CHAPTER SIX

SIX
The blood hunger began to rise once I was on
the street. I avoided Times Square and headed east.
Sometimes I stroll through the new Times Square
pedestrian mall and walk north just to see the
dazzling spectacle of light, even though it now has
almost nothing to do with theater. Tonight, though,
the thought of throngs of human beings did nothing
but whet my appetite. The saloons on the block were
lit up and crowded. I ignored them, knowing the
blood lust would get more intense, more demanding,
should I mingle and press against warm flesh.
It was too early to feed and too early to go to
Elaine’s. Graydon Carter’s Monkey Bar is three blocks
east and ten blocks uptown from the theater. I decided
to walk there. Madison Avenue was nearly deserted.
Some shop windows in the Forties were still lit up
behind metal gates and grates that protected shoes,
suits, shirts, electronics, and dresses. There were a few
humans walking on that stretch of the avenue at that
hour.

There were almost no pedestrians as I got
above 50th Street. A few taxis and even fewer private
automobiles zoomed uptown.
The perpendicular and rectilinear lines of
the buildings in New York have been referred to as
concrete canyons. I don’t see them that way. Canyons are rough. Buildings are smooth. Canyons don’t have traffic.
I ended up walking right past the Elysee Hotel, where Tennessee Williams choked to death on a bottle cap in his suite, and where the Monkey Bar is located on the ground floor. After all that thinking about David Belasco, I decided to have nothing to do with contemporary celebrity this evening. The Monkey Bar is all about celebrity, as is anything Mr. Carter touches.
Walking is a wonderful pastime when you want to think. However, my thoughts were becoming maudlin. Vampires cannot afford to be nostalgic. I know that. Next would come the questioning and self doubt. I was not in the mood for another bout with my existential crisis. I looked around in all directions, saw that none of the handful of pedestrians were looking my way, crouched slightly, rolled forward onto the balls of my feet and leapt to the top of the AT&T building.
I landed in the Chippendale circle and looked east. From that vantage point every light in the city had a misty halo. I blended into the shadows atop the skyscraper and let the blood hunger rise. There was no hurry. Anticipation has its virtue when eternity stretches beyond any visible horizon. I would be going east soon, and my prey would be waiting.
After some time meditating upon the halos of light and mist, I checked my watch. Lights out was in a few minutes. It was as good a time as any. I launched myself, arms tight at my sides, and flew through the sky above Queens and towards Long Island.
How vampire flight works is beyond my abilities to explain. It’s not like a bird. It’s not like a plane. It’s not even like Superman. A vampire rockets through the night sky, but there is no vapor trail, no light from burning fuel. There is one thing about flying to always keep in mind, if you’re a vampire, that is -- Never think “down” or down you will go.
As I bulleted through the sky it occurred to me once again how little we vampires can explain about our seemingly eternal existence. I can recollect nothing previous to the end of the last ice age. Those few times that I have had contact with others of my race it became clear that we are all limited in this regard. None of us know how we came into being, and certainly not why. Vampire existence seems as random as so much else on this planet, and likely throughout the universe.
It took me less than ten minutes to reach the roof of the Nassau County jail. I lay flat in a shadow and listened with my mind, scanning criminal psyches cell by cell. It took less than ten more minutes after landing there to find my prey for the night.
Roger Clonk was lying on his bunk gloating to himself. Tomorrow he would be free. His sentence for drunken driving while in possession of a gram of powder cocaine was ending the next morning. Freedom meant that he could do it again. “It” was rape and kill a child.
Roger’s mind was vibrating with gruesome images from the two child deaths already to his secret credit. Predator meet predator, I thought as I slipped through the bars into his cell. Since vampires do not have skeletons, we can become rubbery and malleable as the situation may require. It took Roger a few seconds before he realized I was in his cell, so absorbed was he with his perverse anticipation.
He jumped off his bunk and started to lift the mattress but I took off my sunglasses and froze him with my eyes. He was conscious and cognizant of what was happening as I fed. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he mentally told himself over and over ‘It’s okay. You’re getting out tomorrow. You’ll be free. It’s okay.’
You are what you eat and there is nothing I enjoy more than an optimist. Once I drank my fill I reached under his mattress, found the shiv that he let me know was there when he tried to go for it upon seeing me. He was still alive when I slit his throat. I did my best to get as little blood as possible on myself while making the cell looked like an abattoir. The bigger the mess, the less there is to investigate.
I took the shiv with me when I left. How anyone got into Roger’s cell and killed him during the night would cause some head scratching in the morning. In the end it would be just another jail house mystery. I dropped the home made knife in the East River just before landing on my roof.