Annie of the Undead (26 page)

The sound of sharp voices disrupted the nirvana
of my glorious down-home delicacy. The voices issued from a room
removed from the region of gathered guests, and one of the voices
was the unmistakably that of Bartholomew Rathstein.

Through the mostly closed door of a room down
the hall, I saw a woman standing. She was a tall blonde of
thirty-something, and she was in pajamas. She had her purse hanging
from her shoulder and was really upset, gesticulating with her arms
and speaking hushed tones to Rathstein, who was behind the door and
out of view.

“He’s run off again,” she said. “We can’t find
him anywhere.”

“Was he on his chain?” Rathstein asked.

“Victor felt sorry for him and let him off for a
while.”

“Well, that’s why. That was idiotic.”

“He usually comes to me, but I wasn’t there. He
never should have let him off without me there, and he’s so much
faster than anyone. There was no way they could catch him.”

“And now he’s going to tear up the neighborhood
again. For the cream of the crop, these people are awfully stupid
sometimes. Let’s hope he tears up a couple neighborhood cats and
goes home.”

“He might come here.”

“Why would he come here?”

“Because I was here. He follows me.”

“He’d better not interrupt my party. I’m not in
the mood to be taking any strays home.”

“Just watch out for him, Bart.”

I didn’t think anything of the conversation. So
a neighbor’s dog had run off and might butcher some cats –all for
best, considering how I felt about cats. There was nothing
noteworthy or unusual about the conversation. That’s what I
thought.

But the woman, along with the thing that had her
so upset that night –that putrid, fucked up thing, would turn out
to be a tremendous pain in the neck for me later on, in so many
ways. If only I had been vigilant…but I was busy scarfing chicken,
and I quickly lost interest in the conversation and wandered back
toward the den without giving the event further thought.

“Oh, you didn’t get me anything?”

Yoki looked pitifully at me. She immediately
began stealing chicken from me in retribution. Before long she had
the whole leg bone to gnaw.

Ferguson was playing reverently, but very badly,
due to his blood alcohol level, much to the amusement of the
gathered party. A couple of students were pretending to dance to
the music, equally badly. Jesus Christ actually lay down and put
his tiny forepaws over his ears. He whimpered dolefully.

“Henry, you ape, give it up! We’re all getting
drunk just listening to you,” said Rathstein, reentering the room
with flair.

“You push off, you” Ferguson belched, “ape. The
city’s gone to the dogs, and I intend to go with it. If any of you
are signing up for my classes next semester, don’t. I teach as
badly drunk as I play drunk, and, do be advised, I intend to be
drunk from here on out. To hell with all this cap…” he stumbled on
the word, “capitalistic…democratic…republicanism, all this voting.
Hanging chads, swinging chads, biflureated chads…God save the
Queen!”

“God save the Queen!” Yoki seconded with the
remainder of my chicken in her mouth.

The pretty-good-for-a-kid student spoke up
again. “Dr. Rathstein, why don’t you play something?”

“Yeah, play something, Dr. Rathstein!”

“Please play!”

“No, no. Not tonight,” Rathstein protested
ingenuinely.

Ferguson quit hashing away at the keys and
bellowed, “Go on, play for them, you old nag. It’s what you’ve been
wanting all evening.”

A few more protests, and Rathstein succumbed…to
his own vanity. Ferguson abandoned the bench, and Rathstein secured
it. With some small ado, he began to play what others identified as
The Antiques Roadshow theme, which garnered laughs. He then settled
down into something more serious, Beethoven, by request, to the
silent delight of all his rapt listeners.

In the middle of the first movement, my favorite
drunk girl stomped into the room, on the arm of a female friend and
wielding a diet cherry cola can like a queen’s scepter, and,
apparently oblivious to everyone’s quiet attentiveness to their
host’s rendition of the Moonlight Sonata, made an announcement.

“Does anybody know what happened to all our
fried chicken?”

At first, people ignored her, but, red-faced and
long hair tangled, she went on.

“Steph and I brought it, and we didn’t get any
of it, and (belch) now it’s gone.”

Rathstein stopped playing in response to the
escalation in her voice.

Now, I have been accused of opening my mouth
when I damn well shouldn’t, when no good can possibly come of it,
when it is likely to get my teeth knocked out of my face or worse.
This was just such a moment.

