Vamparazzi (9 page)

I could practically
hear
Thack sitting up straighter. Lots of actors wanted a new agent, of course; but not many of them were employed actors getting good reviews in a high-profile show.

“Yes,” I said. “His agent is quitting show business to go raise goat cheese.”

“Goats,” Leischneudel whispered, still standing right in front of me.

“Well, not everyone loves agenting,” Thack said magnanimously.

“Or vampires,” I noted.

“It's a thing,” he repeated. “Don't even get me started.”

“So we'll expect to see you tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“There'll be a ticket waiting for you at the box office.”

After ending the call, I decided I would claim
both
of Daemon's VIP seats for tomorrow's performance. I called Maximillian Zadok, who lived and worked only a few blocks away from the Hamburg, and invited him to the show, too. He accepted my invitation with pleasure. Max had wanted to come sooner, but he'd been unable to get a ticket to the sold-out run. And, well, what with all the groping and pawing my inadequately clad character endured onstage, I'd been a little recalcitrant about securing a seat for him before now.

As I ended the call and returned Leischneudel's cell phone to him, we heard Bill, the stage manager, say over the backstage intercom system, “Places for Act One. Curtain in five minutes. Please take your places for Act One.” He sounded depressed.

“That's us,” said Leischneudel, donning his elegant Regency frock coat as I opened the door to exit the dressing room. He followed me out into the hallway.

He and I opened the show each night. The play's first scene portrayed the two of us exchanging letters which established that Aubrey was traveling in Europe with the mysterious Lord Ruthven, whom he'd met at a party in London, while Jane managed her brother's household back in England. Correspondence between the siblings was one of several ways that this stage adaptation restructured Polidori's story to make it thriftily accommodate a cast of only four people, as well as minimal scene changes.

As we made our way to the wings, Leischneudel asked me about the man whom I had just used his cell phone to invite to tomorrow night's performance. “Is Max a friend?”

“Yes, a close friend.”

“A potential boyfriend?” he prodded.

Leischneudel had a sweetheart in Pennsylvania whom he usually saw twice a month, and he was eager to improve his income to the point where he felt he could propose marriage to her. I had met Mary Ann briefly a few weeks ago; a nice, level-headed girl, less pretty than Leischneudel and every bit as polite. Happy in love, Leischneudel wanted to see me having a happy love life, too.

However, given the way that had been going this year—I met someone I really liked, then nearly got him killed
twice
—I had decided to put romance on the shelf for a while.

“No, Max isn't boyfriend material,” I said. “He's, uh, more like an eccentric uncle.”

“He's older?” Leischneudel guessed.

“Yes,” I said. “A senior citizen, I guess you'd say—though I rarely think of him that way.”

In fact, although he didn't look a day over 70, Max was closer to 350, thanks to accidentally drinking a mysterious and never-replicated alchemic potion in his twenties—back in the seventeenth century. The elixir hadn't made him immortal, but it ensured he'd been aging at an unusually slow rate ever since. Fighting Evil for the past three centuries or so had kept him fairly fit, and constant study and extensive travel had expanded his agile (if sometimes befuddled) mind. His courtly manners, however, did not seem to have changed a great deal since the powdered-wig era.

I thought again about Max seeing Daemon fondle me onstage and figured, oh, well, it was too late to
un
invite him. Besides, he was a man of the world, after all—albeit the Old World.

Leischneudel asked, “Will he be all right, rubbing shoulders with the vamparazzi?”

“Oh, he'll be fine,” I said confidently. “Max has dealt with stranger things than vamparazzi.”

Come to think of it, so had I.

I added, “Thack, on the other hand, sounds like he'll be a bit perturbed by the whole scene.”

“I really appreciate you mentioning me to him.”

“It's my pleasure, Leischneudel.”

We stopped talking when we reached the darkened wings and started preparing mentally for the performance. After a few moments of silence, we gave each other a quick “break a leg” hug, then took our places onstage.

