Joshua Patterson

In Gehenna’s Coffee Haven we get our share of oddballs -- more than our share sometimes. Rich folk, poor people, yuppies, lunatics, eccentrics, you name it, we’ve had it.
           

I first saw her on a warm September night. I was capping up a latte. Perfect foam. An act of sheer artistry. It nestled on top like a Capuchin monk’s hood.
           

“I said no foam!” the woman glared at me across the counter.
          

I had committed the cardinal sin. There was no chance of redemption. Not an iota of grace to the hapless barista who topped a foamless latte with -- God forbid -- foam!
           

“Oops, I’ll just scoop that off for you,” I bared my teeth in what I hoped was a smile. “There you are. Good as new.”
          

She snatched up the latte, which now had ring-around-the-collar, and huffed out the door, shouldering aside a fat man in an immense fur coat.
           

I swore silently after her for several seconds, praying the latte would upset in her lap as she drove.
           

My eyes wandered down the waiting line, taking in the fifty-ish man with his starched dress shirt and conservative haircut. A bluff, no-nonsense sort who ordered Colombian coffee every time regardless of what we actually had on. He knew damn well we rotated our daily coffees.
           

The old lady in front of him in a pink jacket would inevitably count out her change, myopically comparing quarters to nickels while the line boiled into a lynch mob, intent on their coffee.
      

The next thing I saw was a pair of big hazelnut eyes looking into mine. I shifted back, a little nonplused, most people were too intent heckling the person on cash to bother with me. So I looked again. A pale, narrow face framed delicately by red-blonde hair regarded me with quirked ruby lips.
           

She was tall, and wearing a navy pea coat over flair-bottomed denims. But those eyes, so knowing, intent, as though she heard me mentally cursing that woman.
           

I stammered, “Can I get something started for you?”
           

Her eyes narrowed as she smiled. She ordered. Every word burned itself into my brain for eternity. I set to work as a flood of drink orders gushed my way. The old lady who was supposed to count her every penny was ordering for her entire sixty plus Italian Club. I went down gasping in a lactose tidal wave laced with liberal doses of French vanilla, crème de menthe and . . . sigh . . . hazelnut.
           

With that thought I glanced up. To my horror she was on her way out, but she didn’t forget me. With a knowing glance through a curtain of red-gold hair, she quirked her lips one last time and was gone.
           

The old lady eyed me narrowly as I overflowed one of her cappuccinos, milk pooling around the cup’s base.
           

“I trust you’re going to remake that, young man. I simply cannot tolerate a wet cappuccino.”
           

I made her a brevé in the fervent hope that her arteries would congeal before she left.
           

My shift passed like cold caramel: glacially. I hardly heard the irate customer demanding Colombian.
           

“Whatever happened to ‘the customer is always right’?” he cried, throwing his money across the counter at Corinna.
           

She tried, for the third time, to explain that we didn’t have Colombian on when he threw up his hands yelling, “Forget it! You people are crap!” and stalked out with his Indonesian coffee.
           

He’d come back. They always do.
           

I spent the next week waiting for my red-haired vixen to return. Every time the bell over the front door tinkled I nearly did myself. She did not appear.
           

Just about the time she’d faded a bit and I recovered relative control of my bladder, she came back. I was bussing for a break, busy scraping a wad of bright, pink gum off a table when a long-fingered, long-nailed, perfectly manicured hand drummed across it. I looked up and there she was, not six inches from my face. I flushed, felt my eyes light up.
           

“Hey!” I said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
           

“You mean you remember me?” she said with her narrowed-eye smile.
           

Various responses careened around my mind. How could I forget? I love you. I want to have your children.
           

My mouth opened. “I try to remember all my customers.”
           

She drew back a little, her eyes dimming. “Oh.”
           

To cover the awkward silence I popped the gum into my mouth. She pretended not to notice.
           

“But you did kind of stand out,” I said after a moment around the salty wad of gum. “Who could forget a small triple, one pump hazelnut, one pump mint, soy, one hundred and seventy degree latte?”
           

