Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror (50 page)

They broke up three times—always, as she’d say with a laugh afterward, because he’d been “thinking too much.”

Chrissie had suggested they go to Paris together. Her parents wouldn’t mind, she said, she’d just say she was going on holiday with a friend. Donald couldn’t believe he’d agreed. He couldn’t believe they had actually gone. He couldn’t believe how happy having her all to himself made him.

That morning when she went out to get fruit from the market they had their very first argument.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll be better. Where do you want to go? Your choice.”

She didn’t even have to think about it—she had her answer right away, and that surprised him.

Fine, he said. Of course they could do that! If she had a certain restaurant in mind, then of course they should go there. (Was it expensive?)

She said she didn’t know. She didn’t think it was expensive. No, it wasn’t expensive.

Fine, he said. It didn’t matter anyway. Not even if it was expensive! They could afford to splash out on a decent meal! What sort of restaurant was it?

She didn’t know.

He said, fine, that was all fine.

She said it was supposed to be very romantic, and she gave him a wink that he didn’t much like, it felt a little too self-conscious. The place had been recommended to her by a friend. The friend had been certain they would enjoy it.

She went to the wardrobe, and to her little pink suitcase, and from a side pocket took out a sheet of paper. On it her friend had written down the restaurant’s address, even drawn a fairly detailed map to help them find it.

She said it was a bit of a distance, and she tilted her head in some sort of apology.

He said, “Who’s the friend?” And at that she tilted her head to the other side, shrugged.

He said, “I thought we’d agreed. We wouldn’t tell anyone we were going to Paris. What we were doing. Who’s this friend, who’s giving you restaurant tips? Is it a girl from school?”

She said it was no one from school. Did he think she was that stupid? She wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t tell a
kid
. No, this was a grown-up. The word
grown-up
made her sound so childish.

And he hated this, that their second argument was so hot on the heels of their first, but he had to know, he couldn’t let it drop. “A friend of your parents?”

No, a friend of
hers
. She had her own friends. God, did he think he was the only grown-up friend she had?

He wanted to hit her, and he’d never felt that way before, not about anybody.

She said, “I’m so tired of you thinking what we’re doing is
bad
. It isn’t bad. And you’re not a bad person. I don’t think you’re a bad person.”

The rage went out of him, and he felt so tired, and he sat down hard upon the bed.

She said, “You’re not a bad person, baby.”

He said that he knew he wasn’t.

She said, “We have to go to the restaurant. I promised my friend. And he went to so much effort. I don’t want to let him down.”

He gave a nod, just a little nod, but it was enough, it was agreed.

A
nd in spite of that, they managed to have a good day. They went to the Louvre. Chrissie saw some paintings she liked, Donald saw some he liked too, and they stood in the queue for the
Mona Lisa
and were surprised how small it was. David told Chrissie that one of the men pictured in Géricault’s
The Raft of the Medusa
looked like Mr. Turner the PE teacher, and Chrissie thought that was very funny, and she found a portrait that looked just a little like Miss Bull. Everything was going so well, and Donald thought the upset of the morning might be forgotten—and then he offered to buy her a pastry at a
boulangerie
and she smiled and said she wouldn’t, she didn’t want to spoil her appetite for later.

They went back to the hotel, Chrissie wanted to get changed. She wheeled her little pink suitcase into the bathroom; she was there for the best part of an hour. While she was busy, Donald looked through the guidebook to see whether Paris had anything to offer they hadn’t done yet; it hadn’t.

At last Chrissie emerged. She was wearing a pink dress, very nearly a ball gown—she’d spent the week in her sweater and jeans, and now she was a movie star. She was wearing makeup too, and her face seemed heavy beneath the weight of it all; nail varnish, pink like her dress, and Donald was no expert but even he could see she hadn’t put it on right, he saw the uneven patches, he saw the streaks bleeding onto the fingers. She looked beautiful. She also looked like a little girl who’d raided her mother’s wardrobe.

Donald wished he’d packed something smart too, but the only jackets he had were the ones he wore to school, and he didn’t want to be seen in those.

“You look nice,” he said.

