Smith's Monthly #22 Read online

  Judy, on the other hand, looked like everyone’s image of a matronly grandmother. She was even wearing an apron over her plaid dress. And Judy was way, way overweight, something you didn’t see often in the gods.

  “How far along is she?” Laverne asked Patty as she and Judy sat down on either side of Patty.

  “Two months,” Patty said. “She and Wolfgang were picked for the honor right after the battle with the Fuzzy-Wuzzy.”

  “So we’re going to have to move rather quickly,” Judy said, nodding and smiling like this was the best news she had ever heard. “She’s going to be leaving home within the next month at most.”

  Patty nodded. “She says she’s already beginning to change. She feels she has less than a week.”

  Both Laverne and Judy nodded sagely, clearly thinking. About what, I had no clue at all.

  I glanced at Stan and he was looking just as puzzled as I felt. But darned if I was going to ask any more stupid questions after my last one.

  “First things first,” Judy said. “We need to get her a house that she can use for a home for the next twenty-one plus years at a rental payment. The Searchlights will not take any charity from any human or god, even though they help us all the time.”

  Laverne nodded and turned and looked at me. “Poker Boy, would you mind being Emmanuel’s landlord? You and Patty could find her a comfortable home and get her approval before buying it. And make sure it’s in a good school district.”

  Now it was Patty’s turn to look puzzled at me.

  I had just kept forgetting to tell her that even though I lived in an old double-wide trailer next to a casino in the Oregon coast mountain range, I was very, very rich. She had always just assumed I was a poor poker player. Actually, my poker playing had made me very, very rich; I just seldom spent any of my money.

  I had always meant to tell her, but the subject just never came up.

  “I’d be honored to do so,” I said to Lady Luck.

  Laverne nodded. “Make sure her rent is reasonable, but not too low.”

  Then Laverne turned to Judy, the God of Hospitality. “You think Emmanuel could find a job in your area?”

  “I’m sure she could,” Judy said. “But with those looks and that build, she might be better served dealing cards. Tips would be a lot better and she would be more comfortable then with the monetary aspects of living here.”

  I wanted to know how a bright pink bald woman who always turned her head slowly from side-to-side and had horrid breath could deal cards, but I kept my mouth shut again.

  “Actually, Judy” Laverne said, nodding, “you are right.” Lady Luck turned to Stan. “After Emmanuel is settled, I’ll leave it up to you to teach her how to deal poker so she is ready to go after the baby is old enough for her to go to work. I’ll loan her some money to last her until then.”

  “A couple of quick questions,” Stan said.

  I wanted to say, “Thank you.” I had a hundred questions, but I just didn’t have the guts to ask anything. Even Patty was looking relieved that she wasn’t the one to ask some of the more obvious questions.

  Laverne and Judy both laughed at even that much from Stan. For some reason all this was just too much fun for the two of them, while it was driving the rest of us crazy.

  “Shall we tell them?” Laverne asked, clearly enjoying the frowns on our faces.

  Judy nodded. “I sure don’t see why not. Might help them sleep tonight.”

  Laverne laughed and then said, “When a Searchlight becomes pregnant, she basically turns into a human. Emmanuel will lose her color and grow hair on her head in the next few weeks.”

  Well, that was going to help with the poker dealing.

  The God of Hospitality smiled and said, “Emmanuel will give birth to a normal-looking human child and will need to raise her child with humans until the child’s twenty-first birthday. Then they will both regain their color and head patterns and join their own kind.”

  “Why?” Patty asked a half second before Stan and I could.

  “This has always been their way,” Laverne said, “from the beginning of humanity. It allows them to understand those they are protecting.”

  “When was the last Searchlight born?” Patty asked.

  “There hasn’t been a new Searchlight baby since the days of Atlantis,” Judy said. “But I expect more in the next few centuries; maybe one even sooner, since this child will need a mate.”

  “And Poker Boy,” Laverne said, smiling at me, “you might consider including Emmanuel on your team in the future for some missions. She will have some special powers, although it might take a little time to figure out exactly what they are.”

  “Be glad to,” I said, trying to imagine Emmanuel Sucker joining the rest of us at The Diner for milkshakes while we tried to solve dangerous problems.

  “Keep us informed as to your progress,” Laverne said.

  Patty and I and Stan all nodded and an instant later the two major gods were gone.

  “Too weird, just too weird,” Stan said, shaking his head and then he also vanished, leaving me with my wonderful girlfriend.

  I dropped into the chair beside Patty. “You all right?”

  She nodded. “Just stunned is all. Not sure why Emmanuel picked me.”

  “I think her husband liked you,” I said, smiling.

  “Looks like we will have a new charge very shortly,” Patty said. “And maybe a new member of the team.”

  “Could be interesting,” I said, still not sure how she might help us. But she was a Searchlight. Even a human Searchlight might be of help.

  “I have a hunch,” Patty said, “from a few things Emmanuel mentioned, that she will need lots of coaching in our modern world.”

  “Breath mints as well,” I said.

  “We can hope that changes with her skin color,” Patty said.

