Gypsy Blood (8 page)

There was a driver’s license. It said his name was Olaf Richardson. Funny. He didn’t look like an Olaf. He looked more like a Bill or a Fred. Carnival said the man’s name out loud.

“Olaf. Olaf.”

“Are you going to sing a requiem? Or can we get out of here?” Maya asked.

Carnival kept rooting. There were a couple of photographs. He didn’t look at them. Knowing Olaf’s name was bad enough. That was his plunder. Over one hundred dead presidents, with only one soul attached. He was rich. He didn’t feel it, though.

“Do you want to split this?” He asked, offering her the money.

Poppa made gagging sounds, like gargling rancid flesh.

Maya shook her head.

“I’ve got what I needed.”

She sure did. Olaf was paler than bleached White-Out. Carnival tucked the bills in his pocket. He slid the wallet into back into the body’s shirt pocket. He didn’t want to touch the dead man’s cock again.

“Now can we throw him in?”

Carnival just nodded. This whole thing kept making him feel sicker and sicker. He took the body’s feet.

One for the money, what else is there to count on?

Carnival swung, once, twice, and then he let Olaf drop again.

“Now what?” Maya and Poppa asked in unison.

“We’re too close to my shop.”

“So what?”

“What if the police find him?”

“You watch too much television.”

Television is educational. Didn’t she ever watch
Sesame Street
? Such a classic. Watch Bert and Ernie once, and their wisdom will haunt you forever.

“What if they knock on my door?”

“Ask them if they want their fortune read. They might go for it. Cops are always thinking about the future.”

Don’t count on it, boy. Policemen look only at the past. When it comes to the future they talk in long sentences.

“I took the money,” Carnival said. “That makes me a thief.”

That makes you a grave robber. Much easier than thieving, with fewer complaints.

Poppa was right. The hundred plus dollars were beginning to feel like thirty pieces of radioactive silver.

“Spend it,” Maya advised. “Money loses fingerprints fast.”

Fingerprints. That was something he should have thought of.

“We’ve got to wipe him down.”

“With what?”

Carnival yanked his shirt off. He tried to rub whatever he’d touched. It was hard to do, while trying to keep his stomach sucked in and his chest puffed manfully out.

“You’re being stupid.”

Did she just notice? I thought vampires were faster than that.

“I don’t want to take chances.”

Carnival kept rubbing.

“Let’s throw him in.”

“He’s too close.”

“Then let’s drag him somewhere else.”

Carnival bent to pick the body up. His back twinged like a broken banjo string.

“He’s too heavy.”

“We’ve got to do something.”

She stared at him hard. He saw her lifeline spin, dark, like angry gypsy blood.

“Let me think,” she commanded.

He wanted to tell her they didn’t have time but something made him just shut up. Who was running this show, anyway?

Not you, boy.

Maya leaped up into the dumpster like a big cat. Way quicker than he thought she could move.

“What are you doing?”

She ignored him and rooted around. She bent and grunted. He heard her say “Perfect.”

 
Then a chair flew out of the dumpster like it was possessed by the Red Baron. One of those office chairs typists use. It had the back ripped out of it. The seat cushion looked like it had been gnawed on. The chair landed on top of the guy’s corpse like a brick hitting a sofa. The wheels on the end of the cross barred base spun like freshly popped bingo balls.

You see, I said you needed a wheelchair.

“Watch it,” Maya called.

She jumped down. It wasn’t a jump really. It was more like she floated down in half speed. Carnival took note. He was learning a lot. It helped to start at zero. Before meeting Maya the only thing he’d knew about vampires was from old books and movies. He’d talked with a gravedigger once who said he’d seen a pack of them dancing over a lawyer’s grave but he figured the gravedigger was full of shit. Everyone dances on lawyer’s graves and vampires hate crowds.

“You nearly killed me,” he said.

Did you just notice?

“Set him up on that,” Maya instructed. “It’d be a lot easier rolling him.”

They heaved the body up. Carnival was careful to keep his hands in his shirt sleeve cuffs, so he wouldn’t leave any fingerprints.

“He’ll slip off.”

“Tie him with his belt.”

Carnival undid the man’s belt. The body’s belly was soft. He probably should have spent a little more time at the gym. Carnival guessed it didn’t matter now.

“Hurry up,” she said.

She kept looking over her shoulder towards the horizon. The light was beginning to yellow. Soft, like a photograph pushing through a negative.
Sunrise
, barging in like an unwanted wedding guest.

Hurry up, boy. Your girlfriend forgot to wear her sunscreen.

She’s not my girlfriend, Carnival thought angrily.

“Hurry,” Maya urged.

“I’m hurrying,” Carnival said. He looped the belt around the dead man’s arm, and back around the chair. A couple of clumsy knots did the trick.

I knew I should have let you join the Boy Scouts.

The two of them started pushing. They got maybe twelve feet when the body slid off the chair.

“It’s not working,” Carnival said.

“Use your own belt on his other arm.”

He didn’t like the idea, but he couldn’t see a choice. A minute later the body was tied securely onto the chair. The two of them, vampire and Gypsy, started pushing, making enough racket to wake up a whole graveyard.

“This chair is too noisy.”

“In this neighborhood? If anyone hears us will just think it’s a grocery cart lady.”

