But it was Splash Mountain that sent Louis into multiple orgasms. Again and again, he howled with glee as the log flume plunged four stories down at the end of the ride. By the third time round, he was drenched to the bone, but not dissuaded in the least from dashing through the concrete tunnels to jump into the little boat, yet one more time. Burman and Carlos had to physically stop him and drag him off to Pirates of the Caribbean. The drop over the little waterfall, however, was a secondary benefit; Louis’ true infatuation was with the audio-animatronic Brer Fox.

  Seeing the mechanical fox for the first time, his mouth had simply opened in a wide “O” of wonder, his eyes glazed with fascination. He tugged at Carlos’s sleeve, pointing like a toddler in a pet store, trying to show Mommy the bunnies. On their second pass, he tried to talk to it and, when it refused to respond in English, Louis had resorted to an odd little blend of yips, growls and barks. The third time, he grew angry, almost like a jilted lover, and Burman had to forcibly yank him back down when he stood up and tried to climb out of the boat in order to get closer to the robot and give it a piece of his mind.

  After their fourth ride, on the way to see the Pirates, Louis had sunken into a deep melancholia, gazing back over his shoulder at the huge artificial mountain with such childlike longing in his eyes, that Carlos, touched by Louis’ forlorn expression, had decided to cheer him up. First winking at Burman and motioning her to keep Louis occupied, Carlos had vanished into a nearby toy shop and emerged carrying a huge stuffed Brer Fox doll.

  Louis was flabbergasted. Speechless with thanks, he’d clutched the toy to his chest for the rest of the day, removing his windbreaker to wrap around the little fox and keep it sheltered from the rain. In fact, Pamela later reported, Louis was so attached to the critter that he insisted on taking it to bed with him every night. According to Pamela, when Louis had first arrived at her home, he’d been plagued with nightmares. But Brer Fox seemed to be able to vanquish the nighttime terrors. As for Carlos, he was heartily looking forward to the day when Louis would be able to fall peacefully asleep clutching an entirely different toy against his chest — namely, Shanda Leer.

  Tonight, finally, they had managed to persuade Burman to allow them another evening alone. Carlos had called Becky to gripe about Burman’s constant presence. The coroner had immediately come up with a unique, but effective, solution. It was called The Vampire Avengers of Venus, a cult classic, and was scheduled to play at the NuArt revival movie theater in West Los Angeles.

  Burman had blanched when Carlos had suggested the film for the evening’s entertainment. She’d suggested a half dozen other, more palatable movies, but Carlos, relying on Becky’s promise that Burman would refuse to accompany them to anything with the word “vampire” in the title, pressed his advantage and, finally, Burman had begged off. Carlos called Becky back, both to thank her and to get an explanation for Pamela’s reaction, but Becky mysteriously kept silent. Carlos’s curiosity was aroused, of course, but he soon put it aside in favor of getting Shanda ready for her second date with Louis — alone.

  The movie had been as bad as the title suggested; they’d left after an hour. Now, the two young, soon-to-be lovers were cuddled comfortably on Carlos’s couch, necking like a couple of teenagers.

  Shanda had dressed exquisitely for the occasion, choosing a stylish pale blue cotton blouse and navy skirt combination. Her wig was immaculately coifed, her nails lacquered an alluring pale pink to match her lipstick; her pumps would have done Shelly Winters justice. To complete her outfit, she’d chosen a small silver cross on a chain around her neck, the crucifix resting evocatively between the swell of her falsies.

  Unfortunately, though the seduction had been proceeding apace, the moment she opened the top few buttons of her blouse, Louis had flinched away and was huddling at the far end of the couch.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” Shanda asked with concern.

  “The cross,” Louis replied, “It’s silver. Like the dishes at the restaurant.”

  “Your allergy,” Shanda said, a dubious look on her face. She hadn’t fully accepted Burman’s explanation of Louis’ antics last week but had been too busy to check and see if an allergy to silver was even theoretically possible. She had her own theories as to the nature of Louis’ problem, but, the idea being so incredible, she’d wisely kept silent and given the allergy explanation the benefit of the doubt. Resolving to make certain and call the county library on the morrow, she daintily removed the ornament, placing it carefully in a small glass bowl on the coffee table.

  “There,” she said, “All gone. Now…” She opened her arms wide to receive the object of her affections. “Come to Shanda.”

  Louis grinned and growled in the back of his throat and moved forward. But Shanda’s waiting embrace was to be delayed yet again. Suddenly, the front door shuddered as if a large object had been thrown against it. Louis’ nostrils flared.

  “What the hell?” Shanda rose from the couch and marched toward the door. She was brought up short as Louis grabbed her from behind and pulled her backwards.

  “Don’t open that!” he whispered, a hint of fear showing in his eyes.

  “Look honey,” she replied, “I’ve got a fifteen hundred dollar security deposit on this place. There’s no way I’m gonna spend it on replacing the damned front door.” She moved toward the door again, but Louis refused to release her.

  “He’s here!” Louis said, terse with anger. “I can smell him!”

