Authors: Faleena Hopkins
2012
“Hey.”
They jumped in their chairs. Stewart coughed up his
Martini and reached for a napkin while Anjelica demanded loudly, “Dani! Jesus.
You scared the crap out of me.”
“You knew I
was coming,”
“Yeah but you’re an hour and a half late.
Where were you?” Stewart asked.
“I was on Mulholland again. Needed to think,” Daniella
Harcourt said, her gaze resting on the person occupying the seat beside her
friends.
The girl in the seat
started to squirm before she turned to see Dani staring. She stood up and
wordlessly gave Dani the seat without
quesion
. They’d
seen this happen a hundred times over the five years they’d been close friends,
yet Stewart and Anjelica got a thrill from it every time.
“How do you do it?” Anj asked, although she knew she’d
never get an answer.
“It’s
nothing,” Dani waved it away. “I’m sure I just timed it right and she had to go
to the bathroom.”
They laughed at the sheer absurdity of her answer.
“You’ve got the most powerful presence I know, Dani. I
sooooo
envy that in you,” Anjelica confessed, shaking her
pretty head.
“New Yorkers,” Stew mused.
Daniella just smiled, satisfied.
She told people she was from New York to explain away the
intense quality she possessed.
The
response was always “Ah!” combined with a predictable nod of the head
indicating they should have guessed as much. “It’s the weather. People there
have to deal with extreme weather so they get really intense,” some would
add.
Here in sunny LA – what
was the hurry? Every day was beautiful so
slowwwww
dowwwwwn
.
On more than one occasion, Stewart and Anj, never
guessing the truth, tried to figure out her appeal. They both admired her very
much.
But what was it about her
that made her so different, they wondered?
She was striking, it was true, with caramel colored eyes, a beautifully
elegant nose, high cheekbones and dark-chocolate brown shining hair that fell
to her waist in straight silky sheets.
She had a woman’s face and not a girl’s, but it was more
than that.
They decided it had to
be her impenetrable confidence.
While both of them were quite accomplished, they still had – like
everyone else they knew - an underlying insecurity coupled with a need to win.
Dani didn’t share that nor was she judgmental by any means either.
It was as if the world was in a competition
around her and she was its sole audience.
“So what was
it you were saying before I so rudely interrupted you?” Dani asked.
“We were
talking about the producer who got killed. Did you hear about that?” Stewart
asked.
Stewart Williams was an
agent with an A-list roster of clients.
He had a very no bones about it manner and was known to be a bulldog
when it came to fighting for something he wanted.
This was the main reason he’d risen so
far so fast without a college education.
In Hollywood you didn’t need college.
But you did need hard work. That was
Stewart’s motto. Except when it came to his dating life, where his motto was
“Next!” Gay and out of the closet, he hoped to one day settle down, but until
then, game on.
“What producer?”
Dani
murmered
, trying to sound interested and failing entirely.
Her depression didn’t have the patience to hear about murders. Let’s keep it
light, people, she silently begged.
Stewart loved the drama and launched right in. “Fred
Rimaldi, the amazing movie producer who won an Oscar last year, can you believe
it, was murdered in cold blood by his accountant after the guy got caught
embezzling his money.”
Dani’s ears
perked up.
“Allegedly,”
Anjelica interjected.
“Please. He
did it. You know he did. It’s all over the papers,” Stewart said, gesturing to
the bartender for another stiff drink.
“We don’t
know anything until he goes to trial.
It does look bad though.”
Anjelica Adams, ever the optimist, wanted to see the best in people. She
was hopeful, and sweet - not naïve. Very liberal and very much an artist, she
made her living as a painter and her work had inspired a bidding war among
several collectors, recently. Her career was just beginning to take off.
It was said she was a free spirit in her work and they
wanted to own that.
“Please.
Sometimes I want to shove a bite of steak down your vegan throat just to bring
you back to the land of reality,” Stewart said very dryly. Everyone knew he
loved her madly, and loved to mess with her even more. They were best friends,
the two of them; she didn’t judge his sexual orientation, his acerbic wit, or
his bad taste in men - and he ignored her love for the
democratic
party
. He was a republican, one of the few in LA. Neither of them had
any inkling that their weekly third wheel, wasn’t human.
“Seriously,
Dani,” Anjelica maintained, shaking her head with a smile and changing the
subject, “You’re amazing and I idolize you.
There, I said it. Now let’s change the
subject.
How’s the photography?”
Dani played with her glass, turning it in circles.
“I haven’t felt inspired.”
“I know that feeling,” Stewart declared.
“I am so fucking bored I could just kill
myself!”
“I know,
right?” Anj agreed.
“Wish I could
do that.” Dani agreed, truthfully, knowing they didn’t understand she meant it
literally.
“Yeah, but we
don’t want to be servants in the afterlife, do we?” Anj countered.
Her human friends clinked their glasses together in a
toast.
Dani looked at them, joined
in, and smiled.
She brought the
glass to her lips and pretended to drink, an art she had mastered from
centuries of practice.
Dani awoke the next night alone, as usual. The numbness
was still there.
She looked at the
wall.
Maybe she should put a
painting up or something.
No.
