Earthly Delights (22 page)

I gave Ms White the prospectus and James’s address and saw her to the door. Then I shut it and leaned against it. My breath was catching in my throat.

‘You came in to see me naked in my bath,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, lounging on my couch with Horatio.

‘I would like to see you naked,’ I said.

‘So you shall,’ he said agreeably, and bent to unlatch his boots.

One of the most erotic experiences of my life was unfolding in front of me. Without making a vulgar display but with an air of rather shy pride, Daniel took off his boots, shucked the leather jacket and undid the white shirt. He was so beautiful that I had to blink to stay conscious. The lines of his shoulders and back were perfect. Sculptural. Michelangelo would have
been groping for his chisel, or other things. He didn’t have that heavy bodybuilder’s Schwarzenegger bulk. He was a climber and a runner. The muscles were all long and smooth. I watched as his shirt fell away from his torso and dropped to the floor.

I saw that a star-shaped scar marred the beauty of his hip as his jeans slid down his thighs. He took them off and then the prosaic black briefs and there was Daniel. He allowed me to stare at his front, then turned slowly to exhibit his back. He was a mannerist Saint Stephen without the arrows.

I don’t remember crossing the floor but I found myself standing behind him. My hands slid down those rounded buttocks and found the exit wound, another star-shaped scar on his back. His skin was as hot as fire. I wrapped my arms around him from behind and laid my face between his shoulderblades. His skin tasted salty.

‘Yes?’ he asked, not moving. I felt him shiver.

‘Not yet,’ I forced myself to say. I couldn’t, not yet. I just couldn’t. I sank down on the couch and watched as he resumed his garments, again without any hurry.

‘But soon,’ he said. I nodded. Certainly, soon. Otherwise I was likely to self-combust. I laid a hand on the scar as his jeans slid up his admirable thighs.

‘That’s a bullet wound?’

‘Shrapnel, from a grenade,’ he said. ‘It was curved so it left a big scar. The boy who inflicted it died. So much evil,’ he said. Then he gathered me close to his chest in a massive hug. ‘And now, so much good,’ he said.

‘The boy died?’ I asked, sensing that I was about to find the key to Daniel. A key, anyway.

‘Of course,’ he said, face muffled in my hair. ‘I shot him. Killed him instantly. He was fourteen.’

I held him close. He did not cry. I expect that he had
already wept all the tears he had for futility and horror and nightmare. He unbuttoned my shirt and laid his face against my breast. We did not speak.

The light began to wane. I watched the sunbeams travel from one side of the window to the other before Daniel sat up and kissed me, hard, on the mouth.

‘Corinna,’ he said, looking deep into my eyes.

‘Daniel,’ I replied.

‘I must go. Now, you can ask me. Ask me anything you want to know.’

I couldn’t think of anything to ask but, ‘Where do you live? How can I find you?’

He let go of me to write down an address and a phone number on the memo pad. Then he said, ‘Ask,’ and I asked the question which I really couldn’t phrase properly.

‘Why do you find me beautiful?’

‘Because you are,’ he said simply. ‘Think of where I have been, what I have seen. In Palestine, thin means hungry, starving, sick. In Melbourne, thin means a child, a heroin addict or an anorexic. I love your flesh, your curves.’ He caressed my thigh and hip. ‘May they never grow less,’ he added. ‘I am going,’ he said, and kissed me again, and went. He remembered the bread and the flyers for Cherie Holliday and closed the door gently behind himself.

I simply didn’t know what to think, or feel, and I sat on the couch until the sky was dark and it was time to feed cats and myself and go to bed. So I did those things, and dreamed fiercely erotic dreams which woke me at four flooded with heat, sweating freely, and in need of a nice cold shower.

The morning began ordinary and continued so until nine. I rose, I baked, I taught Jason more useful facts about yeast, I fed him and the cats and myself and sold most of the morning’s
bread. I made some phone calls. Meroe came in. She seemed pleased. She was wearing a red silk wrap with sacred ibis embroidered on it.

‘How did the ritual go?’ I asked, handing over blueberry muffins and knot rolls.

‘Very well. Should bring her within three days. I gave Andy some herbal tea. I think he might have slept. Alcoholics don’t sleep properly. Cheer up, Corinna! So far today our own little mental health casualty hasn’t done anything unusual.’

‘The day is young,’ I said gloomily. I had half expected to see Daniel. But it was too early for those who fly by night.

