Anne Billson - Suckers

I took one long last look at myself in the full-length mirror in my room. Dora Rosamond Vale, vampire. I thought I looked quite good. I wondered if I would be the same person when I came back. I wondered if I would ever come back at all.

Not liking the idea of being caught halfway across town when the sun went down, I set out early for Molasses Wharf. By the time I got there, it was late afternoon. I marched straight into Multiglom Tower and announced myself to the po-faced receptionist. She checked her watch. 'You're four hours early.'

'I know,' I said. 'But I don't mind waiting.'

She shook her head. 'You can't wait. There's nowhere to sit.'

'You needn't worry about me.'

'You can't wait here,' she said, this time more emphatically, and I saw her trying to catch the eye of one of the doormen.

'OK, OK,' I said, 'I'll come back later.'

There was only one place to go.

I crossed the road to the Bar Nouveau.

The oil paintings had been replaced by out-of-focus photographs of cats and dogs, but otherwise the Bar Nouveau was exactly the same, and once again I was its sole customer. When I ordered a Perrier, the barman did a double-take. I thought for a moment he had recognized me, then realized it was more likely he was just surprised to see someone up and about so early.

'How are you, Mr Renfield?' I asked. He squinted at me suspiciously. I nodded and smiled before taking a seat by the window and watching as Multiglom Tower reflected the gathering night, windows glinting pink and navy blue as they shifted into unfathomable dark. The barman sauntered over to the jukebox and fed it with a handful of coins. The first record was a load of scratchy white noise overlaid with a bored female voice droning on about suicide, but I cheered up as soon as the needle hit the second platter and Roxy Music started up. It was just like old times. I hummed along under my breath. 'All I want is the real thing. And a night that lasts for years.' Then Marc Bolan sang, 'Girl, I'm just a jeepster for your love,' but that was as good as it got. The rest was rinky-dink synthesizer stuff.

Might as well work up a fug in here, I thought, and lit the first of my cigarettes. At about six o'clock a man and a woman came out of the Multiglom Tower and made their way across the street. They were both dressed in black. I steeled myself for the big test. Would they take one look at me and know? Or would it be assumed I was one of them? I was clothed not so very differently from the woman. She was yawning as they came in, but her teeth seemed as regular as mine. The man delved into his pocket and slapped some money down on the bar and I heard him say, 'Two halves of Special.' As far as I could see, his teeth were normal too.

The barman muttered something. The man shook his head and was presented with some change and a couple of large Bloody Marys.

Other people drifted in, all of them dressed in black, with pasty faces. All the women and even some of the men were wearing an excessive amount of make-up, but other than that there was nothing unusual about them. Not one of them had an excess in the ivory department, and all could have mingled with a regular night-club crowd without attracting undue attention. One or two of them inhaled deeply, rolling the air around their olfactories and looking a little perplexed, as if they'd picked up the suggestion of an unaccounted-for scent, but no one looked twice at me. I was counting on their inexperience, on their not having learned to sniff the difference between bottled claret and haemoglobin on the hoof. They were all neophytes, I could tell, all new to this game and therefore easier to hoodwink. An old hand like Violet would never have fallen for it.

But they were all drinking 'Bloody Marys,' every last one of them. And I knew that if I wanted to blend in, I would have to drink one too. My glass of mineral water stuck out like a colourless beacon. I went up to the bar for another drink. I was just going to ask for a Bloody Mary, when I saw the barman looking curiously at me again, so I changed my mind and asked for a half of Special.

The barman stared straight at me and asked, 'Vintage?'

I held my ground and stared straight back. 'What have you got?'

He reeled them off in a bored monotone. 'Ruby Regular. Profondo Rosso. Premier Cruor. Take your pick.'

'Regular.'

'You go easy now,' he said. 'You don't want to drink it all at once.' And he winked at me.

If this was some kind of trap, I wasn't going to fall into it. I didn't even blink, just went on staring with what I trusted was a stony expression. I saw the label on the bottle as he poured it out. A rosy-cheeked infant in nappies beamed out from beneath a date-stamp which vouched that the contents were only six months old and guaranteed free from contamination. I wondered whether the six months referred to the liquid or to the age of the donor.

Back at my table, I gazed at the stuff for a long, long time. The red froth reminded me of Lulu lying in the bath with half her face missing. I tried to convince myself that what I had in front of me was vodka and tomato juice, and after about ten minutes' contemplation I took a tiny sip. The taste was quite unexpected. I had thought it was going to be vile, but it wasn't, not so long as I swallowed straight down without letting too much of it come into contact with the tip of my tongue. Just so long as I pretended it was tomato juice.

I began to relax. I was doing what they were doing. Was there any difference between us? And I could make a single half of Special last for ever. I smoked and, very occasionally, held my breath and sipped. Outside, the street had come alive and was swarming with people. They were just waking up, and it was breakfast time. Some headed uptown, others jumped into taxis and cars and roared off God knows where. Others wandered into the Bar Nouveau for some sustenance to set them up for the long night ahead. The place was hotting up — I had the feeling I would soon be forced to share my table. Sure enough, two men and a woman came up and asked if the seats were being saved. I said no, and they sat down. At first their proximity was unsettling, but once seated they barely glanced in my direction, concentrating on yattering amongst themselves. I tried to keep aloof, but couldn't help eavesdropping. One of the men worked for the advertising department of a magazine. The woman was in publishing. I couldn't catch what the other man did because he had a bad stammer. Deja entendu . I risked another look. The advertising man was dressed all in black except for his red-framed spectacles, and his girlfriend had Rita Hayworth hair — she wished . Dexter, Josette, and friend, last seen saving a table down in the Foxhole.

I had a mild panic attack. Without thinking, I picked up my glass and gulped down a mouthful of Ruby Regular. As soon as the metallic taste hit the back of my throat, I started spluttering, and Dexter, Josette, and friend turned to look at me. I raised my glass at them and managed to cough, 'Libiamo, libiamo!' Obviously they didn't share Violet's taste in music, because they smiled indulgently and turned away, giving no sign of having recognized me. Of course I was safe; they hadn't observed me carefully enough to connect Duncan's subdued companion then with the white-faced red-lipped creature sitting next to them now.

As I listened to their talk about accounts and magazines and salaries and mortgages I couldn't help but be disappointed. Being undead didn't seem to make much difference — they were still talking about the same tired old topics. The only difference, as far as I could make out, was the way everyone kept referring to 'nips.'

'Maybe we could pop into Gnashers for a nip,' Dexter said, and I assumed he meant a small quantity of alcohol until Josette started bragging that she'd had three 'nips' the previous night. I didn't think three small quantities of alcohol was anything to get worked up about, but then they all swapped 'nip' stories, each trying to top the others with their nip-counts. I changed my mind and decided they weren't talking about alcohol but about Japanese people — it wasn't so wayward an assumption, what with Murasaki and everything — but at last I couldn't escape the conclusion I'd been trying to evade all along. 'Nip' was vampire slang for human.