The Undead Kama Sutra (4 page)

T
horne slowed the Bayliner
as we neared the island. A cluster of lights sparkled within the embrace of a lush bay. As we approached, the cluster became a row of burning torches arranged parallel to the shore, north to south. Farther up the beach, strings of electric bulbs in various colors lit the cabins of a small village. The glow of the torches and electric lights reflected off the beach sand and a small pier.

Reggae music beat the night air from a simple pavilion on the far side of the cabins. Under the thatched roof of the pavilion, vampires and humans danced together, their orange and red auras mixing like swirls of candy.

Carmen pulled off her cowboy boots and socks. Since we’d be walking on sand, I went barefoot as well.

Thorne docked the Bayliner against the pier. Carmen
went below into the cabin and brought out the
botánica
package, which she handed to Thorne with instructions for him to bring it along. She and Jolie leaped from the boat and lashed the bowline to a wharf piling. I hopped onto the pier and started after them up the beach.

A tall black man, stout as a tree trunk, wearing a tank top and baggy shorts, came from the cabins to meet us. His orange aura announced he was a vampire. And one that liked to eat, judging from his belly. A crop of nappy hair ringed his bald scalp, and a goatee and mustache circled his mouth. The reflection of the beach torches danced on his shiny forehead. He smelled like he’d been grilling fish.

Carmen introduced me as a longtime friend from Colorado.

The vampire’s name was Antoine, her business partner. Antoine gave a broad and welcoming smile. He hooked one arm around my shoulders and squeezed hard enough to make me gasp, “Pleasure’s mine.”

Most black vampires looked anemic. Not Antoine. His complexion was as dark and shiny as waxed ebony. Evidently, he shared Carmen’s skin treatment.

Antoine let go and we continued up the beach. Jolie jumped onto Antoine’s back and sat on his shoulders like she was riding in a rodeo.

Carmen strode alongside Antoine. “Any word on the missing chalice?”

Antoine sighed. “Nothing new on Key West. Any word from Miami?”

“No.” Tendrils of anxiety snaked along the periphery of Carmen’s aura. She closed her eyes and brushed a hand through her hair.

Jolie reached from her perch on Antoine’s shoulders and tapped her foot against Carmen’s back. “Chill. You’ve done all you can for now.” Jolie unsnapped her bikini top and twirled it like a pennant. “Time to party.”

Her pointy breasts dared me to leap up and nuzzle them. But from what I’d seen of Jolie, she was as apt to kick my balls as to fondle them. So I stayed on the ground and kept my mouth shut.

The four of us passed through the village. None of the lightbulbs matched. The cords had lumps of electrical tape where frays had been mended. The cabins were simple huts with painted shutters and doors. Colorful streamers—actually cut up sections of awning—dangled from the eaves. Everything looked cobbled together from a salvage yard. I had expected a luxurious Florida resort and it was instead a Third World shantytown fixed up for a party.

“Who built this place?” I asked.

“I did,” answered Antoine. “You won’t believe I got most of this picking through debris from the last hurricane. Saved a ton of money.”

“No kidding?” I asked. “The guests ever complain?”

“I give them a retro experience. The Keys as they were back in the day of rum runners and nickel sandwiches.”

A helicopter rested on a concrete pad between the cabins and the wood line. A threadbare tarp covered the bubble
canopy and another tarp (in a different color, of course) covered the engine beneath the rotor mast. Black stains darkened the concrete under the engine. The copter was a vintage Bell 47 Whirlybird. Ropes secured the tips of the drooping rotor blades to eyebolts in the pad.

“You have a helicopter? Why didn’t you fly instead of taking a boat?” I asked.

Carmen cocked her thumb at Antoine. “Ask him.”

“The copter’s mine.” Antoine’s voice sagged with remorse. “Won the damn thing in a poker game and it’s been nothing but trouble.”

“You fly?”

“I gave Howard Hughes his first lesson,” Antoine replied. “I haven’t renewed my license since but I still get around.”

The Bell’s right skid was missing and a stack of cinder blocks and a car jack kept the fuselage propped upright. Beach and kitchen towels hung from the lattice structure of the tail boom. “This thing’s an antique,” I said. “It’d be worth fixing up.”

Antoine shrugged. The gesture said,
Mañana.

Two snowmobiles sat on a rusted trailer behind the helicopter. Weeds grew through the trailer and around the flat tires.

