Christopher Buehlman - The Lesser Dead

“Is your… boss home?”

“I don’t think so.”

Still had that German accent, sounded like he was on Hogan’s Heroes .

We just stood there for a second. I looked at the bear on the door, then back at him.

“May I come in?”

Slow blink.

“I don’t think so.”

“Who is it?” a voice said behind him. Not Messer.

“A boy.”

“What boy?”

The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t tell if it was a guy or a girl.

“A boy I remember,” he said.

“Show me!” the voice said.

He opened the door a little more, stepped back, not to let me in but just so I would be visible to the owner of the voice. We saw each other. Christ, this was not my night. A tall woman with a cock. The one from Studio 54 that said I smelled like trains.

She laughed.

She kept laughing, covered her mouth with her hand.

The doorman didn’t even permit himself a smirk. Damn, he was good. He closed the door with the squirrels and the bear and the acorns at just the right speed. Not insultingly fast. Not awkwardly slow. Just right.

So here’s the part where it’s four A.M. and I charm some schmuck to let me into his nice, dark apartment and I feed on him and tie him up or peel him and sleep in his bathtub, get a fresh start tomorrow night, right? I did peek in several apartments, but every place I looked in, I came up with a reason why I shouldn’t bother the people there. Truth is, I did feed one more time; I had to. I couldn’t take all I needed from she-who-paints-cats without killing her. So I started scoping, thinking I should choose well in case it was my last meal. I hadn’t entirely ruled out greeting the sunrise at Battery Park. The only guy on Christopher Street flagged down the only cab on Christopher Street, and I walked up just as the cabbie asked him where he was going. He hadn’t stopped yet, just slowed down and asked through the window so the guy couldn’t open the door in case he failed the audition.

I walked up, poured on some charm, said through the cracked window,

You must pull their heads off!

“We’re going to Idlewild.”

“You mean the airport? JFK?”

I think he was a Sikh, he had the turban. When he said airport he pushed his eyebrows together over his nose like affectionate caterpillars.

“I’m not with him! I’m going to…”

“Shut up, Dad,” I said, and he shut up.

I said,

You must hold them down and shock them on the bad rail!

“Yeah, JFK, I forgot, the airport.”

The Sikh rolled off to “seek” another passenger. I knew from the way he asked the guy he was only looking for Manhattan fares.

The Dad guy glared at me angrily but wouldn’t speak because I had commanded him to shut up. I told him to come in the alley with me and I would give him a dollar. Turned out I lied. I didn’t give him a dollar. But I did have a secret to tell him, if he’d lean down close. And I did take the money out of his wallet just in case I decided against sunbathing.

Cvetko

First I ran away from my problem, headed west. By four thirty A.M. I had made it up by the old dockyards, the crumbling piers where the gays sunbathed in the summer, whole packs of them. Nobody was around now. Too dark, too cold, unless maybe people came here to hook up in hidden places. There were lots of hidden places in this rusted-out set of piers. As long as I looked out for Coney Island Whitefish, I could maybe stay here, cover up in a trash bag, tuck myself into a rusted cargo container. But no. I might surprise some gays, I didn’t want to see any of that. Or maybe I did, just a little bit, which was why I kept drifting near places like this. Maybe I didn’t want to suck a guy off or anything but I wanted to watch somebody else do that, maybe I secretly liked it when queers hit on me so I could feel attractive but also act superior, like, “Thanks anyway, gay guy, but I’m normal .” Normal, right. I like pussy. I’m a Capricorn. Oh, and I drink blood and don’t get older. Why was I thinking about this now? Maybe it was easier to think uncomfortable thoughts than horrifying, bewildering ones.

Maybe you want to know who you are before you die.

I stood near the water, looking west, where night was running away from me. It was windy, blowing my hair around. A seagull did that thing where he flew against a draft and hovered in one place, he was looking at me like maybe he hadn’t smelled me and was surprised to find one of us bread-and-sometimes-Alka-Seltzer-throwers so close to him suddenly. I swear this bird was looking me right in the face. He called out twice.

“Cvetko! Cvetko!” I said back to him, imitating him. He flew off.

“Yeah, I know.”

I went east.

I went back underground.

Imeant to look for Cvets immediately, but I was so exhausted I sleepwalked into the growing crowd of predawn commuters making their way through Grand Central Station; I went through a door I know that led down. Then I went through a couple of doors and a passageway I didn’t know until I ended up in an unfamiliar service tunnel, where I wedged myself up high between a pipe and the roof. A lot of bugs crawled around; there must have been food nearby. I plugged my nostrils with dollar bills and went to sleep. Once I heard transit cops walk under me, saw their flashlights bobbing. I guessed it was going to get hot for a while because of Union Station, however they put it together. But these guys weren’t serious. They weren’t talking about accidents or bombings. They were talking about Leon Spinks.

I went back to sleep.

I woke up to find that one of my nose dollars had fallen out and sure enough I now had a snootful of bugs, small ones; goddamn, I hated sleeping without a box. I blew them out without much trouble. I knew in my bones that it was sunset. I remembered where I was, in a service tunnel under Grand Central.

I took the 6 down; they had just gotten it running again, it was packed. We didn’t stop at Union Square. The station was closed for repairs. I didn’t look out the window when we passed, but everyone around me put down their papers, papers with headlines like 4 TRAIN DERAILS! and, you gotta love the Post , GOOD SAMARITANS FRIED! I plugged my ears because I didn’t want to hear people talking about it like it was theirs, like they had a right to it. Instead I got a dumbshow of craning necks, ladies putting hands over mouths, one guy taking a picture like he came this way on purpose. It seemed like everybody around me had to stick an elbow in my cheek or an ass in my face while I sat with my hands over my ears, not looking through the permanent marker squiggles on the glass to see how the cleanup was going. I didn’t look because I didn’t want to see where my friends died. But I also didn’t look because I was still scared.

I had to find Cvets.

We had to get out of here.

I had a hunch about where he might be.

I didn’t find Cvetko in the beautiful old abandoned City Hall station. But I did find a note from him. He had stuck it in one of his hooker-red envelopes from Valentine’s Day and put it through the bars of an old ticket window. The outside said Joseph H. Peacock . How do you like that? Even with the apocalypse upon us this guy took time to write out my whole name, except for the Hiram .

The envelope was heavy.

When I opened it, I saw why.

I pulled on a tiny gold chain to reveal the piece of jewelry attached to it. I found myself staring straight at the coral pendant I slipped into Margaret’s purse all those years ago. Medusa stared back at me.