CHAPTER FOURTEEN

FOURTEEN
Millie was twenty when I met her. The war
had just ended and the relief of the general populace
could be felt in the very atmosphere of the city. The
two of us met one evening at the bar at Sardi’s. I
never believed in love at first sight, other than as a
plot device in romantic comedies or musicals. I never
believed in love for a vampire at all, for that matter.

Yet, when I met Millie, something inside me
throbbed; not with hunger for blood but with a desire
for intimacy with this assertive, funny girl who
seemed to be without inhibitions. The war had broken
down certain societal mores. Desperation to live life to
the fullest in the face of carnage and suffering led to
quickie marriages and war brides. Now that the war
was over, and the stories of atrocities and genocide
began to surface, even a patina of virtue seemed a
quaint thing from a bygone era. Everything would
assume a stiff propriety, at least on the surface, in the
1950s; but the post-war half of the 1940s was decidedly
loose.
We slept together on our first official date.
Millie got high on champagne and before I knew what
was happening, she kissed me and thrust her tongue
into my mouth in the back of a horse drawn hansom
as we rode through Central Park. My fangs clicked
into place as a natural reaction. But my mind balked at killing this fetching young woman with her bobbed blonde hair and vibrant laugh. It was spring time and the leaves of the trees were bursting with life and promise in the darkness above us. The air was warm. It was neither the time nor the place for murder.
“Take me to your place, Gus. I want to see where you live.”
The hansom driver, for a good tip, took us all the way to my brownstone. There we talked while she sipped more champagne and smoked.
“This is quite a set up you have here.”
“I inherited it.”
She told me her story. She came from Chicago. Her father was an accountant and her mother was a housewife. Her only sibling, an older brother, died at Normandy on D Day. Since then her parents had been sheltering and overprotective. She had come to New York only a month before to escape their smothering love and to seek a career in the magazine business.
She was living at the Barbizon Hotel for young women until she found a job. Alone, not knowing many people here – she was a perfect candidate for feeding. I knew that, and rejected it completely.
She stubbed out her cigarette and tossed back the rest of her champagne, swishing it around her mouth before swallowing it. Then she got up from her chair and crossed to where I stood by the fireplace.
“Do you ever take off those dark glasses?”
“No.”
She reached up with both hands and lifted them off my face. She gasped as I focused all my power on her. Then I did something that I only ever did with her. I put her in my thrall and I fed a little, drawing her blood with my fangs, and then sealed the wound marks so they disappeared. Why I proposed to her I will never know. I could have entranced her and made her my blood slave. It occurred to me. But I wanted more, for both of us. Or so I thought. In the end, though, she was my blood slave.
These thoughts and feelings toward her were unlike anything I ever experienced before. I became emotional in her presence; that is the only explanation – even if it is a weak one. Whatever came over me, I wanted it to continue; and I made her want it, too.
We married two weeks after we met, in the living room of my town house. Another girl from the Barbizon was her witness. My attorney at the time was mine. He had arranged for the judge to preside at the odd hour of 9 p.m., for a generous fee.
Two years passed with an unusual bliss on my part. I fed on her almost every night, always lightly. It was a substitute for sex. She had no idea, I’m sure. She spent her evenings at the theater with me, or seeing movies, followed by dinner in restaurants, where I never ate but always ordered something to push around on my plate.
I kept her in a continuous state of partial entrancement when we went out, lifting the imposed veil my power only during the movies and plays we watched. At home, after I tasted her with all the gentleness I never before knew I was capable of, she would go into a deep sleep that lasted until sunset. My repeated feeding and healing induced in her a vampire-like desire for the night. We would spend the daylight hours entwined in each others’ arms, in our bed in the house. That was also new to me – sleeping outside my secret crypt, with a human no less.
Then one evening it was over. I looked at her and felt no desire, no emotion, nothing whatsoever. After a week of nights like this, I disappeared from her life and went to Pittsburgh.
Divorce was rare in those days. Even in New York City there were no lawyers specializing in ending the state of matrimony. I instructed my attorney by cable to take care of the matter. My offer to settle two million dollars on her was generous enough that the process did not even require my participation. Millie went to Reno by train and the marriage was dissolved.
When I received word that the matter was ended, it was like it had all happened to someone else.