  Patty then turned to face me, a serious look on her face. “Laverne wants you to buy Emmanuel Sucker a house? You want to explain how that is possible?”

  I sort of coughed under the intense gaze of those superhero brown eyes. “I can easily afford it,” I said, smiling. “You know, poker winnings.”

  “I think we need to talk,” Patty said, clearly not happy that I hadn’t told her I had money.

  Lots and lots of money. So much money, in fact, I wasn’t sure how much I had anymore.

  But I had a hunch, since Patty was a hundred years older than I was, that there were some things she hasn’t told me as well. It might be a very, very interesting conversation, one we had needed to have for a while now.

  “Your place or my trailer?” I asked, smiling.

  She just glared at me, clearly not even happy at the question. So I picked her place and jumped us there.

  Just safer.

  And somewhere I was sure I could hear Lady Luck and the God of Hospitality laughing.

  For a vampire, saying goodbye to your mortal lover can be the hardest thing you ever have to do.

  First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the story was on the final ballot for the Nebula Award.

  IN THE SHADE OF THE SLOWBOAT MAN

  ONE

  I was used to the sweet smell of blood, to the sharp taste of disgust, to the wide-eyed look of lust. But the tight, small room of the nursing home covered me in new sensations like a mad mother covering her sleeping young child tenderly with a blanket before pressing a pillow hard over the face.

  I eased the heavy door closed and stood silently for a moment, my clutch purse tight against my chest. One hospital bed, a small metal dresser, and an aluminum walker were all the furniture in the room. The green drapes over the window were slightly open and I silently moved to stand in the beam of silver moonlight cutting the night. I wanted more than anything else to run. But I calmed myself, took a deep breath, and worked to pull in and study my surroundings as I would on any night in any city alley or street.

  As with all of the cesspools of humanity, the smell was the most overwhelmi
ng detail. The odor of human rot filled the building and the room, not so much different than a dead animal beside the road on a hot summer’s day. Death and nature doing its work. But in this building, in this small room, the natural work was disguised by layer after layer of biting poison antiseptic. I suppose it was meant to clean the smell of death away so as not to disturb the sensitive living who visited from the fresh air outside. But instead of clearing, the two smells combined to form a thick aroma that filled my mouth with disgust.

  I blocked the smell and focused my attention on the form in the bed.

  John, my dear, sweet Slowboat Man, my husband once, lay under the white sheet of the room’s only bed. His frame shrunken from the robust, healthy man I remembered from so many short years ago. He smelled of piss and decay. His face, rough with old skin and white whiskers, seemed to fight an enemy unseen on the battleground of this tiny room. He jerked, then moaned softly, his labored breathing working to pull enough air to get to the next breath.

  I moved to him, my ex-husband, my Slowboat Man, and lightly brushed his wrinkled forehead to ease his sleep. I used to do that as we lay together in our featherbed. I would need him to sleep so that I could go out and feed on the blood of others. He never awoke while I was gone, not once in the twenty years we were together.

  Or at least he never told me he had.

  I had never asked.

  TWO

  I was hunting the night we met. The spring of 1946, a time of promise and good cheer around the country. The war was won, the evil vanquished, and the living bathed in the feeling of a wonderful future. I had spent the last thirty years before and during the war in St. Louis, but my friends had aged, as always happened, and it was becoming too hard to continue to answer the questions and the looks. I had moved on many times in the past and I would continue to do so many times in the future. It was my curse for making mortal friends and enjoying the pleasures of the mortal world.

  I pleaded to my friends in St. Louis a sick mother in a faraway city, and booked passage under another name on an old-fashioned Mississippi riverboat named Joe Henry. I had loved the boats when they were working the river the first time, and now, again, loved them as they came back again for the tourists and gambling.

  For the first few days I stayed mostly to my small cabin, sleeping on the small bed during the day and reading at night. But on the third day, hunger finally drove me into the narrow hallways and lighted party rooms of the huge riverboat.

  Many soldiers and sailors filled the boat, most still in uniform, and most with women of their own age holding onto their arms and laughing at their every word. The boat literally reeked of health and good cheer and I still remember how that smell drove my hunger.

  I supposed events could have turned another way and I might have met Johnny before feeding. But almost immediately upon leaving my cabin, I had gotten lucky and found a young sailor standing alone on the lower deck.

  I walked up to the rail and pretended to stare out over the black waters of the river and the lights beyond. The air felt alive, full of humidity and insects, thick air that carried the young sailor’s scent clearly to me.

  He moved closer and struck up a conversation. After a minute I stroked his arm, building his lust and desire while at the same time blocking his mind of my image. I asked him to help me with a problem with the mattress on my bed in my cabin and even though he kept a straight face the smell of sexual lust almost choked me.

  Within two minutes he was asleep on my bed and I was feeding, drinking light to not hurt him, but yet getting enough of his blood to fill my immediate hunger.

