The Vampire Tapestry (7 page)

He had a portable tape recorder with him, and he switched it on and began asking questions: What’s your name? How did you get to be a vampire? Are you in communication with other vampires? How much blood do you drink at a time? Who shot you?

Every time Mark looked up from arranging his bookshelves, he saw that the vampire was ignoring Roger and following with a sickly gaze what Mark was doing in the bedroom across the hall. Once Roger had gone off to bed and there would be no interruptions, Mark got the plans for Skytown out of his briefcase and laid them out on the drawing table. This personal project ran currently to forty drawings depicting the systems of his one-man space station. Scientific accuracy was not his main concern, although he kept a tight rein on any impulse to outright fantasy. Mysterious vistas of space and carefully scaled perspectives and details of a space-going home were what fascinated him. Working with his Rapidograph under the fluorescent lamp, he forgot Roger, his parents, and even the vampire. When he got up to brush his teeth in the bathroom down the hall, he was startled to find the vampire staring at him again. Returning, he shut his door and opened it only when he had turned out his light. Better to leave it open than lie in the dark wondering what was going on out there. Wesley had installed a night light in the cell, enclosed in a little wire cage and connected to a switch in the hallway. The vampire was illuminated, stretched motionless on the cot.

Mark turned on his side and lay listening to the muted sounds of traffic. In his head he tried to picture the details of the energy-gathering vanes of Skytown, sweeping shapes against a background of stars. Maybe there would be a special robot team to tend the vanes; or maybe he would reserve to himself the adventure of working outside in his space suit with stars for company. Gradually, reluctantly, he became aware of a faint shuffling sound across the hall: movement, effort. Shivering slightly in his underwear, he got up and ghosted barefoot to the doorway. The vampire stood leaning against the wall, facing in the direction of the little bathroom that adjoined his cell.

Mark sneezed.

The vampire looked at him.

Mark whispered, “I’ll go get Roger.”

But he didn’t. Something in the vampire’s posture, a faint shrinking in the already cramped shoulders, made it clear that he sensed what Mark knew—that Roger would make a humiliating joke out of this: a vampire who had to go to the bathroom just like everybody else and couldn’t manage it on his own, poor thing. In acute discomfort Mark remembered how that last summer at camp had been. For no reason he’d found himself wetting the bed every night. Every morning he’d had to go rinse out his sheets and hang them outside to dry behind the cabin where everybody could see them.
Very funny, ha ha.
He crossed the hallway and whispered through the bars, “I’ll help, but if you try anything I’ll yell my head off and Roger will come and—and beat you up. He keeps a hunk of lead pipe by his bed for burglars.”

He padded toward the kitchen, already regretting the impulse. Cautiously, he groped in the dark for the key. Not to wake Roger, not to invite Roger’s mean side to come out, was important. He really hated Roger’s mean side.

He unlocked the gate and entered the cell warily. He didn’t want the vampire to get the idea that he could obtain favors just by looking weak and pathetic. He said, “Roger’d kill me if he knew I came in here. He’d send me home. What do I get for taking that chance?”

The vampire peered at him. Then came his rasping whisper, “You may, if you wish, put yourself on the level of attendant in a public lavatory. I was carrying change in my pockets.”

The change would now be in the paper bag that Weinberg had given Wesley. That would do, though the vampire had tried to make it seem grungy to take payment. The main thing was not to let anybody reach you.

Mark moved nearer. The vampire draped a sinewy arm over his shoulders, and for a moment Mark thought in terror that he was being attacked. Then he realized that the man was so weak that he had to lean almost all of his weight on his helper. Maybe walking even these few steps would make him keel over. Maybe he’d die. It would have been better to have wakened Roger. Then if anything went wrong it wouldn’t be Mark’s fault.

“All right,” gasped the vampire, transferring his grip to the corner of the sink. Mark backed out of the tiny bathroom and stood against the wall. He heard the watery noises, the faint groan of relief, the fumbling for the flush handle. He thought,
This is crazy: he pees like me or Roger,
but he drinks people’s blood
.

Helping him back to his cot, Mark noticed that the vampire needed a bath and a change from his stained white shirt and rumpled pants. They had taken away his belt and his shoes.

“Wait,” the vampire breathed.

Mark backed toward the gate. “Why?”

