"Name a price then, don't keep me waiting."
"I'm not keeping you waiting. You're harassing me. I could call a cop."
"You can't afford to call a cop, kid. Think you're pretty ass is going to pull in more than this?" The businessman waved the money in front of Tim's face.
"I'm not selling myself to you or to anybody else. Go home and jerk off in front of the mirror if you want company."
Tim turned around and climbed the steps to the residence.
"Punk kid!" the businessman yelled.
Tim opened the door and walked into the lobby. Jones snored loudly. The desk remained unmanned, and the elevator didn't work. He climbed the stairs, thinking about Sade. What would Sade do for him? Introduce him to bisexual orgies with women who were capable of killing? Sade didn't want to help; he wanted to use him just the same as that businessman in the street. I'd slip deeper and deeper into the same circle of shit my mother did.
Tim gently knocked on Edwina's door.
"Come in," she called.
He tried the knob and the door opened."Should keep that door locked," he told her.
"Figured you'd be coming back and didn't want to get up. Tomorrow I'll see if I can have a key made for you."
An old movie from the era when Edwina was young was on the television. She had a cup of tea and a bag of cookies next to her. She lay sprawled across the crocheted bedspread, two pillows bunched up behind her shoulders.
"Saw this movie on my first date with my first husband. Such a character. Cheap. Used to bring a brown bag of goodies to the movie theater so he wouldn't have to pay the higher price at the theater. I loved ice cream and told him so. Next movie date he hands me a melting Klondike Bar. Wonder why I married him." She appeared to be attempting to answer that in her own mind.
Tim sat on the floor, his back up against the wall. "Remember you told me you could get me a job interview?" he asked.
Edwina perked up. "I sure did. Wouldn't be much of a job, but it'd be a start. Larry's always short on kitchen help. I don't know whether it's the money he pays or his disposition, but he can't seem to hold on to help for very long. I'd speak to him, though, and make sure he treated you decent, also do a little negotiating for you in the salary department. Get yourself a few dollars to buy a nice suit, and you'll be able to find yourself a real job."
"What's a real job?"
"One that you can have pride in. Someone asks you what you do, you can look that person in the face and tell him."
"Yeah, that's what I want. A real home too, not sleeping in dives like this with the rats outnumbering the people."
"Sometimes the people are the rats."
"I know." Tim laughed. "My mom tried, didn't she?"
"Yes, Tim. But you have to try harder," Edwina replied.
"Think you could give your friend a call tomorrow?"
"How about tonight?" Edwina muted the television and picked up the telephone receiver.
"Isn't it too late?"
"Hell, he's probably still at the restaurant cleaning up. I'll make an appointment for you for tomorrow afternoon. Say about three o'clock. That would be in between the lunch and dinner crowds. Like Italian food?
"Tim nodded.
"Then you'll love this job."
"Speaking of food, think we could spare some coffee and a roll for Jones tomorrow morning?" Tim asked.
Chapter Fifty-nine.
Cecelia sat cross-legged on the ground. The tarp-wrapped skull rested in her arms as her baby once had. This was no baby, she knew; the skull could potentially conjure up the most hated woman in Sade's life. Slowly Cecelia unwrapped the tarp, laying the scorched skull bare. Her hands worked the texture of the skull, feeling the bumps and a solitary patch of glacial smoothness. She recalled Sade telling her of Dr. Ramon, who was his last treating physician. The doctor had been eager to perform an autopsy on Louis. Claude-Armand, Louis's younger son, refused to permit the procedure and had a Mass quickly said at Charenton. Louis was supposedly buried in the Charenton asylum cemetery with a stone lowered over the grave. The stone had no inscription; only a simple cross marked what most believed was Louis's final resting place.
Dr. Ramon continued to insist on an autopsy, and many years later he managed to have a body exhumed from Louis's grave, a body of a simple monk who had lived his life in prayer, dedicated to the service of God. Therefore, when Dr. Ramon studied the skull within the confines of phrenology, he found that the skull belonged to someone who had ''a complete lack of ferocity." A skull consistent with "a Father of the Church." How Louis had laughed when he told the story, deception being his favorite pastime.
What would a man like Dr. Ramon say about the skull she held in her hands?
She held the skull high in the air over her head. A quarter moon flashed briefly in one of the eye sockets.
"I need your help, Marie. I have revenged Liliana and left a victor. For now. If he comes for me, I don't know how I could defeat him. Help me, Marie, and I will avenge what he did to you."
An owl hooted, and she heard the soft rustle of nearby shrubs. Prey escaping? Or attracting its predator?
Cecelia looked around the small cemetery in which she sat. Most graves were marked with simple headstones. An occasional angel rose above the monotony of tombstones. An elaborate stone Bible lay open upon a stone pedestal.
Lowering the skull, she studied its uniqueness; the cavities, the scorch scars that defaced the structure. It was very difficult to believe this skull had any powers. Perhaps it was only a token of a war now over. But Louis had been assiduous in the keeping of this memento. There had to be a reason.
A figure drew her attention to the far end of the cemetery. A lone male bundled in black walked the cemetery. His flaxen hair fell forward, covering most of his face. He carried flowers: roses, carnations, and lilies. Every few feet he would lay a flower in front of a tombstone. He skipped the angels and didn't even go near the Bible. He centered his attention on the simplest markers.
Quickly Cecelia wrapped the skull and jumped to her feet. Holding the skull under her right arm, she pulled away from the approaching figure. Still he came closer, his long white fingers tipped with nails shaped in the likeness of claws.