  After I finished I brushed over the marks on his neck with a lick so that no sign would show, then cleaned up myself while letting him rest. Then I roused him just enough to walk him up a few decks, where I slipped away, happy that I might repeat the same act numbers of times during this voyage. It was an intoxicating time and I felt better than I had ever remembered feeling in years.

  I decided that an after-dinner stroll along the moonlit deck would be nice before returning to my cabin. I moved slowly, drinking in the warmth of the night air, listening to the churning of the paddle wheel, feeling the boat slice through the muddy water of the river.

  Johnny leaned against the rail about mid-ship, smoking a pipe. Under the silver moon, his Navy officer’s white uniform seemed to glow with a light of its own. I started to pass him and realized that I needed to stop, to speak to him, to let him hold me.

  He affected me like I imagined I affected my prey when feeding. I was drawn to him with such intensity that resisting didn’t seem possible.

  I hesitated and he glanced over at me and laughed, a soft laugh as if he could read my every thought, as if he knew that I wanted him with me that instant, without reason, without cause. He just laughed, not at me, but in merriment at the situation, at the delight, at the beauty of the night.

  He laughed easily and for the next twenty years I would enjoy that laugh every day.

  I turned and he was smiling, a first smile that I will always remember. He had the simple ability to smile and light up the darkest place, he had a smile that I would lose myself in many a night while he told me story after story after story. I never tired of that smile, and that first exposure to it melted my every will. I would be his slave and never care as long as he kept smiling at me.

  “Beautiful evening, isn’t it?” he said, his voice solid and genuine, like his smile.

  “Now it is,” I said. I had to catch my breath even after something that simple.

  Again he laughed and made a motion that I should join him at the rail gazing out over the river and the trees and farmland beyond.

  I did. And for twenty years, except to feed on others while he slept, I never left his side.

  THREE

  The smell of the room pulled me from the past and back to my mission of the evening. I looked at his weathered, time-beaten form on the bed and felt sadness and love. A large part of me regretted missing the aging time of his life, of not sharing that time with him, like I had regretted missing the years before I met him. But on both I had had no choice. Or I had felt I had had no choice. I might have been wrong, but it was the choice I had made.

  Since the time I left him I had never found another to be my husband. Actually I never really tried, never really wanted to fill that huge hole in my chest and my very being that leaving him had caused.

  But now he was dying and now I also had to move on, change cities and friends again. I had always felt regret with each move, yet the regret was controlled by the certainty that the decision was the only right one, that I would make new friends, find new lovers. But this time it was harder. Much harder.

  I sat lightly on the side of his bed and he stirred, moaning softly. I again brushed his forehead easing his pain, giving him a fuller rest, a more peaceful rest. It was the least I could do for him. He deserved so much more.

  This time he moaned with contentment and that moan took me back to those lovely nights on the Joe Henry, slowly making our way down the river, nestled in each other’s arms. We made love three, sometimes four times a day and spent the rest of the time talking and laughing and just being with each other, as if every moment was the most precious moment we had.

  During those wonderful talks I had immediately wanted to tell him of my true nature, but didn’t. The very desire to tell him surprised me. In all the years it had not happened before. So I only told him of the twenty years in St. Louis, letting him think that was where I had been raised. As the years together went by that lie became as truth between us and he never questioned me on it.

  He was born in San Francisco and wanted to return there where his family had property and some wealth. I told him I was alone in the world, as was the true case, just drifting and looking for a new home. He seemed to admire that about me. But he also knew I was free to move where he wanted.

  I wanted him to know that.

  The day before we were to dock in Vicksburg, I mention
ed to him that I wished the boat would slow down so that our time together would last. The days and nights since meeting him had been truly magical, and in my life that was a very rare occurrence.

  He had again laughed at my thought, but in a good way. Then he hugged me. “We will be together for a long time,” he had said, “but I will return in a moment.”

  With that he dressed and abruptly left the cabin, leaving me surrounded by his things and his wonderful life-odor. After a short time he returned, smiling, standing over me, casting his shadow across my naked form. “Your wish is granted,” he had said. “The boat has slowed.”

  I didn’t know how he had managed it, and never really asked what it had cost him. But somehow he had managed to delay the boat getting into Vicksburg by an extra day. A long wonderful extra day that turned into a wonderful marriage.

  From that day forward I called him my Slowboat Man and he never seemed to tire of it.

  FOUR

  “Beautiful evening, isn’t it?” he said hoarsely from the bed beside me. His words yanked me from the past and back to the smell of death and antiseptic in the small nursing home room. Johnny was smiling up at me, lightly, his sunken eyes still full of the light and the mischief that I had loved so much.

  “It is now,” I said, stroking him, soothing him.

  He started to laugh, but instead coughed and I soothed him with a touch again.

  He blinked a few times, focusing on me, staring at me, touching my arm. “You are as beautiful as I remembered,” he said, his voice clearing as he used it, gaining more and more power. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you, too,” I somehow managed to say. I could feel his weak grip on my arm.

  He smiled and then his eyes closed.

  I touched his forehead and again he was dozing. I sat on the bed beside him and thought back to that last time I had sat beside him on our marriage bed, almost thirty years earlier.