr. “I'm here every night, after all. Watching this goddamn play over and over. Wondering why anyone would pay three hundred dollars to see it, let alone to see it
again.
”

Leischneudel briefly froze in astonishment. “The scalpers are getting three hundred a seat? For
this
play?”

“There's no accounting for taste,” said the reporter as we all exited the room.

Out in the hallway, we encountered Victor—or, rather, we
frightened
Victor. He was pacing with his back to us and whispering frantically into his cell phone. When he turned around and saw us, he shrieked in surprise, dropped his phone, and clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Jeez, pal,” said Tarr. “You really need to cut back on the caffeine.”

“Are you all right?” Leischneudel asked in concern.

Victor closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded. He lowered his hand and said, “You startled me.”

His voice was faint, and he didn't seem to be breathing. He looked pale. Although the theater was (as I had good reason to know) drafty and cool, there were beads of sweat glinting on his forehead.

“Victor, you don't look so good,” I said as Leischneudel retrieved the older man's phone from the hard cement floor and handed it to him. “And I really think you should breathe.”

“Yes,
breathe,
” Leischneudel urged, patting Victor on the back.

Victor suddenly started panting like a nervous dog. His voice still faint, he squeezed out the words, “It sounds like something . . . something
terrible
may have happened.”

“Your call was bad news?” Tarr asked.

Victor panted, “I think so. It might be. I'm not . . .”

“Breathe a little more
slowly
.” Leischneudel demonstrated what he meant, encouraging Victor to imitate him.

“Anything to do with Daemon?” Tarr asked.

Victor flinched. “You can't say anything to him!”

The reporter opened his notebook. “Why not?”

I took away Tarr's notebook. “Surely that's none of our business.”

“Just keep breathing.” Leischneudel glanced at me, aware that we needed to get to our places.

“Don't say anything to Daemon,” Victor said frantically.
“Please.”

“Don't say anything about
what?
” Tarr prodded, trying to retrieve his notebook from me.

“It might turn out to be nothing. An ugly prank or a mistake ... God, I hope it's nothing! It's
got
to be nothing,” Victor babbled. “And even if it's something, there's nothing we can do about it right now, and I mustn't distract Daemon.”

But distracting the rest of us was fine, apparently.

Rachel came out of my dressing room and saw us all. “God, what are you still doing here?” she said critically. “Didn't you guys hear Bill call Act One places? Am I the only professional around here?”

She shoved her way through our little group, oblivious to me and Tarr wrestling for his notebook, and to Victor panting and sweating while Leischneudel patted his back and urged him to keep breathing.

I gave up my struggle with Tarr, let him have the notebook, and said to Leischneudel, “She's right. We have to go right now.”

“We really do,” the actor said. “I'm sorry, Victor. Um, I'm sure everything will be fine.”

“You won't tell Daemon, will you?” Victor said urgently. “The show must go on!”

“No,” I promised, “we won't tell him.”

“Tell him
what?
” Tarr persisted.

“I have no idea. And
you,
” I said to the reporter, “leave this man alone.”

“Of course,” Tarr said with pellucid innocence. “Absolutely.”

Poor Victor.

Leischneudel took my arm, and we scurried toward the darkened wings to start the second show. From that moment forward, I had no room in my head to spare a thought for Victor or whatever he'd been babbling about. Also no room, thankfully, to dwell on Tarr having asked me out on a date (so to speak).

During intermission, I saw Victor backstage, but he was so artificially bright and bubbly, I assumed that the crisis, whatever it was, must have passed. Given his tendency to overreact, I assumed it was nothing—an assumption which seemed to be confirmed when he bent my ear, at length, about the carpet on which I had spilled blood hours ago, assuring me the dry cleaners thought they could get the stain out completely.

I brushed him off and found a quiet spot backstage to rest in solitude for the remainder of the intermission. This was my sixth performance in three days, I was feeling the burn, and I would be onstage for much of Act Two. Ianthe had been eaten by Ruthven in Act One, but she appeared briefly several times in Act Two, when a feverish, guilt-ridden Aubrey imagined his sweetheart haunting him for failing to save her from Ruthven. Apart from those moments, Mad Rachel would be wandering around backstage until the curtain call, complaining of boredom because too few of her acquaintances were available for phone chats this late at night. I wondered how Leischneudel, who had an exhausting part, was getting through this second show, given that he'd gotten so little sleep last night, thanks to Mimi the cat.

When the curtain rose on Act Two, though, I didn't feel the fatigue anymore, nor did I see it in my two leading men as we performed scene after scene. That's the magic of the stage and the synergy of actors with a live audience. I knew I'd be exhausted as soon as the show was over, but I felt energized and alert as I waited in the wings to go back onstage for my final scene, Jane's wedding night.

Once I was onstage, face-to-face with my groom in the golden light of our private sitting room at night, and nervous about adjourning with him to the adjoining conjugal chamber, I spoke about my poor brother, who was too ill to attend the small, intimate wedding breakfast which had followed the private marriage ceremony this morning. A little while ago, my delirious sibling, openly horrified to learn my marriage was now a fait accompli, had said strange things to me about my groom, bizarre comments that were unquestionably a symptom of his brain fever ... but which nonetheless made me uneasy enough that I now tried to broach the subject of those incoherent accusations with my new lord and master.

My husband brushed aside my questions with sinister half-answers and boldly explicit physical flattery as the two of us began circling each other like swordsmen in the early moments of a mortal duel. Slowly, almost languidly, he pursued me around the room, drawing ever closer, his intense gaze, silken voice, and erotic predation wearing down my reticence until, finally, I stopped fleeing and let him touch me, claim me,
own
me. He spoke to me of life, death, blood, innocence, pleasure, and pain, all the while taking down my hair, stroking my body, and exploring portions of my anatomy that no man had ever touched before.

Including portions which I had specifically told Daemon
not
to touch
again
.

I found the vampire's lengthy speech about life, the universe, and everything rather tedious and derivative, but Jane found it provocative and enthralling—as did the audience. Tarr had described the fans' absorption well; when Ruthven stopped speaking long enough to press several slow, sultry kisses against Jane's shoulder and neck, you could have heard a pin drop in that theater. Then when he ran his hands over my body and reached inside my dress to cup one of my breasts, I heard sighs throughout the audience, and an audible moan from someone sitting close to the stage.

My uncomfortable but flimsy push-up corset was not much protection against this sort of intrusion, and I was annoyed. Daemon's hands, as he well knew, were supposed to stay
outside
my dress at all times.

Ruthven droned on for a while longer, toying with his bride, alternately seducing and terrorizing her. Although Jane by now wanted to lie down on the floor and fling up her skirts for him,
I
was incensed when Daemon slid his hand down to the juncture of my thighs and cupped me there. I writhed and moaned with feigned passion, which activity I used to conceal my firmly moving his hand to my hip while I stomped on his instep.

He wanted to improvise?
Fine
. Two could play that game.