Her teeth bared with pleasure. Nice teeth. Pointed, but nice. I took my moment of triumph to cough into my hand. With the gum safely in my grip I smiled too.
           

“So you do remember!”
           

I shrugged and grinned.
           

“Good,” she said, “Because I want you to go out with me and my friends tonight, okay?”
           

My nod nearly gave me whiplash.
           

Her eyes did that narrowing thing again, but her hand was surprisingly cool as she pressed a slip of paper into mine. I knew instantly that I would never lose that paper. Never misplace it. Never let it out of my sight. It was impossible. It was stuck to the gum.
           

“Here’s my number. Call me around eight.”
           

Then she was gone again, leaving the scent of something earthy yet exhilarating in her wake.
           

I sank into a chair and let my mind wander in a near swoon. Then a thought most horrible came to me -- a terrible realization -- I didn’t know her name!

      

Maggie, one of our supervisors, ashed out her cigarette and regarded me with a level look.
           

“She’s one of them, you know.”
           

“One of who?”
           

“I’m writing about them in my book.”
           

Maggie’s book was legendary at Gehenna’s. No one had ever seen it for she would allow no one to read it, but she talked constantly of it, seeming to have an endless list of scenarios to draw from.
           

“Who?” I asked again.
           

“Them. Those gothic weirdoes. Go to masquerades. Vampire masquerades. My main character, Peter Mayhem, is going to one Friday night.”
           

“Maggie,” I said. “You’re cooked.” I threw my damp cloth at her. She caught it laughing and rose, uncoiling her lanky frame.
           

“Go on your break, pal,” she called over her shoulder as she disappeared into the back. “And be careful!”
           

Yeah, yeah. I left Gehenna’s Coffee Haven to make like Peter Mayhem and stir up some trouble.

 

Once outside, I paused to fill and light my pipe. I liked the reaction I got. People always looked twice at a young guy smoking a pipe.
           

I strolled south down Ferndown Street past Ziggy’s, a hot night spot for yuppies. Its blinking neon lights turned pedestrians’ faces blue then pink then blue again.
           

A thin guy in a tattered army jacket and a goatee resembling a bird’s nest lurched over. “Whatcha smokin’, man?” he asked hopefully.
           

“Tobacco.”
           

The guy’s face fell. “Aw. Thought it was pot.”
           

“Yeah. I smoke that on the street all the time,” I quipped. “But this perique gives me a pretty good buzz.”
           

He retreated, unconvinced.
           

I continued on toward Scream, a nightclub where all the goths hung out, wondering if I’d see a hint of her there. Wandering through the murk of a host of Indonesian cigarettes, I could not make out a single feature that fit my red-haired vixen. These youths, their life boiled from them, were pale in both appearance and existence. She seemed both more vital and alive than these poor shades of life, yet strangely similar.
           

The garish lights of the drag revealed only washed-out faces with dark hollows for eyes and grins like demented foxes.        
           

I returned to Gehenna’s, emptied my pipe’s dottle and resumed making coffee for those as hopeless as the goths, but who just had more money.

           

By the time I reached my flat that evening I’d worked myself into a state of nervous agitation. On one hand I was excited, on the other, nervous. If I had a third hand, well, that would be hearsay anyway, so why bother?
           

I called my mystery woman at precisely seven fifty-nine. The phone picked up. Laughter bold and light filled the background before a voice in a bad New York accent said, “City morgue. You stab ‘em, we slab ‘em.”
           

I said, “Um.”
           

A faint familiar voice said, “Oh, give me the phone, Drew.” The voice evidently got the phone, because in the next instant she said into the mouthpiece, “Vanessa here. This must be Lewis.”
           

“How’d you know my name?” I blurted.
           

Vanessa laughed. Vanessa! Her name was Vanessa! “Your name tag was kind of a giveaway.”
           

I managed an inspired, “Oh.”
           

She laughed again, sweet music in my ears. “So, are you coming with us tonight, or what?”
           

My heart flip-flopped and danced an Irish jig. “Sure. Where should I meet you?”
           

“The Banshee. Nine o’clock. There’s a dress code in effect, so wear black and you’ll be fine.”
           