Chrissie smiled widely, and that made her face crack. “
Merci bien
,” she said. She walked over to Donald, and he got up from the bed, stood to attention. She took his arm. “Shall we go, Monsieur MacAllister?
J’ai faim!
”

T
hey reached an obscure metro stop in the eighteenth arrondissement. It was deserted. Donald was surprised—when they had left the hotel, it had still been quite light; somehow while they’d been underground night had fallen hard. There were a few stars out. There were streetlamps too, though many of them weren’t working, were they broken? A few shops and houses, all had their curtains tightly drawn. It had been raining.

“Is it far?” Donald asked, and Chrissie didn’t exactly answer. She got out the map her friend had drawn, studied it for a moment, and then set off confidently.

She turned them down a narrow side street, and Donald supposed that meant they must be nearly there, but the side street ran into another side street, and that one into another narrower still. They walked arm in arm, and that was a little romantic, but it also forced them to walk slowly, and the pools of light cast by the streetlamps seemed to be getting farther and farther apart. But he held on to her tightly regardless; the rain had made the cobbled streets look slippery, at every footfall he expected them to slip him over. Best not to look at the cobbles at all. Yes, that was sensible.

“What’s this restaurant called?”

“All I’ve got is an address.”

There were high stone walls flanking them on either side, and it seemed to Donald they were getting taller and thicker; they looked as if they’d been built to withstand some medieval siege. “This friend of yours wasn’t having you on?” he asked. “Got a sense of humor, has he?”

“Stop,” she said, and so they stopped, and she pulled him out of the lamplight and into the darkness. She kissed him hard on the lips.

“Yes, that’s very nice,” he said.

“We’re in Paris.”

“I know.”

“This is an adventure. Enjoy it!”

“I am enjoying it,” he said. “I know I’m in Paris. I’m enjoying the whole thing.”

She flung away his arm, and he wasn’t sure whether that was out of irritation or some new urgency in their search for food. His stomach growled at him, and it was only the latest part of his body to ask what the hell he thought he was doing.

“I think,” said Donald, “you know what I think? I think we should just stop at the first restaurant we come to. I mean, this is farther out than we imagined, isn’t it? And we’re getting hungry. You must be hungry, you haven’t eaten since breakfast! What do you say
we just stop at the next restaurant?” And it was such a good plan, except they hadn’t passed a single building for at least ten minutes. Chrissie was striding on so fast now, maybe she couldn’t hear him. At last he tried again. “We should turn back. Yes? Chrissie? Do you agree?”

“This is it,” she said suddenly, and he shut up.

There was a door set into the stonework of the wall. It was made of thick, black wood. There was no handle to open it, no knocker, nothing as frivolous as a bell. It was ridiculous that it was there, with no hint of a building behind it—worse, it was wrong, it felt wrong.

He expected Chrissie to be disappointed, and he was about to reassure her, tell her it didn’t matter; they’d retrace their steps, go back into the city, find a McDonald’s if nothing else was open—but she was beaming, she was so excited. “We found it!” she said. “At last!”

“Darling, if there ever was a restaurant here, it’s long gone. Your friend, this friend of yours”—and he didn’t like the way his voice became so sarcastic whenever he mentioned him—“this Parisian expert friend, you know, he must have been here years ago.”

“I’ll knock,” she said cheerfully. And he was about to stop her—there was no point in knocking—and don’t touch it, don’t touch the door—but it was too late, she was thumping upon it with her fist. But the wood was so thick she barely made a sound.

“You tried,” he said. “Let’s go.” He offered her his hand.

The door opened.

For all its weight, for all its
age
, the hinges were silent. Maybe that was what horrified him, that it could just swing open so stealthily, like a beast that had only been pretending to sleep—and the blackness of the door was replaced by an altogether thicker blackness pouring out from within. Donald stepped back instinctively. And out of the blackness, his head shining in the little light of the alley, emerged a man, an old man, Donald couldn’t see him well but he knew he was
old
, and the man stood firm on the threshold and
stared out at them. Donald stared back, he had no choice. The man seemed to be dressed in a smart black suit, and that only meant the light fell into him and was smothered. He cleared his throat. He looked at them quizzically.

