you, you don't know what's happening. With these Type Three vampires, it's as if they carry a kind of
selective, short-term amnesia in their saliva.
"I passed it off somehow. Told him I'd just felt light-headed for a second or two, blamed it on coming out of
the cold and into all the noise and light and heat. He accepted it but told me I had to take it easy. "You're too
valuable to lose, Don,' he said, and then he kissed me. Here." Callahan touched his right cheek with his
scarred right hand. "So I guess I lied when I said there was nothing physical between us, didn't I? There was
that one kiss. I can still remember exactly how it felt. Even the little prickle of fine stubble on his upper lip…
here."
"I'm so very sorry for you," Susannah said.
"Thank you, my dear," he said. "I wonder if you know how much that means? How wonderful it is to have
condolence from one's own world? It's like being a castaway and getting news from home. Or fresh water
from a spring after years of stale bottled stuff." He reached out, took her hand in both of his, and smiled. To
Eddie, something in that smile looked forced, or even false, and he had a sudden ghastly idea. What if Pere
Callahan was smelling a mixture of bitter onions and hot metal right now? What if he was seeing a blue glow,
not around Susannah's neck like a collar, but around her stomach like a belt?
Eddie looked at Roland, but there was no help there. The gunslinger's face was expressionless.
"He had AIDS, didn't he?" Eddie asked. "Some gay Type Three vampire bit your friend and passed it on to
him."
"Gay," Callahan said. "Do you mean to tell me that stupid word actually…" He trailed off, shaking his head.
"Yep," Eddie said. "The Red Sox still haven't won the Series and homos are gays."
"Eddie!" Susannah said.
"Hey," Eddie said, "do you think it's easy being the one who left New York last and forgot to turn off the
lights? Cause it's not. And let me tell you, I'm feeling increasingly out of date myself." He turned back to
Callahan. "Anyway, that is what happened, isn't it?"
"I think so. You have to remember that I didn't know a great deal myself at that time, and was denying and
repressing what I did know. With great vigor, as President Kennedy used to say. I saw the first one—the first
'little one'—in that movie theater in the week between Christmas and New Year's of 1975." He gave a brief,
barking laugh. "And now that I think back, that theater was called the Gaiety. Isn't that surprising?" He
paused, looking into their faces with some puzzlement. "It's not. You're not surprised at all."
"Coincidence has been cancelled, honey," Susannah said. "What we're living in these days is more like the
Charles Dickens version of reality."
"I don't understand you."
"You don't need to, sug. Go on. Tell your tale."
The Old Fella took a moment to find the dropped thread, then went on.
"I saw my first Type Three in late December of 1975. By that night about three months later when I saw the
blue glow around Lupe's neck, I'd come across half a dozen more. Only one of them at prey. He was down in
an East Village alley with another guy. He—the vampire—was standing like this." Callahan rose and
demonstrated, arms out, palms propped against an invisible wall. "The other one—the victim—was between
his propped arms, facing him. They could have been talking. They could have been kissing. But I knew—I
knew—that it wasn't either one.
"The others… I saw a couple in restaurants, both of them eating alone. That glow was all over their hands
and their faces—smeared across their lips like… like electric blueberry juice—and the burned-onion smell
hung around them like some kind of perfume." Callahan smiled briefly. "It strikes me how every description I
try to make has some kind of simile buried in it. Because I'm not just trying to describe them, you know, I'm
trying to understand them. Still trying to understand them. To figure out how there could have been this other
world, this secret world, there all the time, right beside the one I'd always known."
Roland's right, Eddie thought. It's todash. Got to be. He doesn't know it, but it is. Does that make him one of
us ? Part of our ka-tet?
"I saw one in line at Marine Midland Bank, where Home did its business," Callahan said. "Middle of the day.
I was in the Deposit line, this woman was in Withdrawals. That light was all around her. She saw me looking
at her and smiled. Fearless eye contact. Flirty." He paused. "Sexy."
