CHAPTER TWELVE

TWELVE
“Out of respect for the memory of my
grandfather, I will do whatever is within my ability,
which I am sure will be more than sufficient. Grand
Gus left me quite well off.”
The old dame sitting across the room gave a
throaty chuckle.

“So, that’s you’re story and you’re sticking to it.
Well, I won’t argue. I don’t have the energy and what
would be the point? I’m certainly not going to attempt
to expose you for whatever you are. That effort would
get me locked up in a loony bin as sure as pigeons
crap on taxicabs.”
Millie was always an adept in the way of
colorful allusions. I found myself wondering what
it would have been like to grow old with her. I also
suspected I was going to have to kill her sooner or
later, and promised myself to make it look like an
accident, and to do it without drinking her blood.
She looked around, taking in the living room.
“This place hasn’t changed much. Did you
reupholster these chairs?”
“Tell me what’s going on, Millie?”
She told me her story. It did not take long. She
lost everything with Bernie Madoff. She ran through
what little was left after the crash. Her total monthly
overhead was five thousand dollars. I knew I could cover it without having to skimp. After all, she would not be around for that much longer.
I wrote out a check for fifty thousand dollars when she finished recounting her woe.
“Put this in the bank tomorrow. I just transferred funds yesterday, so it will go right through.”
I took five C notes from my wallet and tried to hand them to her. She waved off the bank notes.
“You should know better than that. I’m not panhandling, Gus.”
“Five hundred dollars is not spare change, Millie, even today.”
“This will do just fine.”
She kissed the check. I laughed again, feeling good about helping her.
I called the service and a car was at my doorstep soon after. I rode with Millie to her apartment building a few blocks away on 91st and Third. I now knew where she lived. I promised we would see each other again soon and let the doorman help her into the lobby.
The driver dropped me around the corner. It was dark there and no one was around. I leapt to the top of the tallest building in the block. I was upset after this meeting.
There is nothing more threatening to my masquerade than a noisome person from one of my past incarnations intruding on the present. It has happened on three previous occasions. Two retired stage hands and a long forgotten hoofer were each dispatched with alacrity upon confronting me and insisting that I am who I am.
Millie presents a quite different situation. She was once the object of the only emotion I have ever experienced that approximated human love, as it is described by the poets. I know that she will require special handling, even more so now that I wrote a check to her. Millie will require thought and planning.
From the rooftop on 89th Street I launched myself into the westward sky and landed across the Hudson atop a building in Jersey City. My eyes probed the night and were soon rewarded with a Dominican man bundled up and walking alone. It was after ten by now and, due to the cold, the nearby streets were deserted but for my prey.
I swooped down and drained him right there on the sidewalk. He was one of society’s necessary dullards – a garbage truck driver who hauled loads of stinking sodden trash from Staten Island to Pennsylvania. I saw his pitiful, mean-spirited life as he tried to struggle against my grip while his blood resuscitated me. He took pleasure in tailgating senior citizens on the highway, terrorizing them with his truck. His wife was fat and his children despised him for his accent. I took his body with me up to the top of a building, where I ripped him apart in a vicious attempt to alleviate my burgeoning rage about the predicament Millie’s appearance put me in.
The sound of bones cracking and cartilage tearing as soft flesh ripped and sprayed its last wet essence into the night did not make me feel any better. I flew around the city and deposited legs, arms, and torso in various locations – dumpsters and in a pile of refuse in a vacant lot.
The violence visited upon my victim might create a minor media stir across the Hudson. It would not make much news in Manhattan. With a show going into previews in a matter of days, the idea that a homicidal maniac is prowling the streets of Manhattan could affect ticket sales.
I dropped his head into the river among the sailboats along the chichi waterfront, caught an updraft, and bulleted through the night.
I landed on my own roof after circling to make sure no one of my neighbors happened to be out stargazing or on the roof making a surreptitious cell phone call to a lover. Though I could not smell it myself, I was sure that the stench of garbage mixed with the meaty odor of blood was disgusting. I let myself into the house through the roof door, went downstairs, threw my clothes into the washer, and took a long hot shower.