The Traveling Vampire Show

“For God’s sake.”

“Okay, okay.” He lowered it, folded it in half and stuffed it into the drawer.

“Is that the way you found it?” I asked.

“What do you think, I’m a moron?” He slid the drawer shut.

“Let’s go.”

“Hang on.” He pulled open another drawer. “Undies!”

He started to reach in, so I rushed over and shoved the drawer shut. He jerked his hands clear in the nick of time.

But I’d shut the drawer too hard.

The dresser shook.

On top of the dresser was a tall, slim vase of clear green glass with three or four yellow roses in it.

The vase toppled forward.

Gasping, I tried to catch it.

I wasn’t quick enough.

It crashed down onto a perfume bottle and they both shattered. Glass, water and perfume exploded, filling the air. Roses flew off the front of the dresser. As they bumped their bright heads against the front of Rusty’s jeans, a cascade of scented water spilled over the edge of the dresser, ran down and poured onto the carpet.

Chapter Fifteen

We gazed at the mess, stunned and silent.

The air of the bedroom carried an odor of perfume so sweet and heavy that it almost made me gag.

After a while, Rusty muttered, “Shit. You really did it this time.”

“Me?”

“Huh? You think I slammed the drawer?”

“Oh, you had nothing to do with it. All you did was open it in the first place so you could paw through her stuff. If you weren’t such a degenerate…”

“If you weren’t such a prude…”

Then we both fell silent and resumed gazing at our catastrophe: the puddle on the dresser top bristling with chunks and slivers and specks of glass; the wet patch on the carpet that looked as if a dog had taken a leak there; the bits of colored glass sprinkled on and around the wet patch; the yellow roses at Rusty’s feet, some of their petals fallen off.

“What’re we gonna do?” Rusty asked.

I shook my head. I couldn’t believe we’d found ourselves in such a predicament.

“Clean it up?” Rusty asked.

“I don’t think we can. That perfume… we’ll never get the smell out of the carpet. The minute someone comes upstairs, they’re gonna know something’s wrong.”

“Not to mention,” said Rusty, “we can’t exactly unbreak the glass.”

“Whatever we do, we’d better do it fast and get out of here.”

“Wanta just leave?” Rusty asked.

“I want to make it all go away!”

“Rotsa ruck.”

“Okay,” I muttered, sort of thinking out loud. “We can’t make it go away. And it’d probably take us fifteen minutes just to clean up all the glass. Then the place’ll still smell like a perfume factory. And in the meantime, we might get caught up here.”

Rusty nodded, then said, “If we just go away—leave everything exactly the way it is right now—they might not even realize anyone was here. I mean, if shutting a drawer too hard’ll knock that vase over, anything will. They’ll think it was just an accident.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“C’mon, man. A lot of stuff could’ve knocked the thing over. Like even the front door slamming.”

“Maybe so.”

“So let’s haul ass.”

We walked backward away from our mess, watching it as if to make sure it wouldn’t pursue us. On the other side of the doorway, we whirled around and ran for the stairs. When we were a block away from Slim’s house, we looked at each other, shook our heads and sighed.

“I feel like such a rat,” I said.

“Accidents happen,” Rusty said. “Thing is, we got away with it. Long as nobody blabs….”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Lying to Slim…”

“You’d rather have her find out we went sneaking through her house? That’d go over big.”

“If we explain why…”

“And what were we doing in her mother’s bedroom^?”

“I just went in to look for you.”

“Oh, so you wanta tell Slim what I was doing in her mom’s room?”

I shook my head. I sure couldn’t tell Slim the truth about that.

“You’d better not.”

“Why’d you have to do that?”

“Felt like it,” he muttered. “Anyway, you would’ve done the same thing if you had the guts.”

“Would not.”

“Only you would’ve gone through Slim’s drawers.” Grinning, he raised his eyebrows. “What were you doing by yourself in Slim’s room, huh?”

“Looking at her books.”

“Oh, sure.”

“I didn’t even know you were gone.”

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

“Go to hell.”

Laughing, he patted me on the back.

“Hands off,” I said.

He took his hand away. His smile sliding sideways, he said, “Seriously, you’re not gonna tell Slim about any of this, right?”

“I guess not,” I said.

“You guess not? C’mon, man! I’ve never told on you.”

“I know,” I said, and went a little sick inside at the reminder of all the things Rusty knew about me. “I won’t tell. I promise.”

“Okay. Good deal. It’s just between you and me.”

“Right.”

“Shake on it.”

I looked around. There were houses on both sides of the street and a few people nearby, but nobody seemed to be watching us. So I shook hands with Rusty. His hand was bigger than mine, and very sweaty. He didn’t pull any funny stuff, so I guess he was being sincere.

“If anything comes up,” he said, “we didn’t even go in Slim’s house today.”

“What if somebody saw us?”

“We’ll claim it wasn’t us.”