“Okey dokey!” I cried. “I’ll be dressed to kill!”
           

Silence on the other end. “What did you just say, Lewis?”
           

“Uh, nothing. Just looking for the right metaphor.”
           

Vanessa laughed again. “I’ll see you there, Lewis. Tell them you’re with me.”
           

Click.
           

I stared at the receiver for a moment before placing it in its cradle. For some reason my heart still flipped and flopped but this time it did so in an astonishing approximation of fear.

The Banshee’s doorman was a woman. A woman who looked like she’d run headfirst into a tanker truck and come out on top. Swathed completely in red, she looked like a splash of blood across the Banshee’s dark double doors. Her face was mashed like the truck’s grill had met her halfway to hell.
           

Above the doors hung the Banshee herself. Fashioned to look like a feral, screaming woman bleeding into the wind, she swung in the breeze. The wires that suspended her were done in an ingenious manner. The Banshee was a giant Aeolian harp. She thrummed and wailed in the most desperate leaps of sound. One minute she bellowed like a fog horn, the next like a cabby and three cats tied up in a burlap sack. She would have done John Cage proud.
           

The doorwoman fixed me with a feral stare not unlike that of the Banshee. I couldn’t imagine anyone not going mad after prolonged exposure to its incessant caterwauling. Still, the red doorwoman seemed to cling to sanity. Barely.
“Well?” she rasped.
           

The Banshee raked her fingernails against a blackboard.
           

“Uh, I’m with Vanessa.”
           

She barked a short laugh like a smoker’s cough. “Aw, another one,” she flung the door open. Wild music tumbled out to mix with banshee screams in a tumult of melodic anarchy. “Good luck, my pretty.”
           

I could have sworn she muttered, “God knows you’ll need it,” then the lush, dark interior of the Banshee devoured me.
           

My first impression was, opium den. Luxuriant cloth hung from ceiling to floor. Low couches, divans and cushions of every shape, size and description were slung about in haphazard profusion. But if the dance floor was like any other, those on the floor were anything but ordinary. No greater horde of ghouls, Deaths and witches had ever haunted All Hallows Eve. And vampires, vampires everywhere, short, corpulent vampires; long, lean vampires; supple, cat-like vampires; hulking, muscle-bound vampires. Every type and variety under heaven. Or over hell. It’s just so hard to classify vampires in the great moral scheme of things.
           

Vanessa and several companions lay ensconced in a satin-draped enclosure. Clad in red so dark to be nearly black, she looked like a precious stone caught between day and night. With a cigarette holder dangling from her long fingers, her arched eyebrows and enormous eyes, she made me feel as drab as a faded portrait, lost in time and washed out.
           

“Ah, Lewis!” she cried gaily over the music’s roar. “Join us!”
           

The music rose; the tempo increased. Witches and ghouls gyrated on the dance floor.
           

I joined them at their low table. Vanessa gestured to a sturdy man in a roll neck sweater. He leaned forward and poured me a glass of dark wine.
           

I attempted my first joke of the evening. Looking over the rim of my glass, I asked, “Blood?”
           

Vanessa’s lips quirked and she smiled her narrowed-eye smile.
           

“Not on a first date, Lewis,” she winked. The others laughed, whether at me or with Vanessa I couldn’t say. “It’s Bordeaux. Chateau Haut Brion.”
           

I took a sip. To my surprise it tasted rich and smooth. I raised an eyebrow. “A good year,” I said in my best British accent.
           

The man in the sweater nodded. “A very good year. Ninety-nine was a good year for all of us, eh?”
           

The others’ grins were rife with hidden meaning.
           

“But this is ninety-nine,” I protested.
           

“So it is,” he replied, wrinkling his brow. “Ninety-nine is a good year for us all.”
           

The others laughed but I had the distinct impression I was being mocked.
           

“Dare I ask?” I muttered as the music throbbed on unabated. The man in the sweater grinned like the doorwoman.
           

“Nothing too sordid, Lewis,” he said, reaching across the table. I shook his cool hand. “I’m Drew. Vanessa’s forgetting to be polite again.”
           

