Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

As soon as the wordluck entered his head, it started raining. The falling moisture was an angry, living thing, an avenging fury that beat on the oxidized metal of his hood and roof like a gigantic millipede with a thousand claw hammers. Jules wondered whether the storm might be a manifestation of his mother’s earthbound spirit, furious at her only son for losing their home. The Lincoln’s bald tires quickly began hydroplaning on the rutted, waterlogged asphalt. The big car weaved from lane to lane as Jules struggled with the unfamiliar steering wheel and jerky brake pedal. He didn’t dare slow down, however. Not with sunrise barely an hour away. He had to at least make Baton Rouge before first light. No closer place outside New Orleans had the enclosed parking garages that might give him shelter.

The sun-rotted wiper blades only served to spread the rain evenly over his field of vision. The metal tips bit into the windshield glass, etching the car a pair of eyebrows. Jules turned the wipers off. He rolled down his window and tried clearing the glass with his hand. No good; the outside world remained a watery blur.

Faded outlet-mall billboards and the gnarled trunks of dead cypress trees drifted past at forty-five miles per hour, signposts of his grim exile. Jules felt a mysterious lump in his coat pocket. Aside from the shabby clothes on his back, that lump could well be the last connection he had to his beloved former life.

He reached into his right pocket. The lump was the plastic case of a cassette tape. Jules lifted it quickly in front of his eyes. He could catch only a flash of yellow and the outline of a man standing by a car, but it was enough to spur his memory. Of course! It was Erato’s tape! The gift Erato had given him! He’d taken it along with him at the beginning of the evening, which seemed like a century ago, hoping he’d have a chance to listen to it once he’d retrieved his Cadillac. Then he’d forgotten all about it.

This little cassette was the last survivor of what had been a mighty, incomparable music collection.A Cab Driver’s Blues. How fitting. Jules glanced quickly at the Lincoln’s dim dashboard. Yes, the car had a tape player of some kind. Maybe fate was beginning to smile on him once more. His best, most loyal friend had provided him with a gift that would now serve to buoy his spirits when they were at their lowest ebb. Jules thought about his friend Erato, safe in his bed in New Orleans with his family, and his eyes misted over.

He carefully removed the cassette from its case and inserted it into the tape player’s mouth. He glanced at the dash. ThePLAY button was illuminated. Maybe Lincolns weren’t so crummy, after all. He pressed the button, anticipating the sweet blues music that would help soothe his ravaged and insulted soul.

Nothing happened. Jules glanced at the dash again.

“Of all the… Hell. It just damn well figures.”

Aside from a desultory whirring of gears, the Lincoln’s eight-track tape player remained stubbornly silent.

The deluge subsided to a thick drizzle by the time Jules reached the outskirts of Baton Rouge. The interstate was surrounded by an endless, monotonous vista of strip malls, fast-food emporiums, beige motels, and gambling casino billboards.So this is what the whole damn country turned into when I wasn’t payin‘ attention, Jules thought. He’d heard it from people who’d seen it firsthand, but he hadn’t dared believe it until now.

The eastern sky was beginning to turn a grayish pink in his rearview mirror. He had maybe ten minutes-fifteen, tops-to find himself a covered garage and check himself in for the day. He scanned the myriad featureless buildings lined up alongside the highway. Land must’ve been cheap in Baton Rouge, because all the businesses, even the office complexes, made do with exposed surface parking lots. Jules frowned. He couldn’t be positive the Lincoln’s trunk was completely daylight-proof, and besides, he didn’t relish the thought of broiling in a steel box twelve hours beneath the South Louisiana sun. He imagined himself slowly roasting in his own fat, not an appealing picture at all.

Sweating profusely from a surefire combination of stress and one hundred percent humidity, Jules figured his best shot at locating a public garage would be to head downtown, where the old state government buildings were. An overhead sign announced a Government Street exit two miles away. That sounded right. Behind him, the pinkish sky was beginning to turn ominously orange.

The Government Street exit appeared just after the interstate forked and Jules turned north. From the top of the exit ramp, Jules saw what he first took to be a heart-stopping premonition of his own eternal damnation. The western horizon was shackled in a steel corset of glowing pipes and effluent tubing. Sulfur-yellow smokestacks belched clouds of smoke and steam in unearthly oil-slick colors. It wasn’t hell, Jules reminded himself. It was merely the terminus of the chemical and oil refinery complex lining the Mississippi River’s banks along the seventy miles between Baton Rouge and his lost home; the origin of the toxic soup that gave New Orleans’s tap water its distinctive flavor and aroma.

St. Louis Street looked promising. Signs pointed the way to a Centroplex Convention Center, and besides, there was a St. Louis Street in the French Quarter in New Orleans. Jules’s eyes grew watery with the memory. But before he could become totally rheumy, he spotted a parking garage. And just in the nick of time, too-something was beginning to smell like cinnamon toast left in the toaster one cycle too long, and Jules was pretty sure it was none other than his own vagabond self.

The wide-bodied Lincoln scraped both sides as Jules piloted the car through the garage’s entranceway. He grabbed his ticket from the dispenser. At least the daily rates were relatively cheap; less than half the typical garage rate in downtown New Orleans. Good. He might end up staying here a long time, and the more days his remaining twenty-nine dollars would stretch, the better.

He pulled into the most shadowy, isolated spot he could find. The garage wasn’t underground. Louvered metal walls let in stray photons of the first rays of the morning. Jules cut his engine and got out of the car. The scattered bits of sunlight hit him like tiny incendiary missiles. Yet he found himself hardly caring. He was so sore all over that he could barely tell new pains from old. The floor where he had parked was filled with noxious blue smoke. Jules couldn’t tell whether the smoke had come from the Lincoln’s tailpipe or his own skin.

He popped open his trunk. The earth from his front yard had remained mud; it shimmered in the early-morning light like black molasses syrup. Jules didn’t bother taking off his jacket. What was the use? He flopped into the soupy trunk like a plaid sack of cement. The cool mud soothed his burning skin a little. He reached for the lid and pulled it closed, then squirmed a bit in a futile effort to get more comfortable.

The exiled, homeless vampire couldn’t remember a time when he’d ever welcomed the darkness more.

“-nuh-no!No! You won’t get me! Keepaway — ”

Soft hands grasped his shoulders and shook him awake. “Jules! Jules, wake up! You’re havin‘ yourself a nightmare!”

Jules opened his eyes. He blinked once. He blinked twice. But the pink walls and white lace curtains refused to fade away. He was lying in a downy-soft four-poster bed. The air was perfumed with essence of citrus. He turned his head to the side. Sitting next to him, resplendent in a gauzy white negligee, was Maureen.

She smoothed the wrinkles from his forehead with her soft fingertips. “Poor baby,” she said, her eyes brimming with concern. “You were howlin‘ like the wolfman got hold of your throat. Real bad dream, huh?”