  “Who’s here…you can what?” Shanda didn’t know whether to be irritated at Louis’ eccentric manner or concerned at the fear edging his voice. “Louis, dear, what are you talking about?” She steeled herself for his laughter at the preposterous notion that had been formulating over the past week and said gently, “Don’t you think it’s time we talked about this? I get the feeling you have something to tell me?”

  “Later,” Louis said as the door shuddered under a second impact. “Quick,” he urged. “Call Pamela. Tell her to get help.”

  Although Carlos would have huddled under the blankets in the bedroom, Shanda was no fool. As the door creaked alarmingly under the third blow, she grabbed the telephone and auto-dialed Burman’s home.

  “It’s your dime,” Burman said, customarily rude, as she came on the line.

  “Pamela, it’s Carlos. We may have a major problem.”

  “Oh, good God!” Burman said. “What’d he do now?”

  “It’s nothing like that,” Shanda said and paused as she watched, totally confused, while Louis pushed the couch against the front door. She turned back to the telephone. “He’s acting very strange. We were sitting in my living room and…”

  “Your living room?” Burman yelped. “What happened to the fucking movie?”

  “It was terrible, Pam,” Shanda said soothingly, “and we didn’t want to spoil your evening alone. So we came back…Hey!”

  Shanda jumped as Louis grabbed the telephone out of her hand and said quickly, “Pamela? Louis.” He drew a breath. “He’s trying to get in! Get Chris!”

  On the other end of the telephone, Burman’s anger evaporated at Louis’ urgency. “The killer?” she asked.

  “Do you know anyone else who’d try to break down the door?” he responded, sarcastically.

  “I’ll be right there,” Burman said and hung up.

  Louis slammed down the telephone in return and grabbed Shanda by both shoulders.

  “Listen,” he said, “I don’t have time to explain. Just do what I tell you.”

  Shanda nodded, meekly, his intensity getting through to her.

  “Good.” His glance roved around the room and then, confusing her even further, Louis asked, “Do you have anything in here that’s silver?”

  “You’re kidding,” Shanda said, her fears being confirmed with each strange thing her lover said. “Louis, are you trying to tell me…?”

  He cut her off. “We’re in big trouble. Don’t argue. Just grab everything you’ve got that’s silver and bring it in here.” He punctuated the order with a huge kiss.

  “Well,” Shanda said, straightening her wig, “if you put it that way.” She vanished into the kitchen, emerging a few seconds later with a silver plated serving tray and a cloth lined box of cutlery.

  “Grab those candlesticks on the mantle,” she told him, and when he reached for them and then hesitated, she snatched them up herself. She stood there, clutching the candlesticks and said firmly, “You are gonna have a lot of explaining to do, young man. Here,” she told him as she tossed him the polishing cloth from the cutlery box. “Rip it and wrap your hands.”

  “Good idea,” Louis said and, tearing the cloth in two, he quickly bound it around his palms with a small wince of pain.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Silver dust in the cloth,” he told her.

  “I’ll get a dishrag,” she replied and moved toward the kitchen again.

  A sharp cracking sound came from the front door. Shanda dropped everything and flew into Louis’ arms, confused and frightened.

  Burman snatched up the telephone and dialed Chris’ number from memory, cursing up a storm when she got a pre-recorded message that the number had been changed. She snatched up a pen and a piece of paper and jotted it down, damning AT&T and telephone operators in general. She dialed the new number and, once again, gave vent to a stream of profanity as the “Circuits are busy” message sounded in her ear.

  “Fuck you, Pacific Bell!” she yelled into the receiver. “Goddamned sons of bitches!” she roared as she slammed down the phone. “First they hire frigging Filipinos who can’t speak English. Telephones are supposed to help communication,” she raged. “If I wanted a multi-cultural experience every time I try to make a call, I woulda been a switchboard operator for the United fucking Nations! And, now, you can’t get a frigging call across town!” She threw the pen back onto the table and, realizing it was a silver plated cross, snatched it back up and jammed it into her purse.

  “Silver, silver…” she murmured to herself and, with lightening speed, yanked open the china cabinet in the dining room and grabbed everything made of the shiny metal.

  “Ah!” she said in satisfaction, as she opened her cutlery drawer and grabbed up a large, wickedly sharp knife and a moment later yelled “Fucking stainless!” and threw it across the room. Panicked, she paused for breath and, suddenly, an idea hit her. She rushed to the front door and grabbed up the Neiman Marcus bag that was lying there. She thanked God that, while Carlos and her ward were at the movies she’d taken the opportunity to shop for gifts for her niece’s new infant. She upended the bag, spilling the contents onto the floor.

  Ripping the baby gifts out of their packages, she crammed them into her purse and picked up the telephone to try Chris once again. This time she got through.

  Burman was surprised at the tears she felt running down her face as she yelled terse details into the telephone. Ignoring Chris’ command to stay at home, she slammed down the telephone and, throwing on a scarlet and mustard yellow sweat jacket over her pink nightie and aqua pajamas, bolted out of the apartment. Two minutes later, with a squeal of her tires, she was flooring it down Horn Avenue toward Carlos’s place six blocks away. She leaned on her horn, ignoring the traffic lights crossing Sunset, praying that she’d make it Carlos’s apartment accident-free and in time.

