Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

She settled herself uncomfortably on an armless chair, which protested but did not give way. “So what’ve you been doing with yourself?”

“Oh, y’know, the usual. Livin‘ the life.”

“The afterlife, you mean.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Her hard, cold stare unnerved him. He looked away, forcing himself to watch the clumsy, plastic-boobed dancer still trying to make a go of it. When he glanced back, Maureen was still staring at him. “I felt you come in, you know,” she said. “When I first started dancing, I felt a little tingle behind my eyes, in my sinuses, like the start of a headache. So I knew you were downstairs, pacing back and forth in front of that sketch of me, trying to decide whether or not to come up. That damn tingle got worse with each step you climbed. I kept hoping I was wrong. But I wasn’t. I can always sense when the ones I made are around. I’m like a bitch with her goddamn puppies.”

Jules tried to think of something to say. He stared at his fingers, splayed on the table like white cigars. He’d always hated the way Maureen could nail him with a look, making thirty seconds feel like a century of deafening silence.

“Goddamn it to hell, Jules,” Maureen whispered fiercely after a few seconds of deadly quiet. “Didn’t I tell you never to come see me again? Didn’t I?”

Jules finally found his voice. He wished he could still drink whiskey; his throat could use it. “Mo, that was ten years ago. I thought, y’know, maybe you’d changed your mind by now. Lord almighty, I’m practically the only relation you got in the whole world. Why’re you holding this heavy grudge against me, baby? What’s so awful about seeing me once every ten years?”

Maureen remained quiet for a few long seconds, smiling ruefully. “You just don’t get it, do you? Naww. Of course you don’t. You’re a goddamnman.” She sighed heavily. “I’ll try to explain. Look at that stage, Jules. What do you see? Aside from a drug-addled bimbo with thousand-dollar tits, I mean.”

Jules considered all possible answers before replying. He really didn’t want to make her any more angry than she already was, not if he could possibly avoid it. “Uh, I dunno. Mirrors?”

Maureen smiled and slowly nodded her head, like she was trying to teach a retarded child the alphabet. “That’s right, Jules. Mirrors. But when I’m dancing on that stage, do you see the mirrors?”

“No. They cover them up with velvet.”

“And why do they do that?”

“ ‘Cause it’s part of your act. You insist on it.”

Maureen waved her pudgy hand in a brisk, circular motion. “Andwhy do I insist on that?”

“Uh, ‘cause it’d freak out the clientele to not see you reflected in any of those mirrors, right?”

“Yes, Jules. Very good. And guess what? If none of the clientele can see my reflection, neither can I. I haven’t been able to look at myself in a mirror or a photograph for more than a hundred years. But you know what? That’s been a good thing. A very good thing. Especially during the last five decades or so. I feelblessed that I can’t look at myself in the mirror. I am the luckiest fat woman on earth, Jules. But you come waltzing in here, after ten years, and you know what you are to me? You know what you are?”

Jules had figured it out. But he didn’t want to say it.

Maureen sighed again. No exasperation this time. Just sadness, a sadness weightier than the two of them put together. “Amirror, Jules. You’re my goddamn mirror.”

She took a deep breath, and her eyes moistened and seemed to soften. She reached across the table and took his fleshy paw between her hands. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “You were abeautiful man. Such a beautiful man. You know that? When I saw you that night, standing in front of the French Opera House on Canal Street, I knew immediately that you were the one. The one I wanted to give eternal unlife to. So I could spend the rest of eternity looking at beautiful, gorgeous you.”

Whoa!Maureen had never talked to him this way before. Not even back in the days when they were first together. What in hell could he say to that? “You were beautiful, too, Mo,” Jules said, a little haltingly. “Baby, you’restill beautiful.”

Maureen let his hand drop to the table. “Don’t bullshit me, Jules. I know exactly what I look like. I look at you, add some frizzy blond hair, make the tits and hips a little bigger, and there I am.” Her scowl melted into a melancholy frown, and she touched his hand again. “Jesus. It breaks my heart, honey, to see what you’ve done to yourself. It really does. If I had known, eighty years ago, what would become of you, I wouldn’t have bitten you. I would’ve just let you be.”

Jules felt his stomach do a double somersault with a half twist. If Maureen pissed off was bad, then Maureen on the verge of tears was a million times worse. “Mo. It’s gonna be different. You’ll see. I’m going on a diet. That’s, uh, that’s one a the things I came here to tell you.”

Silence. Deafening silence. Maureen stared at him as if he had just sung a Chinese opera. “This is ajoke, right? You tried, in your pathetic little way, to cheer me up. A joke. Right?”

“No, baby. I’m dead serious. I made up my mind last night. I’m gonna come back here six months from now, and you won’t recognize me. I’ll behalf the man I am now.”

“Oh. Youare being serious. You crazy, predictable, baboon’sass. How many times have I heard this shit from you, Jules? Do you have anyidea how many times I’ve listened to your identical bullshit?”

“Aww, Maureen-”

“Don’tyou ‘Aww Maureen’me. I’mwise to you, Jules Duchon. Why do you think I put you out on your ear ten years ago? You never change.This is the reason you came up here tonight?This is the reason you’ve trashed my routine, got me docked a night’s pay, and probably loused up my whole week? To repeat your sorry old ‘I’m-going-on-a-diet’ bullshit?”

Jules took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly through his nose. “Well, actually, I came to ask you, uh, a little favor, see… but it’s not bullshit, what I just said. I’m at the end of my rope, baby. I think I might be getting diabetes, or maybe something worse.”

Maureen tried pushing herself away from the table, but instead her chair remained firmly planted and she shoved the table into Jules’s gut. She rose awkwardly from her chair and smoothed the wrinkles from her kimono. “I think you’d better leave now. I can’t continue this conversation any more. It’s hazardous to my mental well-being.”

A waitress in a spangled bikini hovered expectantly over Jules’s shoulder. “Set’s almost over, dearie,” she said to him. A gold tooth in the middle of her false smile reflected the glare of the stage lights. “You gotta buy at least one drink. House rules.”

Maureen glowered at her coworker. “Samantha, can’t you see we’re in the middle of a conversation here?”

The waitress placed her tiny fists on her not-so-tiny hips. “Well, it looked to me like you was leavin‘, Maureen. Ex-cusea girl trying to make a living. You make your rent by wiggling around onstage an hour a night. Me, I don’t move the drinks, I’m out on my ass faster than you’d sunburn on Panama City Beach.”

Maureen jammed her bosom into the waitress’s tray, spilling a shot of bourbon onto a pile of cocktail napkins. “Get the hell out of my face, Samantha. I’ll pay for his drink later.Okay? ”

Samantha cast an appalled look at the spilled drink and backed away. “Ohh-kay, Maureen. Whatever you say. You’re the big-assstar around here. But you don’t have to be such abitch about it.” She stalked back to the bar.

Jules eyed the empty space on the table, next to his right hand, which would ordinarily be occupied by a cup of thick, steaming coffee. “Hey. Maybe I wanted to order a joe.”