“What are you doing with those?”

“Different poker game,” answered Antoine.

We passed through a plume of charcoal smoke carrying the aroma of grilling fish. The smoke rolled out the chimney and the windows of a wooden shack.

“That’s my gourmet kitchen,” Antoine said.

“Looks like it’s on fire,” Jolie noted.

Antoine paused. His aura flared with concern. He yelled to the shack: “Hey, you guys burning my kitchen?”

From inside the kitchen, there came a clanging of metal and an “Oh shit.”

A flame shot out the kitchen chimney. Antoine pulled Jolie off his shoulders. Together they sprinted for the shack.

Carmen shook her head in dismay. She grasped my hand, we turned our backs to the shack, and continued for the pavilion.

A combo band of undead and living played guitars, a baritone saxophone, a marimba, and a variety of drums at the south end of the pavilion. No one wore anything more than a brief swimsuit and dreadlocks. Some wore less.

Groups of chalices stood on the wooden floor of the pavilion, arms waving to the music. I counted seven orange auras besides us. I didn’t recognize any of these vampires. Counting Antoine, Carmen, Jolie, and myself, that made about three chalices per set of fangs.

Along the floor’s edge, vampires sat on the benches of picnic tables, chalices on their laps, the couples necking like teenagers. A wall of palm fronds decorated with flowers, ribbons, and bunches of rooster tail feathers stood on the far end of the pavilion.

Carmen took me to the center table. A female chalice, topless and fit as a Pilates instructor, removed the lid from a metal stockpot on the table. The smell of a rich bouillabaisse
wafted out. Bread rolls filled a basket next to a stack of bowls and utensils.

Carmen patted my shoulder, indicating that I sit. “Antoine’s lack of aesthetic style doesn’t extend to his cooking. Enjoy.” She rubbed my scalp and tousled my hair. “Chow down, Felix, you’re going to need it. Meanwhile I have resort business to take care of.”

I grabbed Carmen’s wrist. “What do you mean, ‘You’re going to need it’? For what?”

She grinned and shook loose. “Every evening we have a party and tonight you’re the guest of honor.” She turned to leave.

The chalice ladled the fish stew into a bowl. The aroma of the bouillabaisse was a teaser compared to the wonderful scent of a thick blood stock, type O-positive, that she added from an insulated metal carafe. Another chalice—a bustier version of the previous one—poured mojitos from an enameled pitcher into short glass tumblers. This was the first decent meal I’d had all day, and after a second helping, I sopped at the last of the gelatinous redness with hunks of bread and washed it down with sips of the sweetened rum drink.

Two chalices cleared the table. Thorne, Carmen’s male chalice, went around with a big pitcher and refilled glasses. This batch of mojitos had a better kick. Maybe it was the blending of different spices, a more potent rum, or something from the
botánica.

The sax, marimba, and guitar players paused and let the bongos and conga drums carry the rhythm.

Antoine reappeared from the left side of the pavilion. Vertical red, black, and white stripes covered his torso. A wreath of leaves crowned his balding noggin. His broad lips gripped an unlit cigar. Glitter sparkled in his hair, mustache, and goatee. A necklace of cowrie shells glistened against the dark skin of his neck. He strutted in a cadence that matched the drumbeat, his thick legs parting his only attire, a blue sarong.

The drumming softened to a rumble.

A female chalice followed Antoine. Stripes of paint also covered her body.

They stopped before the wall of palm fronds. She stepped around Antoine to place votive candles along the floor.

Antoine pulled a butane barbecue lighter from his waistband and crouched to light the candles. After he lit the last one, he stood, put the lighter to the end of the cigar, sucked hard, and exhaled a dense puff of smoke. The smoke rolled through the air and spread a pungent tobacco smell.

The drummers slapped their congas and started a loud Afro-Caribbean beat. The guitars, marimba, and saxophone joined in with a fast merengue.

Antoine’s aura crackled around him. He no longer looked doughy and friendly but demanding and stern. “It’s time to make music,” he boomed louder than the conga drums, “and dance to beckon the goddess of beauty and sensuality, our exalted Oshún.”

The beat reverberated inside me. I swirled my mojito and wondered about the dark sediment circling the bottom of the
tumbler. Maybe what Carmen had bought in the
botánica
was in the drink. Something psychoactive. I hoped so.