“Lewis,” I replied unnecessarily.
           

He shot me a wry smile.
           

Vanessa’s attention, drawn elsewhere, took us with it. She stared unreadably at a nearby group of vampires. One had cut his wrist and his female companion was delicately lapping its crimson upwelling.
           

I blanched.
           

Glancing at Drew, I saw his lips moving, scornfully mouthing something. He noticed me and flashed a quick smile.
           

“Don’t worry, Lewis, only hardcore vampires do stuff like that.” He emphasized ‘hard core’ with a curious twist of his mouth.
           

A shaky bleat of laughter escaped me. The phone call, the Banshee, the bloodsuckers had unnerved me more than I cared to admit. I realized I sounded like a sheep and fervently hoped it wasn’t I who was being led to the slaughter.
           

“Have you tried it?” I asked Drew, my voice pale and thin above the music.
           

Drew’s smile widened. “Once or twice.” His eyes flared into lambent fire. I shuddered, looked around the table and noticed that every eye smoldered with a similar light, even Vanessa’s. They seemed poised, suddenly alert and on edge, sharing a passion I knew nothing of and shuddered to contemplate.
           

I raised my glass and kept raising it until its dregs slid down my throat. Drew leaned forward with the bottle and poured.
           

The music had changed subtly. Still wild, it undulated seductively in a minor key. An untamed Gaelic voice set the air quivering, singing,
           

“I will give my love an apple without any core.”
           

My senses whirled. The room spun wildly.
           

“I will give my love a house without any door.”

It seemed that young, ancient voice was calling my name, luring me away from who I was and the world I knew.
           

“I will give my love a palace, where in it he may be.”

Bagpipes, flutes and spinning faces filled my vision. Hot eyes pierced my soul.
           

“And he may unlock it without any key.”

Dark, blood-red curtains flapped in a supernatural wind obscuring my sight. Blinding me.
           

“My head is the apple without a core, my mind is the house without any door.”

A tremendous pressure to surrender to the music hammered my chest. Voices coerced and cajoled.
           

“My heart is the palace, where in it he may be.”

Aye, and my heart was fruit for those with a taste for it.
           

“And he may unlock it without any key.”
           

And the power to pluck it unresisting from my breast.
           

The music soared; the siren sang. I left the world behind, fleeing a nameless terror of unspeakable beauty across an endless expanse of night. A terror so ancient yet so wrenchingly lovely I lacked the strength to resist. Half of me fled; half of me remained.

I woke in my clothes, in my bed, in my flat with no idea how I’d got there and a thousand phones jangling my skull.
           

My hand brushed the lamp off the table before it found the phone. The light bulb shattered.
           

“Get up, Lewis,” said a voice. “You’re late for work.”
           

I bolted out of bed. No, still prostrate, I stared at the ceiling willing my body to move. I heaved myself up and dropped back. Someone had stuck needles in my brain while I slept. With a sledgehammer.
           

Finally, I rolled from my bed and hit the floor. Shards of light bulb pricked my posterior. I suddenly had the energy to move.
           

Yowling, I leapt in and out of the shower, purged my lacerated skin and screeched out of the flat, pulling on various articles of clothing as I did so.
           

Maggie met me at the door with a hearty slap on the back and a booming voice.
           

“Things go a little too well last night?”
           

“A gentleman never tells,” I mumbled as I shambled to my post.
           

In truth, I could remember very little of the previous night: a song -- one that made my blood itch and my heart palpitate whose resonances echoed in my head between hammer blows.
           

I spent my shift suffering acutely trying to focus on the suddenly complex task of making coffee. Bits and pieces of memory began to filter through: Drew filling my glass, Drew filling my glass again, a toothy smile from Vanessa, Drew filling my glass, Vanessa kissing Drew . . . Vanessa kissing Drew?
           

The cardboard cup crumpled beneath my convulsing fingers. Hot milk boiled over like a liquid volcano. My hand caught fire. Hissing in pain, I dropped the cup onto my foot. Scalding milk burned into my shoe. I slipped and fell on the floor.
           