“Stay and talk. I must not sleep. If I do, I could easily drop into the sleep of years that takes me from one era to another. Then my life would sink to so low an ebb that my body would be unable to heal itself. I would die. Your Uncle Roger would be annoyed. So talk to me. Tell me things.”

God, this was weird.
“What things?”

“What do you do all day?”

“I’m in school, ninth grade.”

A small silence, and then the vampire murmured, “That seems appropriate. I too am something of a student. Tell me about school.”

Mark sat down on the floor across the room from the cot and talked about school. After a while he got a blanket from his closet and folded it under himself, and he brought a glass of water from the kitchen to moisten his throat.

The vampire lay still and listened. If Mark let a little time go by in silence, the vampire said, “Talk to me.”

* * *

When Mark got back from school the next day Wesley was there. “Your dad called, said he’d like to hear from you.”

“Oh, yeah, thanks, Wesley.” Both Mark’s parents accepted Roger’s apartment as Mark’s neutral refuge from their endless hassling. Nevertheless, they tried to keep tabs on him by phone.

“Okay,” Wesley continued, “our friend is bathed and shaved, got clean pajamas on and fresh bandages. He’s all set for a couple of days, except for the feeding. Now, you have to go inside his room for that. Even if you shove a glass of blood across the floor at him, he can’t lean down and pick it up. He can sit up on his own, though—enough, anyhow, so you won’t have to touch him. Carry the glass in and hand it to him, but keep clear of him.”

Mark looked into the icebox for something to eat. There were plastic pouches of blood heaped up on the top shelf in back. He blinked fast and looked away. He said, “I thought you weren’t scared of him.”

“I wasn’t scared to give him some of my blood yesterday, but he’s healing awful fast. He’s scary, all right. He’s in a lot better shape than he should be, an old guy with two fuckin’ bullet holes in him. Be careful.” Wesley, washing his hands at the kitchen sink, laughed suddenly and turned off the water.

“Look at me, washing up like after handling a patient at the hospital! I guess I’m just a natural for nursemaiding Roger’s vampire, right? Roger sure thinks so.”

He shook his head and tucked away the dishtowel on which he had dried his hands. “Myself, I liked it better when I was just fixing this place up for Roger.” With Wesley’s help and at great expense, Roger had reconverted the entire ground floor of the brownstone from two tiny apartments to one comfortable one.

Shutting the icebox door on the sight of the blood, Mark said, “You give it to him cold, right out of the fridge? Isn’t that sort of a shock?”

“Well, it’s probably not a bad idea to heat the stuff up a little first—but not too hot.”

“I know how. I used to heat up the bottle for Aunt Pat’s baby that time I stayed with her.” At the sink counter Mark spread peanut butter on a slice of bologna.

Wesley unwrapped fresh gum. “You’d make a good hospital attendant, thinking of a thing like that. If you could keep your distance, that is.”

Mark felt ashamed that Wesley thought he wasn’t cool enough. He considered telling Wesley about helping the vampire at night, how he kept his distance then all right, but decided not to say anything. Wesley might tell Roger.

He politely asked Wesley what was owing for the fresh blood supply, and Wesley went into the living room to wait while Mark got the money box out of the oven. Roger kept it there on the theory that no burglar would look inside a kitchen fixture. He avoided banks because they made reports of interest income for taxes, and he said he preferred to forgo the interest and the taxes both. The money was safe; the apartment was fortified New York City style with barred windows, grilles on the back doors, even strands of wire strung along the top of the wooden fence that enclosed the sour scrap of yard. It was like something out of a prison-camp story. Stalag Manhattan.

With only one prisoner.

As Wesley counted his bills in the hallway by the front door Mark said, “You know, I almost wish Mr. Weinberg’s friend the doctor had taken this vampire away for the scientists to study. It feels funny, having somebody locked up here like this.”

Wesley, chewing, looked at him. “You figure even a guy who drinks blood has a right not to be grabbed and shut up in Roger’s apartment like he was a stray dog, is that it? That’s Roger’s lookout. You’re a minor, you got no say, so don’t go feeling all responsible. Stay laid back, all right? Right.”