“I took the last piece, and I gave it Yoki. It
looked like community goods to me.”

Of course no one else owned up to the crime.

Yoki stood holding the telltale femur and
half-pelvis of a chicken thigh. There was just no hiding where at
least that much of the chicken had gone. I figured I would take the
heat off her, so I’d let the gnomes in.

I watched as the blonde’s face took on the
expression of someone who had just caught her husband in the back
of a jalopy with another woman –and I was that other woman. Her
forehead wrinkled up and her mouth twisted meanly.

I tell you, fried chicken is a powerful force in
the universe.

Surely, if wonderful Yoki had said what I said,
there would have been no problem. The two would have been hugging
in seconds and calling each other “carebear.” Alas, Ogre Annie had
said it, she who brings out the worst in all people, who turns good
people to homicide, who incites shipmates to mutiny, who causes
minor earthquakes.

By now everyone was listening and watching. Let
it be known there were witnesses.

Of course I threw gasoline on the fire.

“You don’t look like you need to be eatin’
anything else anyway.”

Bleach Blondie seemed to explode all at once. It
was as though pressure had been building inside her for some time,
like Old Faithful, and I just happened to get in the way at the
crucial moment.

“You bitch!” she exploded. “That was our
chicken. We brought it! Who do you think you are?”

“I’m Annie,” I said acidly.

Her friend tried to calm her. She put her hand
on Blondie’s arm and said, “Trish, come on. It’s no big deal. They
screwed up. We can eat something else.”

Trish wouldn’t be placated, even by her friend’s
skewed logic. The power of the One Wing (okay, thigh) was too
great. She yanked her arm away from her friend angrily and even
shoved her friend back.

Yoki was upon us in a second. She tried to
placate Trish, but even Yoki’s honey tongue couldn’t put the fire
out.

“Don’t you get in my face, bitch!” she snapped
at Yoki.

Then, unexpectedly to probably everyone except
me and my hyper-vigilance, she hauled off and slapped little Yoki
across the face.

I retaliated in a second, without a thought. I
punched the buggering blond right in the nose and watched as she
fell to the floor.

I drew my fist back and shook the sting out of
it. Trish immediately burst into tears. Blood ran down from her
nose onto her cleavage and pretty pink halter top. I wondered why
Jesus Christ wasn’t attacking her like a barracuda; a man down
would seem his natural queue to go all apeshit. People started
gathering around. I instinctively reacted to them as though they
might attack me next. I eyed them all, but no one came near me.

I checked on Yoki. She was on the verge of tears
–violence was not her thing. But she was looking at me with her
familiar “you’ve done it again, and how am I going to get you out
of this one” look.

Ferguson loomed overhead.

“My goodness, Trish Danes. What have you gone
and done this time? Has someone finally socked you in the
nose?”

Others tried to console Trish. Someone ran for
ice. But Trish would have neither consoling nor ice. She clambered
to her feet, her face all tears and blood and flushed cheeks, and
she made a inept try for me.

A lot of hands stopped her. She spat curses at
me, then calmed enough that the others released her. Through the
whole thing, amazingly, she managed never to drop her soda can. She
shook off their hands, spit at me, missed, and stormed her way
through the crowd towards the front door. Her friend Steph glared
at me also, then followed Trish.

“Hightailing it so soon, Trish old gal? I always
would’ve thought you’d’ve had more in’ve…uh…you’ve,” Henry Ferguson
called after her, followed by a large belch.

“Trish got really hurt, Dr. Ferguson,” the
Mozart-shirted boy explained, eyeing me.

“Good for her,” he continued, undaunted. “Builds
character, something she could use lots of.”

No one argued with him.

“Come on, old man,” Cynthia said, steadying him.
“I think it’s time to get you home before you say something that
gets you fired.”

“I have tenure.” Ferguson slurred. Then he
leaned toward me. “I never had the chance to meet you, girl. What’s
your name?”

“Annie,” I answered.

“Annie,” he breathed liquor fumes and slurred in
my face, “I’ve got to pack it in now, but before I topple over I
just want to say –and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: keep up
the good work.”

Cynthia smiled at everyone apologetically and
directed teetering Ferguson away from the crowd.