Fortunately someone was there. Rob looked down at me then leapt over my writhing body. I lay on the floor in liquid agony while the Savior of Coffee, the Lord of Latte kept the cogs of Gehenna’s running smoothly.
           

“Don’t worry,” I hissed between clenched teeth. “I’ll sacrifice myself.”
           

“A barista is down,” someone called dolorously.
           

I lay on the floor and cursed life, fate, women and anything else that came to mind.         
           

Maggie loomed over me, her hand extending. She helped me stand and we hobbled to the staff room. The customers applauded.
           

A sympathetic smile on her lips, Maggie lowered me to a chair. My butt stung and my head protested any sudden change in altitude.
           

“Did they clap because I was leaving or because I didn’t have to be carried out?”
           

“Probably both. You’re not yourself today, you know. And you look like death warmed over.”
           

“Gee, thanks. You’ve a real talent for making a guy feel better.”
           

Maggie smiled again, “I try.” She pressed a cool, damp cloth against my skin. I closed my eyes and tried to relax.
           
           

I went home early with orders to see a doctor. My skin had not blistered, so I decided against further torture. Poking and prodding quacks did not rank high on my Enjoyment of a Day Off Scale. A little hair of the dog was the only cure one needed on days like this.
           

So cracking open an ale I settled back on my tattered brown, floral couch with my equally tattered copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and spent the afternoon quietly.
           

I woke once more to the phone ringing. This time, however, the needles in my brain had subsided and I needed no shards of glass to rouse me.
           

“Hullo?”
           

Silence.
           

“Hello?”
           

I thought I heard a soft moan. For some reason a vision popped into my mind: tears falling like rain from a tearless face.
           

“Can I help you?” I asked. “At all?”
           

Dial tone.
           

I sat back phone in hand, suddenly, inexplicably sad and tired. I wondered if it had been Vanessa, but it didn’t seem her style.
           

The wind began to blow, rattling the windows. I sat a little longer, reluctant to move.
           

“Aw, forget it.” I downed the rest of my ale and went to bed.
           

I tossed and turned and turned and tossed and finally drifted off.
           

At some point I woke, or at least thought I did. The wind howled like wolves through the streets and a pair of lambent eyes floated in my window, burning orbs of sullen fire. Sibilant leaves were voices calling in the night, frail forms menacing in their last moments on the branch.
           

Lewis.
           

My name trailed through and around the building.
           

It was unsettling in the extreme, horrifying even on an ordinary night, but to tell the truth, I was growing tired of strange things happening to me.
           

“Oh, bugger off,” I growled, rolling over.
           

The eyes widened, blinked twice then winked out of existence.

Vanessa visited the next night. I say visited because she came looking for me, I could tell. She lingered discreetly until I had my break. I joined her on the patio. She marked her page and smiled up at me. She was reading Lord of the Flies.
           

“Lewis,” she said by way of greeting. I had always loathed my name, but from her lips it sounded like epiphany. “Sit. You’re gawking.”
           

“I don’t gawk. Do I gawk?” I asked sinking into a plastic chair.
           

“Occasionally.” She saw my look of dismay and her smile softened. “Lighten up. It’s endearing.”
           

“Ah,” I said, masking my discomfiture behind a hasty sip of latte. Too hot! I blinked rapidly to avoid reacting.
           

Vanessa leaned forward noticing my watery eyes. A taloned finger whisked a tear from my cheek.
           

“And sensitive too,” she murmured, a strange look in her eyes. She regarded the bead gleaming on the end of her finger.
           

“What are you thinking?” I asked.
           

“I’m hoping,” she replied.
           

“What are you hoping?”
           

“That we can change ourselves.”
           

I snorted. “What do you need to change?”
           

Vanessa looked briefly amused. “Many things,” her chair squeaked as she leaned back. “Small and not so small.”
           

“The same as all of us,” I chuckled, sipping cautiously.
           

Her lips quirked.
           

A siren wailed like a dirge deep in the city.
           

“What? You don’t believe that?”
           

“Do you really believe it?” she countered.
           

I got the feeling we weren’t just talking about change. I sat back. I looked out at the city. Its innumerable eyes winked slyly back.
           