Meroe asked, ‘Who are you going to get to help you in the shop now that those girls have an honest job?’

‘I really don’t know.’ I sighed. ‘As for the other problems, I have set up a meeting with James and I intend to skin him alive.’

‘What if it isn’t him?’ she asked.

‘Then on general principle. Do him good. Why? Do you suspect someone else?’

She made a fluid gesture with the red silk wrap.

‘It is an illogical universe until you discover the underlying sense,’ she told me.

‘I understood everything you said until the bit about “underlying sense”,’ I said.

Meroe went out. Goss came in.

‘I can help out until Friday,’ she said. ‘And if you could give me the wages up to then I could get my dress early.’

‘Carol will keep it for you,’ I said soothingly. I do not pay wages in advance. Carol Holland, though she is a Goth whose features are hard to discern through that thick white pancake they wear, is a reliable young woman and she and Goss were quite close. I told Goss so. She grimaced.

‘Don’t do that too often, the wind might change,’ I warned her.

She got behind the counter to complain to Horatio, who never minds complaints as long as they are accompanied by skilled ear-tickling and fur-caressing.

‘So, you’ve been to Blood Lines before?’ I asked. ‘How did you come to go there? Just a whim?’

Silence. Goss wasn’t talking to me yet.

‘Have you actually read
Interview with a Vampire
?’ I continued. ‘It’s quite a remarkable book. Started a whole fashion. If it hadn’t been for Anne Rice, Buffy would never have existed. Or Angel. No one has tried to make vampires sexy since the Hammer horror movies. I was there for the revivals. Christopher Lee. They used to film them in Highgate Cemetery near where I lived in London. He was a very suave, very cool vampire. “I vont to drink your blode.” ’

I managed the accent with the effortless ease of someone who had seen every Hammer horror movie, even
The Revenge of Dr Phibes
. Actually, I had seen them in secret. Grandma would not have approved of vampire movies. So they had a sweet, secret charm. My adolescent rebellion. That, and cigarettes of course. Of the two, Hammer was only slightly less addictive.

‘I saw the film,’ mumbled Goss.

‘
Interview with
…?’

‘
A Vampire
. Yes. It was cool. Way cool. I saw it six times and bought the DVD. It’s got extra scenes,’ she announced proudly. Goss was talking to me again, which was good.

‘If you liked the film so much, you must have been drawn to Blood Lines. Is it a Goth club?’

‘Goths, some S&M. There’s back rooms, but you have to be a member to go in there. Lestat told me they had a torture chamber in the crypt.’

‘Well, of course,’ I began and bit my tongue. Sarcasm is fatal to conversations with anyone under twenty-five. Either they don’t get it and you have to explain, which is embarrassing, or they are much better at it than you and you get withered. Neither assists communication. Goss gave me that look which said ‘are we having a conversation or is this one of those attempted mother–daughter things which is going to be so uncool that I will have to have a ritual bath to wash off the uncoolness?’ and I shook my head.

‘I’m just curious,’ I said. ‘Who was it who invited you and Kylie to a weekend Slayerfest before Daddy got you cable? And who still has my tape of the Buffy musical which I would like back sometime, if you please?’

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought you might be about to tell me to stay away from bad company,’ she said, laughing to show that it was a joke.

‘I would,’ I said. ‘But I don’t consider Goths bad company. No one who takes that much trouble over their costumes is trouble, usually. Besides, we have the best-dressed Goths in the southern hemisphere, which is why they filmed the triumph scene of
Queen of the Damned
here,’ I said knowledgeably. I knew about that film. I had supplied the bread for their sandwiches.

‘Oh yeah, that’s right. Well, let’s see. You go up the steps and convince the door bitch to let you in, then you go into a sort of lobby, then there’s the big room, they call it the Théâtre des Vampires, all hung with red velvet. Big screen. There’s lights in the curtains too. But it’s pretty dark.’

‘What sort of music?’

‘Techno,’ she said. ‘Eversun. SPF 1000. You know.’

I winced privately. Ever since I had set my face against disco, things had got worse. Now there weren’t even the sugary
tunes and we were rapidly running out of Bee Gees. Now there was a repeated phrase, perhaps, an uncomfortably inorganic beat, and a few thousand k’s of unrelated pictures.

‘They play all the old vampire movies,’ Goss told me, clasping her little hands in what looked suspiciously like girlish delight. She could have been a Victorian maiden describing her favourite bouquet, except for the hair. It was green today. ‘All the Hammer horror, and that real old one, black and white.’