"You knew them, because of the vampire-demon's blood in you," Roland said. "Did they know you?"
"No," Callahan said promptly. "If they'd been able to see me—to isolate me—my life wouldn't have been
worth a dime. Although they came to know about me. That was later, though.
"My point is, I saw them. I knew they were there. And when I saw what had happened to Lupe, I knew what
had been at him. They see it, too. Smell it. Probably hear the chimes, as well. Their victims are marked, and
after that more are apt to come, like bugs to a light. Or dogs, all determined to piss on the same telephone
pole.
"I'm sure that night in March was the first time Lupe was bitten, because I never saw that glow around him
before… or the marks on the side of his throat, which looked like no more than a couple of shaving nicks.
But he was bitten repeatedly after that. It had something to do with the nature of the business we were in,
working with transients. Maybe drinking alcohol-laced blood is a cheap high for them. Who knows?
"In any case, it was because of Lupe that I made my first kill. The first of many. This was in April…"
TEN
This is April and the air has finally begun to feel and smell like spring. Callahan has been at Home since
five, first writing checks to cover end-of-the-month bills, then working on his culinary specialty, which he
calls Toads n Dumplins Stew. The meat is actually stewing beef, but the colorful name amuses him.
He has been washing the big steel pots as he goes along, not because he needs to (one of the few things
there's no shortage of at Home is cooking gear) but because that's the way his mother taught him to operate
in the kitchen: clean as you go.
He takes a pot to the back door, holds it against his hip with one hand, turns the knob with his other hand.
He goes out into the alley, meaning to toss the soapy water into the sewer grating out there, and then he
stops. Here is something he has seen before, down in the Village, but then the two men—the one standing
against the wall, the one in front of him, leaning forward with his hands propped against the bricks—were
only shadows. These two he can see clearly in the light from the kitchen, and the one leaning back against
the wall, seemingly asleep with his head turned to the side, exposing his neck, is someone Callahan knows.
It is Lupe.
Although the open door has lit up this part of the alley, and Callahan has made no effort to be quiet—has, in
fact, been singing Lou Reed's "Take a Walk on the Wild Side"—neither of them notices him. They are
entranced. The man in front of Lupe looks to be about fifty, well dressed in a suit and a tie. Beside him, an
expensive Mark Cross briefcase rests on the cobbles. This man's head is thrust forward and tilted. His open
lips are sealed against the right side of Lupe's neck. What's under there?Jugular? Carotid? Callahan doesn't
remember, nor does it matter. The chimes don't play this time, but the smell is overwhelming, so rank that
tears burst from his eyes and clear mucus immediately begins to drip from his nostrils. The two men opposite
him blaze with that dark blue light, and Callahan can see it swirling in rhythmic pulses. That's their
breathing, he thinks. It's their breathing, stirring that shit around. Which means it's real.
Callahan can hear, very faintly, a liquid smooching sound. It's the sound you hear in a movie when a couple
is kissing passionately, really pouring it on.
He doesn't think about what he does next. He puts down thepotful of sudsy, greasy water. It clanks loudly on
the concrete stoop, but the couple leaning against the alley wall opposite don't stir; they remain lost in their
dream. Callahan takes two steps backward into the kitchen. On the counter is the cleaver he's been using to
cube the stew-beef. Its blade gleams brightly. He can see his face in it and thinks, Well at least I'm not one;
my reflection's still there. Then he closes his hand around the rubber grip. He walks back out into the alley.
He steps over the pot of soapy water. The air is mild and damp. Somewhere water is dripping. Somewhere a
radio is blaring "Someone Saved My Life Tonight." Moisture in the air makes a halo around the light on the
far side of the alley. It's April in New York, and ten feet from where Callahan—not long ago an ordained
priest of the Catholic Church—stands, a vampire is taking blood from his prey. From the man with whom
Donald Callahan has fallen in love.