She was right, but that didn’t make him feel any better. They kept pushing. It was easier on a downhill slope. It still was noisy, though. The guy bobbed along, periscoping up and down like a clown on a kid’s push toy. Carnival’s pants lagged about his hips like they were getting set to fall off. He wanted to complain but it felt as if he’d been gagged. His throat kept itching. He badly wanted to go home.

“Stop your whining,” she said, like she felt his thoughts. “It’s nearly sunrise.”

“I thought you wanted to see it.”

“That was just something you pushed me into.”

“I didn’t push anybody.”

“Sure you did. Slick, too. Just like when you took this guy. You were smooth. You sure you’re not one of us?”

No. You’re not a vampire. You’re worse. You’re a grave robber, a hypocrite, and you give no respect to your father.

Carnival let go. He was pissed at what she’d said and what Poppa had said. Pissed at how close they both were to the truth. He let go and Maya slipped. He didn’t mean to let go. He was thinking so hard he forgot to hold on to the body. The body kept rolling. It picked up speed fast. There was something hypnotic about the way he looked, rattling on down the hill like a runaway paraplegic, like it would keep rolling forever.

“Catch him,” Maya shouted.

“Why bother,” Carnival said. “He’s headed for the bay. A car might hit him. Better yet, a truck.”

She was okay with that. It hadn’t been her idea to move him in the first place. Carnival couldn’t blame her.

What could the police do to a vampire? Impound her coffin? APB her tomb?

He stared at her, trying to remember when he’d decided he was okay with murder.

“I’m not, you know,” he said.

“Not what?”

“Not one of your kind. I never will be.”

She shrugged. “We’ll see,” she said.

He didn’t like the sound of that but she had a point. Two of them, growing out of her mouth, long and white and sharp. He figured there wasn’t much he could do about it just now.

The guy on the chair rolled up and over one more rise and then down below the horizon. There was nothing left but the distant rolling rattle. Then even that was gone. He probably hit the water. Even if he didn’t there wasn’t that much to tie him to a Gypsy palm reader. It wasn’t like Carnival had left him holding one of his personal business cards.

Death will out, boy. No matter how hard you try to hide it, death will out. Go and ask Macbeth.

“Do you have a name?” Maya asked. “Or just a sign on your window?”

He nearly laughed. He was in love, not stupid.

“I know better than to give the undead my true name. You can call me Carnival, or Val if you don’t like the feel of something that long in your mouth.”

He winked. She ignored his entendre. The distant rattle rolled on.

“Do you want to stay over?” he asked.

She gave Carnival a grin that barely covered her canines.

“Never on the first date.”

Ha. You should have known she’d feed you another line, boy.

Maya stepped into the street light. In a moment she’d be gone. Vanished like smoke on the wind.

“Where else can you go?” Carnival persisted. That earned him another grin. He liked that. He could grow used to that grin.

Ha! A man can get used to boiling in oil, too, but would you want to try?

“A girl can go anywhere she wants to. It’s a great big old night. There’s room enough for everyone.”

Nice. A vampire who believes in free will.

“Come on,” Carnival coaxed. “I’d like you to stay over. I promise to dust.”

He gave her his most winning smile. It’s a hard smile to resist. He practiced it daily, along with his shrug. She tilted her head like she was thinking about it. He prayed she was.

Be careful what you wish for, boy.

He wasn’t proud. He’d take a date any chance that he got. Even a vampire.

“All right,” She said. “Let’s go.”

He smiled all the harder. A yes to a first date and he’d only had to kill one guy for it. Who says gypsies don’t have any luck?

And yet, he wondered what Olaf thought about how things ended up.

Slam Dunk Sunk Funk

D
eath is a little like luck. It always runs out and there seems to be never quite enough of it to go around. No matter how dead a body gets, there’s always a little life, hovering close to the bone and deep in the blood.

Olaf Richardson lay in the water, in the darkness, cradled by the numbing hand of death. He could see himself, looking at himself from somewhere far off behind an unseen curtain.

A curtain he’d just passed through.

He felt his body strapped to that ridiculous office chair, bumping along like a cheap roller coaster until the wheels slammed hard against the rim of the wharf and he tipped up and over and into the waiting ocean.

Splash.

Two points.

Sinking downward, still bound to the office chair.

He felt strangely prophetic. He’d told his wife that this was how he expected to go. How he wanted to die, sitting in an office chair, engrossed in a heap of statistics and spreadsheets, calculating the drift and accumulation of a client’s meager fortunes. Dead in an office chair. He’d told his own future but he sure hadn’t seen it happening quite like this.

The water rose about him. He felt himself sinking into the churn and muck of the harbor. A thousand soiled condoms and drifting chunks of feces drifted about him. Even now the accountant in his soul tried to process them, to make some sense and find a pattern out of what had happened.

Was this my fault, a part of him wondered? He’d been a good father, a dutiful husband. He hadn’t cheated on her, except this one time. And he hadn’t even done anything?

Why had he thought he could?

It had been a bet, a stupid fucking bet. Billy and that chuckle headed bastard Thomas, they’d bet he wouldn’t have the nerve. Go get some skin, they’d said. Go grab yourself a piece of skin.

Then, when he’d challenged them to come out with him, to find themselves a woman, they’d chickened out. High on a green stinking cloud of righteous self-indulgent indignation, Olaf had made his way out into the darker side of town. Down to the Fish Hook area where you could count on purchasing a cheap stolen DVD player or maybe getting a tattoo of a high titted mermaid or maybe even getting your palm read - the seedy part of town, where you came to find a woman who would fuck you for money.