We wound up waiting there for about fifteen minutes. The frenzy outside on the street spread into the lobby as people who'd been unable to get tickets tried to force their way into the theater. We later heard there were some more arrests. However, despite that distraction and the late start, the first show went fine.

Between performances, I repaired my hair and makeup in my dressing room while waiting for our usual pizzas to be delivered, then I joined Leischneudel in his dressing room to eat. We used towels as bibs to avoid staining our costumes while we ate our late supper, trying to satisfy our hunger without getting so full we'd feel sluggish onstage afterward. Back in my dressing room, Mad Rachel was picking at her own pizza while whining loudly to her mother, who apparently didn't mind being telephoned so close to midnight.

Daemon, as usual, retreated alone to his own dressing room. Despite the pretense that the star replenished his strength with a bottle of blood between shows, I assumed that Victor discreetly slipped some food (or at least a protein shake) into his room when everyone else was onstage. I also assumed this was why one of the few restrictions on Tarr's access to Daemon was that he wasn't allowed in the vampire's dressing room during or between shows, though Daemon claimed (reasonably) that it was because he needed to focus and recharge in solitude.

Unfortunately, rather than simply leave the theater and go live his life, this meant that Tarr often prowled around backstage, bothering the rest of us. Tonight he barged into Leischneudel's dressing room to try to get me to answer some questions, as Daemon's “costar” in the show. (Actually, Leischneudel was the costar; and Tarr had already cornered and interviewed him.)

I was about to decline again when I realized that if I just gave Tarr his damn interview, he'd finally leave me alone. So, finishing my supper, I nodded in acquiescence and gestured to the only unoccupied chair in Leischneudel's small, stark dressing room.

To my surprise, Tarr had done his homework and was familiar with my career, including my stint as a chorus nymph this past spring in the fantasy-oriented
Sorcerer!,
a short-lived musical staged at a theater only a few blocks from here. He also complimented me on my recent appearance as a prostitute on
D30
(which was what fans of
The Dirty Thirty
affectionately called the gritty crime drama).

“You were really convincing as a streetwise crack whore,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, pleased—after all, it was my
job
to be convincing. “The writing on that show is so good, I really enjoyed that role.”

Surprising me again, because it was a better question than I had expected of him, Tarr asked, “So what's it like to go from that role to playing Jane, a virginal, sheltered woman living two hundred years ago?”

So I talked for a little while about how I had prepared for a historical role, and the different choices I employed in body language, diction, tone, attitude, and facial expressions when playing a genteel Regency lady, as compared to playing a drug-addicted hooker living on the streets of New York's 30th Precinct.

And then Tarr decided to stop humoring me. “So fans are wondering, as you must know, how real is the sexual heat between you and Daemon onstage? And does it extend to your offstage lives?”

“There
is
no sexual heat between me and Daemon onstage,” I said firmly. “It's between Jane and Ruthven. Offstage, Daemon Ravel and I are colleagues and scant acquaintances, nothing more. Which you already know, Al, since you're with him day and night!”

“Yeah, but I gotta ask the question,” he said with his perpetual grin. “So how
about
onstage? What's going on between the two of you there? And don't say ‘nothing,' because everyone in the audience already knows better.”

“Well, Jane is completely ensnared by the handsome, worldly aristocrat who's wooing and seducing her. And since Daemon's performance is so good, that's easy for me to play, of course,” I lied.

Actually, I thought Jane should have her head examined. Ruthven's courtship of her was openly predatory and nearly sadistic at times, he was almost certainly a fortune hunter, and his conversations with her consisted of nonstop sexual innuendo. If I were on a date with this guy, I'd feign an attack of appendicitis after the first half hour.

But I wasn't reckless enough to say any of this to Tarr, whose article would be read by Daemon's volatile (and occasionally violent) fans.

Tarr proceeded to ask more “probing” questions about the heavily eroticized tone of Daemon's interaction with me, which I continued deftly (and accurately) reframing as Ruthven's interaction with Jane.