“Trish is not a member of the Political
Society,” Yoki said, also apologetically.

I perused the cuts and incipient swelling on my
first two knuckles.

“So, Yoki.” Came Rathstein’s voice disquietingly
close behind me. “Your friend is full of surprises.”

“That’s why I love her,” Yoki answered. “Not the
first time she’s saved me from a beating. Golly! Did you see how
she socked that tart! Right on the nose!”

“I saw,” Rathstein answered dryly, “and I saw
her break it. That girl is going to have medical bills.” He said to
me, “She just might bring this back to you.”

I didn’t answer him. I was through talking for
the night. I was through with him. I was through with
everything.

“Yo, your ride is leaving,” I said.

“Oh, I’m coming,” she agreed, possibly a smidgen
sobered by the sting in her cheek.

Yoki said a few goodnights, Rathstein being one.
I didn’t care to read his looks. But Yoki made it quick, gathered
Jesus Christ up from his place on the carpet, and within two
minutes we were headed out the door.

Jeanne left too, off with another friend.

I closed the red door behind us with a huge
inner sigh of relief.

Yoki and I went down the walk. The drunk girl
had spilled her soda on the way out. It sprawled from its crumpled
can onto the walkway in a dark puddle of stickiness. Yoki stepped
in it, cursed in irritation, and wiped her foot on the lawn before
proceeding.

“She’s not even here and she’s still pissing us
off,” she said. She turned to me, “Quite a night, my girl. I bet
I’ll never get you to a party again.”

“Maybe,” I yawned, “one with all the people
safely sequestered in cages.”

“Ooh,” she cooed, “sounds kinky. So, what did
you think?”

“Somebody makes really good fried chicken.”

“No, silly. What do you think of Rathstein?” she
asked, suspecting my reply.

“He’s fifty years old and hits on you like a
nineteen-year-old.”

“You can’t blame old Bartholomew for that.
Everyone does it.”

She scratched Jesus Christ’s little, scruffy
head. In an unprecedented show of placidity, he was already out
like a light.

“A blundering zeppelin of patronization.”

She poked me.

“He’s a type, Yoki. He’s not my type.”

“When will I get to meet your type?”

“You’re a sly one.”

“When? At the Riff? For the Demonseed
concert?”

“I’m not thinking about that tonight. You’ve
already killed your share of my brain cells.”

Maybe I would have been nicer to her if I had
known that that night, such as it was, was the last normal evening
Yoki and I were going to have together. Normal was going to change
real fast.

As we pulled away, this time to the sound of
Elton Jon’s “Rocket Man” from Yoki’s spaceship mix, I looked out
into the night, and I wondered not if Yoki would ever meet Vampire
Miguel, but if Vampire Annie would ever eat Yoki.

Miguel met me on the steps of the Banana Grove.
This time, he was warm –not 98.6 degrees –but warm for him. He had
very recently fed, but that did not keep him off me.

“Aren’t we playful tonight,” I commented as his
hands went to places I would have decked anyone else for
touching.

He pinched me.

“Ow!”

“You did not tell me you had a tattoo
there.”

“Yeah, because I knew you’d make a big deal out
of it.”

“How could I not with what it is?”

“If you tell anyone about it, I’ll skin you
alive –uh, I mean dead. –Ow! Would you stop it? Old Man’s right
over there.”

He was doing that thing with my neck again.

“What is up with you?”

“I have tasted you, Annie,” he whispered in my
ear.

“Oh, so now you get to rub scent on me like a
cat every time you see me? Newsflash: there’s no one else around
here to compete with. So give me some air. Air!”

I pushed him away. He grinned, showing all his
teeth, but it wasn’t his teeth that got to me, it was the look in
his eyes, like he had some wicked surprise for me and could hardly
wait to make it known.

“Creepy,” I said, pointing. “Just creepy.”

We were on our way back from our (my) favorite
little café near Jackson Square, playfully jabbing the voodoo dolls
we had made of each other at a craft table and pantomiming the
trauma supposedly caused by each jab, when the first thing
happened. We were on the opposite side of the street from the crack
house where the local dealer brokered his deals, when Miguel
suddenly stopped dead and put an iron hand on my chest, stopping me
dead too.