"Almost had your hooks in me, din'tcha, dear?" Elton John sings, and Callahan steps forward, raising the
cleaver. He brings it down and it sinks deep into the vampire's skull. The sides of the vampire's face push out
like wings. He raises his head suddenly, like a predator that has just heard the approach of something bigger
and more dangerous than he is. A moment later he dips slightly at the knees, as if meaning to pick up the
briefcase, then seems to decide he can do without it. He turns and walks slowly toward the mouth of the alley.
Toward the sound of Elton John, who is now singing "Someone saved, someone saved, someone saved my liiife
tonight." The cleaver is still sticking out of the thing's skull. The handle waggles back and forth with each
step like a stiff little tail. Callahan sees some blood, but not the ocean he would have expected. At that
moment he is too deep in shock to wonder about this, but later he will come to believe that there is precious
little liquid blood in these beings; whatever keeps them moving, it's more magical than the miracle of blood.
Most of what was their blood has coagulated as firmly as the yolk of a hard-cooked egg.
It takes another step, then stops. Its shoulders slump. Callahan loses sight of its head when it sags forward.
And then, suddenly, the clothes are collapsing, crumpling in on themselves, drifting down to the wet surface
of the alley.
Feeling like a man in a dream, Callahan goes forward to examine them. Lupe Delgado stands against the
wall, head back, eyes shut, still lost in whatever dream the vampire has cast over him. Blood trickles down
his neck in small and unimportant streams.
Callahan looks at the clothes. The tie is still knotted. The shirt is still inside the suit-coat, and still tucked into
the suit pants. He knows that if he unzipped the fly of those suit pants, he would see the underwear inside. He
picks up one arm of the coat, mostly to confirm its emptiness by touch as well as sight, and the vampire's
watch tumbles out of the sleeve and lands with a clink beside what looks like a class ring.
There is hair. There are teeth, some with fillings. Of the rest of Mr. Mark Cross Briefcase, there is no sign.
Callahan gathers up the clothes. Elton John is still singing "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," but maybe
that's not surprising. It's a pretty long song, one of those four-minute jobs, must be. He puts the watch on his
own wrist and the ring on one of his own fingers, just for temporary safekeeping. He takes the clothes inside,
walking past Lupe. Lupe's still lost in his dream. And the holes in his neck, little bigger than pinpricks to
start with, are disappearing.
The kitchen is miraculously empty. Off it, to the left, is a door marked storage. Beyond it is a short hall with
compartments on both sides. These are behind locked gates made of heavy chickenwire, to discourage
pilferage. Canned goods on one side, dry goods on the other. Then clothes. Shirts in one compartment. Pants
in another. Dresses and skirts in another. Coats in yet another. At the very end of the hall is a beat-up
wardrobe marked MISCELLANY. Callahan finds the vampire's wallet and sticks it in his pocket, on top of his
own. The two of them together make quite a lump. Then he unlocks the wardrobe and tosses in the vampire's
unsorted clothes. It's easier than trying to take his ensemble apart, although he guesses that when the
underwear is found inside the pants, there will be grumbling. At Home, used underwear is not accepted.
"We may cater to the low-bottom crowd," Rowan Magruder has told Callahan once, "but we do have our
standards."
Never mind their standards now. There's the vampire's hair and teeth to think about. His watch, his ring, his
wallet… and God, his briefcase and his shoes! They must still be out there!
Don't you dare complain, he tells himself. Not when ninety-five per cent of him is gone, just conveniently
disappeared like the monster in the last reel of a horror movie. God's been with you so far—I think it's God—
so don't you dare complain.
Nor does he. He gathers up the hair, the teeth, the briefcase, and takes them to the end of the alley, splashing
through puddles, and tosses them over the fence. After a moment's consideration he throws the watch, wallet,
and ring over, too. The ring sticks on his finger for a moment and he almost panics, but at last it comes off
and over it goes—plink. Someone will take care of this stuff for him. This is New York, after all. He goes
back to Lupe and sees the shoes. They are too good to throw away, he thinks; there are years of wear left in