  Becky was sitting amidst a mountain of cotton, leather, silk and the ever present spandex, helping to load Troy’s clothes into the apartment’s huge closets, astounded that such a little person could wear so much.

  Twilight had come and gone quite a while ago, but Chris was still asleep. Becky had spent the evening carrying armload after armload of Troy’s clothes into the bedroom, where Troy was supposed to neatly put everything on hangers. But he seemed even more distracted than usual, incapable of buttoning anything properly and lopsided shirts kept slipping off the hangers and onto the closet floor. After an hour of cleaning up after him, she’d set him to folding and putting things in drawers and taken over closet duty herself.

  But now, she wished she hadn’t. For some reason, probably having to do with what she’d witnessed the night before, the coffin in the middle of the bedroom was making her nervous even though she knew that it was only Chris inside. As a medical examiner, she told herself, she should be immune from getting the willies in the presence of a corpse. But between just having watched Chris feed and her memory of the one time she’d seen Chris in repose, she couldn’t get the image of his sharp fangs and waxen pallor out of her mind.

  She recalled one particularly disturbing incident during the early part of her medical career. It was one of her first solo autopsies. A forty-ish male had been brought in to the morgue, dead of coronary failure brought on by hypertension. As Becky had been preparing her instruments, the corpse suffered a muscle spasm and had sat bolt upright on the autopsy table, almost causing Becky to have her own heart attack. The thought that, without warning, Chris’ coffin lid might fly open and someone, who only moments before had been quite dead, would emerge, fangs agleam, was bringing up disquieting memories and seriously working her nerves. Luckily, Chris chose to wake up while she was in the bathroom. By tacit agreement, neither of them mentioned the night before.

  The three of them worked for a while, putting things in drawers and on shelves. Unfortunately, every time they would think that they’d fully stocked one item of furniture, one of them would open a new crate or box and find more stuff to be put away. They could have been unpacked at least an hour ago, but the constant shuffling to find room for everything complicated the process. Then again, they didn’t have nearly enough furniture.

  Becky recalled the brief squabble that had occurred just before the movers had arrived. It seemed that, at the last minute, over Troy’s objections, Chris had insisted on bringing the scarlet furniture from the old apartment. Now, it was dwarfed by the cavernous walls of their new home. Troy had grumbled, having wanted to rush out while the movers were en route, and buy a new living room suite. Chris had patiently explained that, since the movers were to be arriving momentarily and since the traveling distance between the two apartments was less than five blocks, they would not nearly have enough time to shop. Besides, he’d added, since it was well after normal business hours, very few of the finer furniture shops would be open.

  Now, after they’d shifted and moved everything for what seemed the twentieth time, and after umpteen not-so-subtle hints from Troy, Becky placed her hands on her hips and announced, “He was right, Chris.” She waved at the piles of personal belongings that were beginning to stack up.

  “You need to get new furniture.”

  Chris looked at her, merely arching an eyebrow in reply.

  “Well,” she said, defensively, “you’ve got all this extra room and no place to actually put anything.”

  “Troy’ll fill it in a week.” Chris replied dryly.

  “Antiques,” Troy said, dreamily. “It’ll go with the ceilings.”

  “Since I’m the one paying for all this,” Chris said, “do you mind telling me what kind of antiques you had in mind? Victorian? Gothic again, God forbid? Pre-Columbian, perhaps?”

  Troy missed the sarcasm. “I liked the thirties,” he said. “All that black lacquer and etched mirror stuff. You know? Fruitwood tables and sleek lines. Bronze lamps with naked boys on them.” He went into the hallway with an armload of linens, an absent expression on his face.

  “Deco?” Chris asked and his eyes narrowed as he cast a glance about the living room. “Not bad, if we get rid of the other stuff. I kinda liked deco.”

  “You won’t when he gets through with it,” Becky said. “Bronze lamps with naked boys? Well,” she added, “I guess there are worse things.” She repressed a shudder at what horrors Troy could work on the apartment if he’d decided, say, that he’d like to do it in Santa Fe, one of the more modern Retro or Industrial styles or — Heaven forfend! — a combination of all three. Visions of coffee tables made from spare tractor parts, painted bright blue with pastel coyotes on the side made her head spin.

  “That’s true,” Chris agreed, amused. “Will you get that?” he asked her when the telephone rang.

  “Sure,” Becky reached out and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Get the fuck over to Carlos’!” Burman shouted. “Now!”

  For first time in her life, Becky heard a hint of fear in Burman’s voice. If Burman, who had given Rex Castillian a run for his money, was scared, something must be dreadfully wrong.

  “What’s wrong, Pam?”

  “There’s no time!” Burman shouted. Then something happened that caused a cold wave of fear to wash over her; to Becky’s disbelief, Burman began to cry.

  “Pamela, are you home?” Becky asked urgently. But her question was met with the city manager’s sobs.

  “Pamela, I need to know where you are?”

  At Becky’s look of helplessness, Chris took the receiver from her.

 

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