Chrissie spoke in French. The old man inclined his head and stepped backward to let them in.

“Don’t,” said Donald.

“
Merci
,” said Chrissie, and she went through the door, and Donald followed.

Down a long corridor, and at last, into the light. And Donald realized that the man wasn’t merely old, he was ancient—and not just with age, that was the oddness of it, he was
sick
, and you could see the bones beneath the skin, he was wasting away in that waiter outfit hanging around him so loosely. Hardly a good advertisement for a restaurant, Donald thought, and he wanted to nudge Chrissie, make a joke, share a laugh—and he actually made to do that, but in an instant he felt such a wave of revulsion, he didn’t want this man touching food, he didn’t want him anywhere near food, touching anything they might want to put into their mouths—and yet here he was, he was touching
them
, he was taking the coats from off their backs and they were surrendering them to him, willingly! It wasn’t a quizzical expression he had on his face, the eyebrows had just set that way.

And then into the restaurant itself. More a cavern than a room, the stone floor studded here and there with tables and chairs. No real order to it, some clustered close together, some out on the fringes like little islands. There was light, yes, but it was a heavy light, Donald thought it was slightly green—and he couldn’t see where it came from, there weren’t any lamps, the light seemed to leak from the bricks and the rocks and the earth.

It was empty. Of course it was empty. Who would come here—? No, in the distance, on one of those islands bobbing about, there sat a man on his own, fork in hand, tucking into something Donald
couldn’t make out in the gloom, reading a book. He looked up briefly at the newcomers and without apparent interest, and Donald saw he had one of those silly pencil-thin mustaches only suave sophisticates from France are able to get away with.

“Are they open?” Donald asked Chrissie. “Ask them if they’re open. I don’t think they’re open.” But their coats had been taken, hadn’t they? The waiter had now draped them over his arm and seemed to be clinging on to them hard, he wasn’t going to give them up easily. The waiter led them to a table. It wobbled on the uneven floor. He pulled out a chair so that Chrissie could sit down, but he didn’t have the strength to accomplish the task with any grace; the coats he was carrying hardly made the operation any easier. Chrissie thanked him nicely. Donald sat down without help.

Chrissie took out a cigarette. Donald began to tell her he didn’t think she could smoke here, but the waiter didn’t seem to mind, and with his free hand, he took out a lighter for her. With the same flame, he lit a blunt candle squatting unhappily in the middle of the table—the little light it gave off was quickly quenched by the greenish glow of the room.

Then the waiter strode away without even looking back at them, and Donald wondered whether they would ever see their coats again.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

Chrissie puffed and grinned. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she said.

“Is it?”

“You don’t think it’s romantic?”

“Are you sure they’re open? You should ask if they’re open.”

Then the elderly waiter was back, sloping to them across the floor with renewed energy and confidence. He carried a bottle of red wine and two glasses. He set the bottle down upon the table.

“We haven’t ordered that,” said Donald.

Chrissie said, “But we do want wine, don’t we?”

“Yes, but we haven’t ordered.”

The waiter fixed Donald with his not-quite-quizzical look, then set to work on the cork. It released from the bottle with a subdued pop. The waiter picked up the bottle with both hands and aimed its contents somewhere toward Chrissie’s glass.

“
Parfait, merci
,” she said, and sipped.

The waiter nodded, poured Donald a glass. Donald sniffed it. It smelled good.

Chrissie drank deeper, and the waiter stood beside her and watched, as if needing further confirmation that she enjoyed it. She turned to him, smiled, nodded. He nodded in return. And then he reached out that skeletal hand of his toward her neck, and he brushed away a few stray hairs from her shoulder.

“Hey,” said Donald.

And then he left.

“Hey. Did you see that?”

“What?”

They both worked on their wine. Chrissie worked on her cigarette too, taking shallow puffs and turning her head away to exhale the smoke. Donald tried to think of something to say. He wondered why it was so hard. With all the many other problems they’d had to face, right since that first date cuddled together in the car park, conversation had never been a difficulty.