CHAPTER TWO

TWO
There is always someone in New York who
must be fooled. This time, again, it is Elaine, who
maintains the best saloon on the planet. This watering
hole is located at Eighty Eighth Street and Second
Avenue. I have been going there since she opened the
place, which coincided with my reincarnation, so to
speak, as Gus III. Toward the end of Gus III, Elaine
was complimenting me, if it can be called that, a little
too often.
“I don’t know how you always look so young,
Gus,” she would say.

So, in the late 1970s, I disappeared from New
York yet again and came back as my own son in 2000
to start all over with the millennium. I spent much of
the interim in New Orleans. It was the height of the
“murder years” there. I fed with ease, sometimes on
murderous cops, sometimes on other disreputable
characters, sometimes on tourists.
I went back right after Hurricane Katrina.
All the North American vampires, and some from
South America, were there. It was a feast, a grand
opportunity, and we vampires are nothing if not
opportunistic feeders. Our lives are much simpler if
we can leave a corpse to rot after draining it of every
warm red drop.
There is not a lot that society could do to me if my true nature was revealed. Wooden stakes, silver bullets – that is all nonsense. The most unpleasant aspect of being found out would be the absence of relaxed human company; which is something that sometimes gives me great satisfaction. I would miss that. There is no question but alive some humans can be quite charming in their own way.
Anyway, I came back to Manhattan once again as my usual youthful self. Now I occasionally catch Elaine watching me with this look on her face like she has almost figured something out but cannot quite believe it.
Oh well. What can she do about it? My money is as good as the next guy’s, and I do have lots of it.
Soon I may have to start employing the craft of a make up artist. Being involved with theater for more than a century, and never growing old, I have become an expert at false aging. This, of course, is the opposite of why most cosmetics are applied. That, and the fact that almost all of my public appearances are in the artificial lights and shadows of the night, allow me to get away with this subterfuge. Also, I was taught the art of make up by a master of the theater, perhaps the greatest master of all time.
For the first eight or ten years in the duplicitous but necessary cycle of being my own descendant, there is no make up required. I always look youthful, handsome, sexy if you like – take your pick. Whatever the description, people do not start to question the vision of eternal youth, whether with me or with one of their own kind, until it tests credulity.
Envy tends to blind people to the actual stasis of my features. With cosmetic surgery being what it is these days, I am shocked that anyone would ever question my looks, not that anyone has as yet this time around. It is possible that I will simply disappear for a couple of weeks and reappear in public looking exactly as I do now, but with a cosmetic scar behind each ear indicating that I had some “work” done.
In another ten years or so I must begin to add hints of silver to my hair, as well as a line or two to my face. It takes a trained and sure hand to pull off this trick. I can do a believable job of advancing in years to the human age of sixty or so, and even with the masque of false plastic surgery, that is pushing the limits. Then I will have to leave and start all over again in twenty to thirty years, as Gus the Fifth. Who knows what theatrical productions will look like then?
I am capable of more elaborate disguise than simple make up, and do employ that theatrical craft when necessary, which is very seldom. However, as a day to day subterfuge, disguise is a wearying matter and a tool to be employed with discernment. Aging my features is a necessity, though, and easy enough.
The way things are shaping up, I will probably disappear again before the false aging of my features is required. You could say that I have had it with New York theater and everything it has become. Then again, this ranting and worrying could all be nothing more than pre-opening night jitters. My revival of the musical Pretty Lady will soon have its premiere. If it is a hit, I likely will feel better about my future.