Jolie made her entrance from the left. She wore an iridescent loincloth the size of a napkin. Her red hair was fashioned into an octopus of braids. Jolie led six painted chalices, alternating male and female, who entered in a swaying gait. The rattles on their ankles and wrists shook with the rhythm. They carried censers that trailed plumes of smoldering tobacco, sage, marijuana, and sandalwood.

Antoine stamped his feet and chanted, “Oshún.”

The other vampires and chalices in the pavilion sprang to the floor and picked up the chant. Their orange and red auras pulsed in time to the music. They shimmied and writhed as if they were Pentecostal snake handlers. Breasts and buttocks quivered like so much flesh Jell-O.

This was one party I couldn’t sit out. I downed the last of the mojito, jumped from the bench, and joined the dancing. Chalices pawed at my shirt and tossed it aside.

I swung my arms and kicked with spastic abandon, doing the Chicano version of a frog-in-the-blender dance. I wasn’t sure of the point to all this but it was a great party.

The wall of palm fronds began to shake. The music picked up speed. The chanting went faster and faster.

“Oshún. Oshún.”

With my eyes closed, I shouted, “Oshún,” over and over, enjoying myself until I realized that the music had stopped and I was the only one still chanting.

I opened my eyes.

The other dancers stood frozen in place. Their auras shimmered like a collection of neon lamps.

The wall of palm fronds before us had split apart. Carmen (who else?) glared at me from between the fronds. Her gaze burned through the eye slits of an elaborate feathered headdress.

A dozen cowrie-shell and glass-bead necklaces looped across her naked torso. Gold bells on her bracelets and anklets tinkled softly. A brightly colored loincloth dangled between her thighs.

In one upturned hand she carried a glass jar the size of a coffee cup. She swung her arm in a small circle, the torch lights refracting through the glass jar into rainbow bursts of jewellike colors.

The music started again, jumping back to the same loud tempo as a moment ago. Carmen dipped left and right in exaggerated postures, with the jar as the focal point of her movements. Her breasts trembled beneath the layers of cowrie shells and glass beads.

Vampires somersaulted in gravity-defying leaps. Chalices wailed as if speaking in tongues, threw themselves to the floor, and bounded back up.

The music became louder, the dancing more frantic, and the atmosphere more charged with hedonistic frenzy. Jolie and a couple of chalices stood hunched over, hands on their knees, and twirled their hair while ululating like Arab witches. The fragrance of pheromones was as thick as the smoke.

I didn’t know how well this shindig kept to Santeria tra
ditions but I was having a hell of a time. And I still had my pants on.

We stamped our feet, faster and faster, and just as the beat couldn’t get any more rapid—I was ready this time—we all stomped once. The music stopped. The silence seemed as deafening as had the music. Heaving, glistening bodies surrounded me, the body paint mottled by sweat.

I found myself standing directly before Carmen.

She faced me, the glass jar raised in offering. “Felix Gomez, Her Majesty Oshún channels me to summon you.”

Carmen pushed the jar in front of my face. “Behold the secret to our protection from the sun. Oshún has given us this wonder, the Florida chartreuse-pine spider.”

My head cleared slightly. This is what all the music and theater was about? I took the jar and held it up to the light of the tiki torches. Inside the jar scurried a small, bright green spider the size of my thumbnail. “Powerful medicine?” I fought to keep the sarcasm out of my question.

“Very powerful,” Carmen answered reverently.

“Quite a show. The last time I bought aspirin at Walgreens, they did nothing like this.” I tapped the jar. The spider reared back. “Where did you find this critter?”

“In the trash outside the kitchen,” Jolie answered.

Carmen cleared her throat. “Oshún’s blessings are everywhere.”

“Is it poisonous?” I asked.

“Of course.” Carmen removed her headdress and handed it to a chalice. “But to us vampires, the venom in its tiny fangs
is magic. One bite from this spider and our flesh is made new. We get color.” Carmen lifted one side of her loincloth and flashed a sliver of pale flesh. “See, tan lines.”

It was an exciting glimpse of white skin against a brown leg. I looked with admiration at the spider. “One bite? That’s all?”

The little spider seemed to study me in return. Its tiny eyes sparkled like grains of sand.

A bite of its minuscule fangs and I could again enjoy the caress of the sun upon my naked skin. No more slathering on the sunblock? I could walk among the humans without a mask of Dermablend?