When Mark had the apartment to himself he got the paper bag and spread the vampire’s belongings on the coffee table in the golden light of afternoon: a ballpoint pen, blue; a felt-tipped pen, red; two pencils with broken points; four small index cards covered with unreadable handwriting; a rubber band, three paper clips, a horn-handled pocketknife; two keys; one case containing a pair of glasses with dark, heavy rims, the left lens cracked; and two quarters.

Mark passed up the knife after a moment’s hesitation and pocketed one of the quarters as payment for last night’s favor.

Then his mother phoned. She promised she wouldn’t bring up the touchy subject of plans for his summer vacation, and he relaxed a bit. She sounded tired and anxious. How was he, she wanted to know, how was Roger? Did Mark need anything from home? Had his father called? Did Mark have enough pocket money? He was not to become any kind of a drain on Roger. How was school? Was he seeing that nice Maddox boy he’d brought home last week? Was he eating right? When was he planning to come home?

Never
, he thought. He said, “I don’t know, Mom. I just need to be able to settle down without a bunch of fighting going on all the time. I’ve got a lot of schoolwork to do before the term ends.”

“I wish your father wouldn’t phone me when he knows you’re probably home. He only does it to—”

“I have to go, Mom. I’ve got some things to do for Roger.”

“Just remember, when your father calls you, you remind him that this little interlude that his foul temper provoked isn’t coming off my time with you. When you leave Roger’s, you come back here to finish our six months together, darling. I love you, Markie.”

Love you too, Mom
; but you could never say that kind of thing out loud to either of them, because they’d put an edge on it and turn it around and cut you with it. She’d say later, ‘He loves me, not you, he said so’; and if Dad believed that even a little he’d think you were on her side. Then he’d take it out on you somehow, and you’d spend your time crying like Mom; crying and complaining. He said, “Bye, Mom,” and hung up. Then he sat there chewing his nails and wondering when he’d get used to his parents hating each other. Other kids got used to it with their folks. Maybe being an only child made it worse. On the other hand, Dad and Roger didn’t seem to derive any special benefits from being brothers.

One time, one time only, he’d gone weeping to his father, begging him to patch it up, put the family back the way it was supposed to be. His father had said, “Is that what you do when you can’t get what you want, cry like a girl? Who taught you that, your mother?”

The worst of it was that Mark had spoken as much out of feeling for his father as out of his own misery, knowing that his dad was wretched, too.

Thinking about them didn’t help. He got up energetically and went into his room, where he pulled out the drawings for the botanical gardens of Skytown. He was working on plants picked up from different planets, right now one adapted from a book called
A Voyage to Arcturus
, which was mostly boring but had this terrific tree that grabbed up small mammals in its branches and ate them. But what kind of an animal would it eat? A rat? A weasel? Weasels were vicious; you wouldn’t mind if it ate a weasel. Inside the cage of branches he drew a weasel, working from the picture in his encyclopedia. At last, reluctantly, he put the Skytown plans aside; there was work more pressing. He had to do a paper for Carol Kelly for her English class on a poem by A. E. Housman. If he didn’t get to it soon, there wouldn’t be enough time to work on it. Completing the job was important. Carol Kelly was getting awfully chummy lately. There was nothing like a cash transaction to push a relationship back into shape. He settled down to the poem, trying to make sense of it.

* * *

The evening after that, instead of packaged blood Wesley brought Bobbie, one of Roger’s former girlfriends. Going down the hall between Wesley and Roger, she kept laughing and saying, “It’s just one of your theater friends fooling around, right, Roger? Come on, I know you—it’s a joke, right?”

Then she was sitting there on the cot in the little white room and not laughing at all. She looked down with wide eyes at the vampire’s head bent over her arm. Mark could only bear to watch out of the corner of his eye.

“Oh,” she said softly. And then, still staring, “Oh, wow. Oh, Wesley, he’s drinking my blood.”

Wesley said, “I told you. No joke.”

“Don’t worry, Bobbie,” Roger said, patting her shoulder. “You won’t grow fangs afterward—Wesley hasn’t, anyway.”

She put out her hand as if to push the vampire’s head away, but instead she began to stroke his hair. She murmured, “I read my tarot this morning and I could see there would be fantastic new things, and I should get right behind them and be real positive, you know? But I never thought—oh, this is so far out, this is a real supernova, you know?” Until he finished she sat enthralled, whispering, “Oh, wow,” at dreamy intervals.