Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

“Ouch! So where you been hiding yourself these past few weeks? I was beginning to think you’d up and left town.”

Jules signaled the counter lady for a cup of java. “Been busy. Trying to get my life in order, y’know?”

“Oh, I hear what you sayin‘. You live and work around these parts, things isbound to get messy now and then.”

“Buddy,messy is too piddly a word for the fix I’m findin‘ myself in. To cut to the chase, I’m hopin’ you can maybe drop me a good lead. You’re always connected to what’s goin‘ on around town.”

Erato nodded sagely. “Pal, you can count on it. Whatever you need. In our line a work, you gottagive good tips toget good tips. What kinda info you need?”

Jules took a sip of coffee. “Business has been shit lately. All I’m getting is these little bumfuck fares that barely pay my gas money. I need an angle.”

“How ‘bout airport fares? That’s a dime clear each way, at least.”

Jules frowned. “You know how hard it is for an independent to land any airport gigs. To grease all the palms I’d have to grease, I’d have to mortgage my goddamn house.”

“Man, haven’t I been tellin‘ you foryears to leave that gypsy shit behind? Join Napoleon Cab already! Management’s decent. They been treatin’ me all right goin‘ on ten years now.”

Jules pushed his empty coffee cup in the counter lady’s general direction. “We been through this already. A hundred times now. I can’t be workin‘ for no boss but myself. I got special needs.”

“Yeah-like keepin‘ that lazy ass a yours in bed all day. So, Mr. Special Needs, what kinda angle you lookin’ for?”

Jules tried to catch the counter lady’s eye, but his curt little wave overshot the mark. A woman sitting by herself at a table across the dining room caught Jules’s wave and met his eyes with her own. A spectacular woman. How could he have failed to notice her when he’d first walked in? She was like a pre-Marilyn Norma Jean, only fifteen dress sizes bigger. Even from the far end of the dining room Jules could see she was perfectly proportioned, every supervoluptuous curve precisely sculpted to awaken the long-dormant beast that slumbered within his loins.

“Hey, Jules? Mission Control to Spaceman Jules. I was askin‘, what kinda angle you lookin’ for, anyway?”

Jules forced himself to refocus on the conversation. “Uh. Yeah. Here’s what I’m lookin‘ for, see. Health nuts. You know the kind. Joggers. Bike riders. Those wackos that swim the Gulf of Mexico and then box fifteen rounds dripping wet. I wanna be the official driver for all the health nuts that come to New Orleans.”

Erato waited for Jules to continue, hanging expectantly for a punch line of some kind. But his large companion looked perfectly serious. “Uh, I don’t get it.”

“Think, Erato! Think! You’re some runner in for a marathon runners’ convention in the Big Easy. You’re booked in one of those swanky hotels downtown. You got a big race comin‘ up next week, after your convention, so you want to stay in shape. You can’t be scarfin’ down all that greasy andouille shit they serve up in the Quarter. You gotta find some healthy chow. But the few healthy restaurants this town’s got are miles from your hotel, in neighborhoods you never heard of. What are you gonna do? Save a few bucks by eatin‘ local and pack on ten pounds? You’re screwed. You got no choice but to open up the wallet and let your friendly, know-it-all cabdriver take you to wherever the alfalfa sprout joints are tucked away.”

Erato stared at Jules with new respect. “Y’know, you ain’t half as dumb as you walk in here lookin‘.”

Jules grinned. “Good thing, huh? So, you heard of any health-nut-type conventions around town?”

Erato rested his stubbly chin on a large, callused fist. His eyes narrowed to dark slits as he accessed his formidable data bank of hearsay, newspaper stories, and talk-radio rumors. Then, just as Jules was wondering if he’d fallen asleep, Erato’s orbits popped open to their full size. “Yeah. I think I got one for you. There’s a convention of river kayakers staying at the Hotel La Boheme, one of them new places on Convention Center Boulevard. If it’s nuts you lookin‘ for, these fellas fit the bill. They’s planning to paddle up the Mississippi all the ways to Natchez or thereabouts.”

Jules leaned against the bar for support as he backed his rump off the stool. The waitress refused to meet his eye; a second cup of coffee was clearly a lost cause tonight. “Yeah, that’s good, that fits the bill. Thanks, Erato. I owe you one. Next bowl of red beans is on me.”

Erato leaned closer and grabbed Jules’s thick arm. “You in the mood to do me a favor, huh? How about gettin‘ into areal car? When you gonna dump that Caddy a yours for aLincoln? My brother-in-law’s in sales at Lamarque Lincoln-Mercury over across the river, in Harvey. He’ll set you up in a Town Car-cherry, nice an’ pretty-and he’ll give you good trade for that hunk a junk a yours, too.”

Jules pulled a dollar from his billfold and tossed it onto the bar, figuring that’d leave the waitress a seven-cent tip. “You know when I’ll drive a Lincoln? When the Streets Department shells out for a fleet of snowplows, that’s when. Thanks for the tip, Erato. Your taste in transportation stinks, as always. Don’t go playing any three-card monte on Bourbon Street, okay?”

“You neither, okay?” Erato’s yellow-toothed grin was quickly obscured by theTimes — Picayunecomics section. “Take care, man. And good luck with your angle.”

“Thanks, pal.”

Jules smiled. His step had a bit of extra spring to it as he turned to leave the diner. Now he had a plan. Plan your work and work your plan, that’s what Mother always said. Without even thinking about it, he chose a path that led him within a French bread’s span of the table occupied by the spectacular woman he’d locked gazes with earlier. He couldn’t help but notice what she was eating. She stabbed a stack of chocolate-chip pancakes as tall as her fork, dipping her fire-engine-red fingernails into fluffy protrusions of whipped cream and blueberry syrup each time she buried her utensil in the mountain of fried batter.

Jules had never seen anyone like her. Not in the flesh, anyhow. She conjured up memories of the Turkish harem girls in the old French paintings at the New Orleans Museum of Art, where Jules’s mother had taken her young son for cultural outings. Her blond hair was like a movie star’s, seductively framing her round, beautiful face. As she carefully raised a wedge of pancake, syrup, and cream to her full lips, touching the white cream with the tip of her tongue before plunging the sweet mass into her mouth, the ceiling lights glinted off the yellow down on her expansive arm; it looked as if she were wearing a sheer golden negligee.

Midchew, she raised her eyes slowly to Jules’s. And winked.

Jules blushed as vividly as Maureen had the night before. During the ride home and for hours afterward, his pants felt even more uncomfortably tight than normal.

The next evening, Jules pulled his Caddy into the taxi line in front of the Hotel La Boheme barely half an hour after the sun had set. He hadn’t wanted to miss the dinner hour-either the conventioneers’ or his own. His hunger had returned with a vengeance. The last few bottles of his reserve blood had gone stale, two days earlier than their estimated expiration date.Damn refrigerator’s on the rag again. One more goddamn thing I got to spend money on. He was hungry and nauseated and a little weak, and he was in a testy mood.

Jules’s disposition improved greatly when he saw who exited the lobby and walked over to his cab. The man sliding into the Caddy’s rear compartment was a little gray at the temples, but his thin T-shirt revealed a rippling set of upper-body muscles. This guy was definitely an athlete. Jules salivated gratefully, anticipating his most healthful meal in years.