“I think . . . yes, I think that no matter what we’ve done there’s redemption somewhere.”
           

Vanessa bit her lip and turned away. The lights of Gehenna’s softened her pale skin to the sheen of silk. I touched her hand. Her head jerked toward me. A tear flew from her cheek. It glittered like a garnet.
           

“I cannot believe,” I breathed, my throat tight. “That someone as lovely as you could do something so horrible as would taint your soul.”
           

“I have no soul, Lewis,” she murmured.
           

She wasn’t crying. There were no tears, but I knew she was weeping.
           

Vanessa pulled her hand away. “I have to go.”
           

“Okay,” I said, my eyes on her face. I held up her book. “I meant what I said.”
           

She smiled then as she took the book. A sad, sweet half smile. Her fingers brushed my cheek as she walked away.
           

I sat on the patio for the last few minutes of my break. I had no idea what had just been communicated, but I could not help feeling lost, alone and a little sad.

 

I didn’t see Vanessa for two days. The third day of her absence was overcast and nearly dusk all afternoon. Evening descended with a puff and a wheeze, sooty and pungent.
           

I left for work around six. Drew was coming up the street towards me, his dark sunglasses gaping like empty eye sockets.
           

“Missed you last night.”
           

“Missed me?”
           

“Yeah,” said Drew. “Didn’t you get Vanessa’s message?”
           

“No, what message?”
           

Drew puffed out stubbled cheeks and exhaled. “Well, that explains it. Vanessa was pretty upset when you didn’t show.”
           

My eyebrows shot up to my hairline.
           

“She thought you were ignoring her.”
           

“No!” I said. “Nothing of the sort!”
           

He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think so, but you know women.” He grinned suddenly. “Anyway, we’re meeting at the Eagle & Child down on Quay Street tonight. See you there?”
           

I nodded. “As soon as I get off work.”
           

His teeth flashed in the gloom. “Later, Lewis.” He spun and was gone.

 

I alternated between kicking myself and cursing my answering machine as I worked.
           

“How’s the foot, Lewis?” asked Rob as he took over for the night.
           

“Fine. No thanks to you, you putz.”
           

Rob shrugged. “It wasn’t life threatening and you know how irate customers get.”
           

I shot him my dirtiest look and decided I didn’t have time to hit him. Stifling my ire, I hurried to the back. Maggie glanced up at me.
           

“Hot date tonight?”
           

“Yeah, Vanessa. I missed her last night and she’s peeved.”
           

“I hope you’re taking her somewhere nice, then.”
           

“We’re meeting at the Eagle & Child.”
           

“Could be worse.”
           

“Thanks a lot.”
           

“Anytime, Lewis. As always.”

           

The Eagle & Child was an English pub. Age-blackened oak panels, low heavy-beamed ceilings, pipe smoke and good ale made for a nice Old World feel.
           

Drew sat in the far corner accompanied by two of the guys from the Banshee. He introduced them as Pierre and Michael.
           

“Where’s Vanessa?” I asked, sliding in beside Drew.
           

“Said she’d be along in a little while,” he replied, shoving a pint my way. “Running a little late.”
           

“No Bordeaux tonight?”
           

Drew shook his head. “Too expensive for every night.”
           

Pierre, fox-faced and thin, waved a slender hand. “Vanessa will probably order some when she gets here. Not one for beer.” He exchanged sharp smiles with Michael. Drew leaned back with a satisfied look on his face. Once again I got the feeling I was excluded from an inside joke.
           

The evening progressed and no Vanessa. Midway through my fourth pint, Pierre ordered a round of shooters. They laughed raucously tossing back their drinks without a grimace. Mine went down like fire, burning all way to my toes. A few minutes later, Drew ordered another round.
           

“I wonder what’s keeping Vanessa,” mused Drew.
           

Pierre and Michael laughed. I laughed because they were laughing.
           

“Michael. Another round.”
           

Soon a scotch stood before me. Then another.
           

The night drew on and blurred. Soon I nearly forgot I was meeting anyone. My head wobbled on a weak neck. Not mine, surely.
           

