gazpacho?”
“A sort of vegetable soup.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“No.”
“So you drink blood? Just like I drink V8?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “If you get sick of drinking V8 you can drink something else.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Actually, I don’t like V8 much.”
“See?” she said. “In China it’s not blood, they drink, it’s spinal fluid.”
“What’s that taste like?”
“Nothing much. Clear broth.”
“You’ve tried it?”
“I know people.”
I tried to figure out if I could see her reflection in the wing mirror of the truck we were leaning against, but it was dark, and I couldn’t tell.
15.
THE DEVIL
This is his portrait. Look at his flat, yellow teeth, his ruddy face. He has horns, and he carries a foot-long wooden stake in one hand, and his wooden mallet in the other.
Of course, there is no such thing as the devil.
16.
THE TOWER
The tower’s built of spit and spite,
Without a sound, without a sight.
The biter bit, the bitter bite.
(It’s better to be out at night.)
17.
THE STAR
The older, richer, ones follow the winter, taking the long nights where they find them. Still, they prefer the northern hemisphere to the south.
“You see that star?” they say, pointing to one of the stars in the constellation of Draco, the Dragon. “We came from there. One day we shall return.”
The younger ones sneer and jeer and laugh at this. Still, as the years become centuries, they find themselves becoming homesick for a place they have never been; and they find the northern climes reassuring, as long as Draco twines about the greater and lesser Bears, up near chill Polaris.
19.
THE SUN
“Imagine,” she said, “that there was something in the sky that was going to hurt you, perhaps even kill you. A huge eagle or something. Imagine that if you went out in daylight the eagle would get you.”
“Well,” she said. “That’s how it is for us. Only it’s not a bird. It’s bright, beautiful, dangerous daylight, and I haven’t seen it now in a hundred years.”
20.
JUDGEMENT
It’s a way of talking about lust without talking about lust, he told them.
It is a way of talking about sex, and fear of sex, and death, and fear of death, and what else is there to talk about?
21.
THE WORLD
“You know the saddest thing,” she said. “The saddest thing is that we’re you.”
I said nothing.
“In your fantasies,” she said, “my people are just like you. Only better. We don’t die, or age, or suffer from pain or cold or thirst. We’re snappier dressers. We posses the wisdom of the ages. And if we crave blood, well, it is no more than the way you people crave food, or affection, or sunlight — and besides, it gets us out of the house. Crypt. Coffin. Whatever.”
“And the truth is?” I asked her.
“We’re you,” she said. “We’re you, with all your fuckups and all the things that make you human — all your fears and lonelinesses and confusions . . . none of that gets better.
“But we’re colder than you are. Deader. I miss daylight and food and knowing how it feels to touch someone and care. I remember life, and meeting people as people and not just as things to feed on or control, and I remember what it was to feel something, anything, happy or sad or anything . . .” And then she stopped.
“Are you crying?” I asked.
“We don’t cry,” she told me. Like I said, the woman was a liar.
EATEN
(SCENES FROM A MOVING PICTURE)
INT. WEBSTER’S OFFICE. DAY
As WEBSTER sits
reading the LA Times, MCBRIDE walks in
and tells in
FLASHBACK
how his SISTER came
to Hollywood eleven months ago
to make her fortune, and to meet the stars.
Of how he’d heard from friends that she’d “gone strange”.
Imagining the needle, or far worse,
he travels out to Hollywood himself
and finds her standing underneath a bridge.
Her skin is pale. She screams at him “Get lost!”
and sobs and runs. A TALL MAN DRESSED IN BLACK
grabs hold his sleeve, tells him to let it drop
“Forget your sister,” but of course he can’t…
(IN SEPIA
we see the two as teens,
a YOUNG MCBRIDE and SISTER way back when,
giggles beneath the porch, “I’ll show you mine,”
closer perhaps than siblings ought to be…
PAN UP
to watch a passing butterfly.
We hear them breathe and fumble in the dark:
IN CLOSE-UP now he spurts into her hand,
she licks her palm: first makes a face, then smiles…
HOLD on her lips and teeth and on her tongue).
END FLASHBACK
Webster says he’ll take the case,
says something flip and hard about LA,
like how it eats young girls and spits them out,
and takes a hundred dollars on account.
CUT TO
THE PURPLE PUSSY. INT. A DIVE,
THREE NAKED WOMEN