Already Dead

– Well, the hitch here is that the chick in the squat, she didn't have any makeup on. Now the chick in the picture, I saw her last year no doubt, and she always had all that ghoul shit all over her. But this chick in the squat? Not even nail polish. So it might have been her, but you see my fucking problem.

I nod.

– If she's around and it's the girl from last year, there are people who would know, right?

– Sure.

– Find out, Lep.

He raises his eyebrows.

– How fucking much is it worth?

– It's worth a lot. It's worth saving me a lot of hassles. Which means it's worth keeping me happy and keeping you from getting hurt. So find out for sure if it was her and then call me at Evie's bar. Now go get your dog before it kills itself or eats someone.

I turn and walk away and Leprosy shouts after me.

– Sure thing, Pitt. Hey, me, I'm at your fucking beck and call, right, fuck face? Hey, I got an idea, why don't you go check out Realm? I hear all the hot young goths hang out there.

He laughs and I keep walking. Leprosy is a little fuck, but he'll do as I tell him. He'll do it because he owes me. He remembers the time his father came cruising in here from Long Island to get him. Comes rolling up in his stockbrokers' standard-issue Lincoln Continental and storms into the park like he owns it. Leprosy spots him and tries to run, but his dog gets off the leash and goes after the bastard. Dad doesn't even break stride, that dog runs up and he smashes the toe of his wingtip right into its nose, which is how Gristle lost his sense of smell. The dog drops, bleeding all over the concrete, and dad starts after Leprosy. Me, I'm sitting on a bench smoking, like I do, and maybe this is none of my business, but I got involved anyway. I beat the fuck out of the ass-raping son of a bitch, made his nose match the dog's. I did that for free, but it doesn't mean Leprosy doesn't owe me.

'Bela Lugosi's Dead.' It's like their theme song. I'm hip-deep in Realm, watching crowds of black-garbed teenagers with pasty faces 'dance' to Bauhaus. Back in my day goths were all these mopey, alienated, semi- suicidal kids. Pretty much your average teenagers, just dressed in black. Back then they were mostly hooked into the music: The Cure, The Smiths, Bauhaus, The Damned, a little Depeche Mode. Now it's gotten all tangled up in fetishism and S amp;M. So here's what it's like inside Realm. Over here you got your video screens showing clips from Nosferatu intercut with scenes from some tape of people getting their genitals pierced. Over there you got your brass chandeliers scavenged from junk shops around the Tri-State area, draped in black cheesecloth and illuminated with red lightbulbs. Along the walls you got your innumerable mirrors, brass framed and also draped in black cheesecloth. In point of fact, most everything here is draped in black cheesecloth, including half the patrons. Up on that stage you got your fetishist couple performing a rather tame S amp;M act. He's strapped to a big rusty steel X, wearing nothing but a black leather G-string. She's in the obligatory thigh-high boots and corset, and is sticking alligator clips connected to a car battery onto his nipples, shocking him when he fails to call her 'mistress.' Which is most of the time. Hot, right? Could be, except they're both middle-aged, seriously overweight and balding. Nonetheless, they're drawing a pretty big crowd, so who's to say their booking agent doesn't know what he's doing.

Over by the stage you got most of the new school goths favoring latex and studs. On the other side of the room, grooving on the music and the bootleg bottles of absinthe they scored from some guy that just got back from Brazil, are the old-school crowd. These folks lean more toward velvet and lace with a healthy dose of leather thrown in. And worn close to the heart of each, you'll no doubt find a treasured, autographed copy of Interview with the Vampire. This is the vampire crowd, the ones who really get into the whole undead experience. Half of them have their own coffins and the other half are saving up. These are the ones who think getting turned into a vampire will be just like The Hunger. Lots of hot sex with Catherine Denueve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie followed by a centuries long, lingering, tragic, but ultimately poetic death, which is also filled with lots of hot sex with Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie. And that's what makes these people such easy pickings for your average bottom-feeding Vampyre, because so many of them dream of being turned. But they don't know shit about the Vampyre, and what a pain in the ass it is to be one.

I grab a beer and eyeball the crowd. If Lep is right, Amanda Horde may have dropped the goth look. I push away from the bar and take a pass through the room. A couple chicks in full goth

Kabuki-face have the right build, but a closer look tells me they're not my girl. I hang out for another half hour, keeping a close eye on the door. No dice. This is a waste of time. It's not like I can flash the girl's picture around or hang up flyers. That would pretty much go in the face of the discreet job Predo and Marilee Horde want. I'll check the basement and blow.

Realm's basement is a dark warren of small rooms, each with its own ambience, as it were. There's the Victorian Room, crammed with old sofas and cast-off end tables, all of it illuminated by oil lamps. Next to that is the Murder Room, decorated like a suburban kitchen, but with fake blood splattered across the walls and ceiling, and body outlines taped on the floor. There's the Dungeon Room and the Padded Cell and the Mad Scientist Room. I stick my head into each, take a quick look at the inhabitants and move on. Suburban goths from Long Island are sitting around the Formica-topped table in the Murder Room playing quarters. The Dungeon Room is hosting an impromptu panel discussion on spanking. And so on. I duck out of the Padded Cell, where a guy is being strapped into a straitjacket by one of his buddies, and head for the stairs. Time to get out of here.

I catch a flash of white out of the corner of my eye, turn to see what it is, see nothing, turn, and then he's right in front of me, blocking the stairs.

He squints through the grimy lenses of his glasses.

– Are you alright, Simon?

I grunt.

– I asked if you were alright, Simon?

– Yeah, I'm fine.

Christ I hate it when people use my real name.

I size him up. He's just a bit shorter than me, but more pale and skinnier than a cancer patient with AIDS and a heavy speed habit. He's wearing baggy white clothes, sporting a shaved head, and I don't know his name. I don't know him at all. But I know where he's from and who he belongs to because he knows my real name. These fuckers always know your real name. I step around him and start up the stairs. He follows.

– Are you alright, Simon?

– I said yes, for Christ's sake. Now will you stop calling me that?

– My apologies, Joe.

I get to the top and make a beeline out the front door. The skeleton stays on my heels as I walk down the sidewalk away from Realm.

– Perhaps you have a moment, Joe?

– Perhaps I have a whole shitload of moments. Perhaps I have moments squirreled away all over the place, and perhaps I plan to keep them for myself. What of it?

He laughs.

– What are you laughing at?

– I've been told about your sense of humor, Joe, how you stumble over wisdom even as you mock it. Moments squirreled away. Indeed, that is how so many treat time, as if it is something to be hoarded rather than a phenomenon to be experienced.

– Are you fucking serious? Is this what you have planned for me tonight? Can I just give you a donation or volunteer at a soup kitchen or something and get you off my back, or do I have to listen to this shit?

– No, Joe, you don't have to listen to anything. You don't have to do anything. But die, Joe, we all have to die. Except one of us.

– Yeah, well I already did that so maybe you can fuck off now.

– There's trouble about, Joe Pitt.

– There's always trouble around. Way I figure it, trouble just runs around this town doing what it wants.

– You are in danger and in need of allies.

– Not as far as I know.