I remember, vaguely, the waitress telling Drew I’d had enough.
           

Then I found myself prostrate on the ground with buildings looming over me and a narrow swath of stars between them.
           

Pierre hunched over me, baring sharp incisors. Michael chuckled softly in the darkness to my left. Drew was everywhere, his eyes burning.
           

My vision blurred.
           

“Do it, Pierre,” hissed a voice.
           

The world cartwheeled. The stars spun.
           

Pierre’s eyes caught the cold light of the stars. I threw up.
           

He jerked back, swearing.
           

Drew shouldered him aside growling, “Here, let me do it. You damn fool.” His eyes smoldered like burning blood.
           

His teeth gleamed wetly as his lips drew back. His head came down.
           

Suddenly the stars blotted out. Came a rush of air and Drew disappeared from my vision.
           

“Bastard!” cried a sweet, familiar voice.
           

Hisses filled the black alley.
           

“Did you actually consider him a threat?”
           

Drew growled, voice thick with blood. “You’re growing soft, woman.”
           

“Because I sought mortal company?”
           

“Because you sought mortal counsel!”
           

“I would rather love one whose end is certain. Who loves life only as one who knows it will end does. Mortals do all things more passionately than we. They flash brilliantly across the unending span of our years. So they love the fiercer, fight the harder.”
           

“They are feeble.” Drew’s fingers tightened painfully in my hair.
           

“Their weakness is their strength.”
           

“Your weakness is your undoing.”
           

“My weakness brought me to you,” Vanessa said softly. Then her voice hardened. “And their weakness will bring me back.”
           

Drew’s laugh could have split stone. “You are what you are.”
           

“You are what you’ve become.”
           

Rats chittered in deep shadow as silence fell.
           

“There’s still no return, dear,” Drew said finally. His voice was almost gentle.
           

“For my physical form, no. But my spirit will be free. Free from the hatred you poisoned me with.”
           

“Have it your way then. You’ll come back crying for us and we will not answer!” Drew threw my head aside. “Last chance, Vanessa. Come with us.”
           

Vanessa was silent. The moment stretched and stretched until it nearly broke. Then: “No.”
           

Drew spat a curse into the air. There came a flurry of movement, then all was silent but for a sound like stones weeping.

           

I opened my eyes to piercing sunlight and a tugging at my shirt.
           

“Lewis,” a voice said in my ear. “Lewis. Wake up.”
           

I groaned.
           

“Come on, Lewis. I can’t carry you, skinny as you are.”
           

My eyes fluttered open again. Maggie was bending over me, trying to lift my inert body.
           

“Maggie . . . what the-?”
           

“You got mugged. Now come on, help me out here. Can you sit up?”
           

I raised myself to my elbows, looked down at my chest. My shirt was stiff with dried vomit. My left foot lay in a puddle of oily water.       
           

I tried to swear but my tongue had swollen during the night. Groggily, I felt my back pocket. “How come Uh got muh wallet if Uh was mugged?” I slurred.
           

“I don’t know. Maybe someone scared them. Come on.”
           

Maggie helped me up and we limped to the mouth of the alley. Across the street lay the Eagle & Child. I hadn’t made it very far last night.
Maggie bundled me into her little blue hatchback, took me home, and cleaned me up. Neither of us mentioned Vanessa.
       
           

After that, my worst morning ever, life returned largely to normal. I never returned to normal but I was never close to it in the first place. However, I did catch myself thinking at odd moments of my beautiful red-haired vixen. I became more prone to melancholy than I’d ever been.
           

Then, months later, I received a package in the mail. A Parisian postmark stared up at me and I knew who had sent it without having to look. I set it on my kitchen table and stared at the plain brown wrapping.
           

Finally, with a mixture of excitement and foreboding, I slowly unwrapped it. Pulling the lid open I stared down at an empty wine bottle nestled in red tissue paper. The white label bore a chateau in gold. Lettering of the same color proclaimed it a product of Chateau Haut Brion and in black numerals below the letters -- just below the letters -- there lay a date. The black numerals read eighteen ninety-nine.
           

It had been a good year.