“I know Daemon likes to improvise,” Tarr said after a few minutes. “And I've heard the two of you, uh, discussing it backstage. How do those unscripted moments come about between the two of you, and how do you feel onstage when he fondles your—”

“Please stop right there,” said Leischneudel, who'd been listening silently until now. “You'll need to change the subject, Mr. Tarr, or else leave my dressing room.”

Sure, he was scared of vamparazzi; but he was quite capable of standing up to Daemon or Tarr on my behalf. I was capable of it, too, but I appreciated the support. I smiled at him to let him know.

“Whoa,” said Tarr, his gaze flashing gleefully back and forth between the two of us. “Looks like I've been barking up the wrong leading man. So the two of you are an item?”

“No,”
we said in unison.

“I'm practically engaged!” Leischneudel added.

“Ah, so you don't want your girl to find out about you and Esther,” Tarr surmised, grinning.

“Mary Ann knows about Esther,” Leischneudel said. “I mean, she's met Esther. I mean, there's nothing
to
know!”

Obviously enjoying himself, Tarr said with mock sincerity, “You mean, you and Miss Diamond are just
good friends?
”

Leischneudel's jaw dropped at how sleazy Tarr made the phrase sound, then he looked to me for help.

I shook my head, indicating we should just ignore it. Then I said to Tarr, “I think we're done here, Al.”

“Just one more question!”

“No.”

“A real one this time,” he promised.

I sighed. “Fine. Then the interview is finished, over,
done.
”

“Okay.” He paused, apparently trying to build suspense, before saying, “What's it like to work with a vampire?”

I blinked. “
That's
your ‘real' question?”

He shrugged. “I gotta ask it.”

I thought it over, then said truthfully, “Actually, it's pretty much like working with anyone else.” After all, it wasn't as if I had never before worked with someone who had a few pretensions or eccentricities.

“You gotta give me more than that,” Tarr said.

“Why do I have to give you more than that? In one sitting, you've implied that I'm sleeping with each of my male costars. Throw in Mad Rachel as my lesbian lover, and you'll achieve a perfect trifecta of slander.”

“You call her Mad Rachel?”

I said to Leischneudel, “Oops. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“No, no,” Tarr said, waving his notebook in the air as if to assure me he wouldn't use that slip of the tongue in his article. “It suits her. And she drives Daemon
nuts
. Remember a few nights ago? He's onstage alone, rising from the dead by the light of the moon, replenished and renewed after drinking Ianthe's blood, and the audience is so absorbed in the moment you could hear a pin drop in that theater—”

“And then everyone heard Rachel yakking into her cell phone backstage,” I said dryly. “Oh, yes. I remember.”

Leischneudel caught my eye and giggled. We
all
remembered. Daemon had gone on a rampage that night. But despite his star status and the fact that he was dramatically impressive in his rage, Rachel had blown him off like a cheap attempt at a pick-up in a hotel bar. Her crass indifference to the show, the audience, and his anger left Daemon sputtering and discombobulated. It was the one time in our entire acquaintance when I sympathized with him.

I consoled myself with the knowledge that, with behavior like that, Rachel's career in our profession would be short-lived, despite how pretty she was and how well her voice carried to the back row. However, that knowledge wasn't much of a comfort while I was still nightly sharing a dressing room with her.

“Speaking of lesbian lovers,” said Tarr, “when I was out in Hollywood—”

“
Were
we speaking of lesbian lovers?”

“Yeah. You and Mad Rachel.”

I said in exasperation, “We're
not
—”

“Hah! Gotcha! Just kidding.” Tarr winked at me. I found that quite grotesque for some reason. “Anyhow, when I was out in Hollywood, there was this
big
star I covered who was a secret lesbo. So one night—”

“I've got a second show to go perform,” I said quickly, feeling like a cornered animal as Tarr began one of his Hollywood anecdotes. “We're finished here, Al.”