The man could not be Sade. His gait was different, less frenetic. A good deal taller than Sade, he towered above the markers, bending his knees slightly to drop a lily or a carnation or a rose.
Ready to run, she turned toward the ramshackle gate that no longer protected its inhabitants. She would have fled, except she did not know where to go. Her soil and her coffin remained at the Victorian house, but she dared not return. Even if she found the house empty and her own coffin still in one piece, she would not trust Louis not to tamper with her soil. He could now be filling her coffin with San Francisco dirt after having disposed of her home soil. Irked by the thought, she kicked a stone at her feet. Not that she had believed he would take no vengeance, but she was sorry she hadn't thought the matter out more; she rued the fact that she had missed her chance to exchange Louis's soil. Instead she had acted wildly, tossing the coffin out the window, destroying the trap she could have set.
So engrossed in her thoughts, she had almost forgotten the figure that now stood several feet from her. The straight flaxen hair hung in strands in front of the bowed head. He seemed to be blocked by her presence. Finally he took a lily from the bouquet he carried and offered the flower to her.She stood tall before the figure and asked, "Who are you?"
He raised his head, and she saw green pools where his eyes should be. The whites had been drowned out; only a rich, deep green colored the eyes.
"The flowers are for the dead," he said. "This one is for you."
"Do I look like I just crawled up out of one of these graves?" she asked indignantly.
He tilted his head to the side, causing some strands of hair to spread apart, revealing parts of his face. His features were even, his lips neither fat nor thin, his nose neither long nor stubby. His eyes round with anguish.
"I know what you are," he said.
"You know me from the clubs?"
"We have never met before. Please take the lily. I want to bring you peace."
Cecelia stepped back several paces. "You still have not told me who you are."
"You would flee, but are afraid to turn your back on me. Wise."
"I'm not afraid. There is nothing you can do to me."
"I am a child of yours."
"Please. You're years older than I am."
"I can't move on until you have accepted the flower." His hand still held the lily before him.
"Then you'll just have to back up."
"I can't go back. I can only go forward."
"Okay. Throw the flower at my feet."
His eyes darkened into muddied earth. He tossed the lily on the ground before her.
"You're half-vampire, aren't you? Your eyes change the way Liliana's did."
"I do not know Liliana."
"Do you live here in the graveyard?" she asked.
He nodded, turning to point in the direction of a cluster of trees. Beyond the trees, almost hidden from view, was a weathered shack.
"That's just the caretaker's shed," she said.
"And my home."
"You're the caretaker here. You do take care of the dead." Cecelia moved past the man, trying to obtain a better view of the shack. "And your name?""I am whoever you want me to be."
She immediately turned her head toward him.
"I want a name. Don't play with me."
"Call me Justin, then."
"Justin, I'm Cecelia, and I want to see your home. You see, I find myself homeless right now and may need a place to . . . to meditate. I have to make a long journey. I must go home, to where I was born."
Justin nodded. "You are without home soil. That is why you sit here alone in a cemetery."
"You say you help the dead, Justin. Show me mercy."
Justin took the bouquet and placed it at the foot of the oldest and most decrepit headstone.
His gait grew stronger as he led her across the cemetery to his home.
The windows were covered with cardboard. The wood was gray from age, and the door seemed to be fastened with a thin wire. He walked past the shack, and in the distance she could see a lone mausoleum. Marble spiraled in columns on either side of a metal door. Rust covered the very bottom of the door, but the rest of the door had obviously been scraped and painted recently. The body of the mausoleum was made of stone that had been stained by rain and moss. Justin reached for the door handle, and the metal squeaked with age as he pulled it back.
"You live here?" she whispered. She walked past the man and entered the mausoleum.
A number of small rectangular doors lined the wails on either side of her. She assumed the ashes of a family member lay behind each door. Before her was a well-kept wooden casket, polished to shine; a painted portrait was centered just below the lid's closure. She moved closer, and saw a beautiful woman dressed in seven- teenth-century attire. She heard the door squeak closed. The light dimmed, but not her eyesight.
On the floor to her right was a horsehair mattress covered with a rough-textured blanket. A wooden recorder lay next to the bed.
"You play?" she asked.
"Mother taught me when I was a child. She loved music."
"You still play for her?" she asked, turning once again toward the casket.
"Yes," he answered.
"Your mother lies in the casket. You stand guard over her. She was mortal?"
"No," he answered. "She is like you."
Wary, Cecelia moved closer to the door. "Then she's only sleeping."
"Both my parents are sleeping. Only my father sleeps deeper and in peace, for he was mortal."Justin went to the casket and opened the lid; at the same time Cecelia placed her hand on the handle of the door. He threw the lid back and invited her to view his mother.
Cecelia let go of the handle and with small steps approached the casket. Eventually she saw shriveled, mummified remains laid out on a pinkish-yellow satin. A stake pierced the chest where the heart should be.
"Who did this to her?"
"I did."
"To your own mother."
"And creator," he said.
"Why?"
"To give her peace from the rampaging to which she was shackled. She wounded, killed, and sometimes replicated, but not without conscience. Mother missed Father desperately when he died. You see, he did not want to live her life, and she, causing her own unhappiness, honored his wish. Sometimes I would go hunting with her, but I do not thirst for the blood. Ordinary food can nourish my body. And unlike you, I will grow old."
"And die?"
"I have met no one like myself, so my future is a mystery to me."
"You're the only human child she birthed?"
He nodded.