‘Oh yes, that one.
Nosferatu
.’

‘Scary,’ confessed Goss.

‘Scared me and Horatio both so much we spent the rest of the night under the doona,’ I confessed in turn.

‘I think it was those teeth,’ said Goss. ‘Like a snake.’ She shook her green head. ‘Anyway, there’s dancing, and you can only buy red drinks—wine or red cordial. Sometimes they have competitions. One of the people is given a little bottle of water, and you have to chase your favourite vamp and splash him or her, and there’s a prize for the best death scene. It’s so cool,’ she enthused.

It sounded harmless enough to someone who had spent her schooldays playing murder in the dark. A lot of revenge can get taken in a girls’ school in the dark. Chasing a costumed person with a bottle of holy water seemed tame by comparison. Though of course it would allow for a lot of incidental collisions and embracing and so on, which ought to ensure its popularity. While hormones remained hormones.

‘I’ve seen Mistress Dread there,’ said Goss. ‘Well, Kylie said she saw her. Carol says that Mistress Dread runs the dungeon.’

‘She was born to run a dungeon,’ I said. Goss giggled. ‘And I bet she runs a very well-conducted crypt too, with only the best of resurrected corpses,’ I said.

‘No, the crypt master is Lestat,’ said Goss. ‘He’s a bit scary. Even though he asked me to, I don’t think I want to go down there,’ she added reflectively.

I didn’t dare say a word. Goss was acquiring common sense, that rarest of commodities. Any word from me would produce an adverse reaction. I didn’t quite hold my breath. I waited for her to go on. She seemed reluctant.

‘The kids say … that things happen in there. But they’re just bullshitting, I suppose.’

‘Bad things? Like poor Suze?’ I ventured.

‘Suze doesn’t go in to the club,’ said Goss. ‘She doesn’t have the clothes and they know she’s a junkie. She just goes round the back, in the lane. It’s not just the vamps from Blood Lines with Suze. Daniel says she won’t last much longer.’

‘Yes, it’s very sad.’

‘And it’s not fair!’ she burst out, with one of those young-person changes of mood which keep all people over thirty on their toes. And sometimes drive them out of their minds. I was groping for a response when a familiar voice said, ‘Where does it say it has to be fair? You show me where it’s written that it’s a fair universe.’

‘It still isn’t, Daniel,’ mumbled Goss.

‘The only answer that God is likely to make to “Why me?”, Gossamer, is “Why not you?”. And it’s not a useful answer, and not a useful question either. Why so sad on such a nice day, ladies?’ he asked.

I was suddenly short of breath. Just seeing Daniel without warning had the same effect on me as a punch in the solar plexus I had long ago received in a minor altercation in an Irish pub.

‘Suze,’ said Goss. Daniel gave her a big grin.

‘I am pleased to tell you that Suze got knocked down by a
car last night,’ said Daniel. ‘No, wait, that isn’t quite what I meant. I mean, poor Suze, pelvis broken in two places, but lucky Suze, because—’

‘She’ll have to stay in hospital for weeks and weeks,’ said Goss, cheering up right away.

‘And I have already called her mother to tell her that Suze will need rehabilitation and a place to live and that from about Wednesday she will be off drugs. I have also told the hospital that she will need special care as she detoxes. God knows how they are going to manage a broken bone without opiates. Mama’s happy to have Suze back if she’s off the stuff,’ said Daniel.

‘It’s just what she would have wanted,’ said Goss, clasping her hands again. Goss had given me such a lot of useful information that I relented on the dress. I opened the till and counted out three days’ wages.

‘Go and get your dress,’ I said. ‘You deserve it.’

Goss counted the notes. ‘You forgot to tell me to go to the movies,’ she said cheekily from the door. ‘That’s what my sister always did when her boyfriend—’

‘Or I could just take the money back,’ I said, and she squeaked and fled. Daniel watched her go.

‘You know, I don’t think I was ever that young,’ he sighed.

‘Me either. Oh well. I’m so pleased about Suze. Best thing that could have happened. Daniel, you weren’t driving that car, were you?’

‘No, ketschele, but I admit that if I had been and she had happened to totter across the road in those broken heels, I might have been tempted. Luckily, some other public-spirited citizen did. Pity he didn’t leave his name,’ said Daniel grimly. ‘When they found her, she looked just like a broken doll, flung into the gutter by a bad-tempered child.’