The 8’x8’ room possessed only a bed, recessed lighting,
steel walls, and a door with an
iPad
mounted next to
it. No table. No art. The bed was a soft contrast to the steel walls with its
two white down comforters, four buckwheat hull pillows and matching throw
cover.
It looked and felt
incredibly cozy. When she built The Safe, she’d put the lights in because she
didn’t enjoy rising to darkness. The lights were unnecessary as her night
vision was impeccable, but they made her feel better and that was enough
reason.
Waking up to pitch black
night after night was unappetizing. The soft glow of the tungsten yellow lights
helped.
Sometimes.
Gazing at the lights now reminded her that she had put
them in all by herself.
No help.
This room she’d built herself, for protection. If she’d had a human build it,
they’d wonder why she needed it. Maybe they’d talk about it to another human
over drinks one night while watching a horror film and put two and two
together. Was she being paranoid? No. Panic rooms existed so it might have been
fine but was it worth the chance? Also no.
Much as she would have loved the help, she couldn’t be too careful.
Maybe if she’d had another vampire help
her… but vampires commonly did not like others, humans or vampire, to know
where they slept.
What if a friend
became an enemy?
With endless time at her disposal and a need to fill it,
she’d learned carpentry skills. She could work with steel. She also mastered
lighting installation.
Even so,
she’d begun to wish more than anything that she had someone she could rely on.
She wished someone else would build a room for her.
She wished someone else wanted to make
sure she was safe when the sun came, and took steps to ensure it.
Someone who would
never tell her secret under any circumstances.
Turning onto her side and pulling the
covers up higher under her chin, she allowed herself to fantasize.
A human?
That might be nice.
Maybe they would have an affair for
awhile
. She did that sometimes. Yes. Their affair would
begin when he was working, when he was building. He’d be all sweaty, smelling
of masculinity, soap and skill and he’d turn to her with a hungry look.
He’d tell her, “Take off your
dress.
You can bite my neck.
I won’t fight you.
Unless you want me to.”
Dear God, she thought, and rolled her eyes.
She should get up.
She went to the door and keyed in the numeric security
code: 0-8-1-6-1-5-2-1. At once a hologram fingerprint sensor appeared and she
touched her thumb to it. From the speakers came the voice of Elizabeth, silky
and warm, “Good evening, Daniella. I hope you slept well.” Dani didn’t reply.
With a quiet whoosh, the door swung open and she walked into the Observation
Room, also hidden and protected.
On a
wall hung
monitors hooked
up to cameras planted in all sections of her loft home, the hallway of her
building, and even the parking lot. Another
iPad
hung
on the wall of the observation room near its door. Both were set with different
encryptions to control the security of either room separately. Were she to be
trapped - she could get out. Were her
loft merely found
and the hidden rooms undiscovered, she could watch and change the codes if she
needed.
There was even a rolling
wall inside The Safe that concealed a window.
If desperate measures were needed, she
could let in the sun. She’d thought of everything.
She leaned on the desk and scanned the monitors hoping to
find someone lurking inside. C’mon, she thought, searching one after the other.
A burglar? Homeless junkie? Maybe even a rogue vampire?
Anyone,
please.
Someone to help her break through this apathy.
No such luck. The place was empty, again. She could see the curtains remained
drawn
as she’d left them. She was safe to go in.
She keyed a different code into the second
iPad
, 0-4-0-8-1-7-8-4, and pressed her thumb again onto a
sensor. Inside the loft, a 10’x15’ framed painting of an extremely large single
purple hydrangea flower, with Monet influence in brush stroke and color detail,
slid quietly to the left, revealing the steel door that led to the Observation
Room.
She walked through it, into her loft home.
Via movement censors, both doors shut
leaving no evidence of anything hidden behind them. Inside the loft, thanks to
an automatic timer, all of the lights had come on a half-hour before, creating
an inviting lived-in effect.
She walked past an unmade decoy bed, her office area, the
living room and into the kitchen and opened a cabinet of spices and baking
ingredients she never used and moved a Costco-sized can of evaporated milk
(who’d ever pick up that?) to reveal another fingerprint sensor.
She pressed her thumb on it and a secret
refrigerator door opened revealing 30 or so bottles of AB Negative hospital
blood.
She removed one and shut the
door, hiding it once again behind the milk.
She got her supply from a connection at
a hospital.
Humans will do a lot
for money.
Her wine glass collection was extensive.
There were many, none alike, and all
were purchased, one at a time, in places she had lived.
She used these to keep time and preserve
her memories.
Choosing a deep blue
chalice with delicate silver accents from Annecy, France, she poured her dinner
into it, wincing at the first sip.
Cold…yuck.
“I’ve
gotta
start heating this stuff up,” she said and walked
into the office area, glass in hand, muttering, “Lazy, lazy, lazy.”
Sitting at her desk, Dani turned on her computer and
logged onto the
internet
.
She typed in “Local news, Los Angeles”
and highlighted in the search tools, “Past 24 hours.”
Boom. The page loaded and she scrolled
down the headlines: “Gang shooting spurs more violence in east LA. ” “Woman
commits
suicide
before
discovering winning lottery ticket.” “Producer’s
accountant on trial for killing his employer after embezzling nearly twenty
million dollars.”
Bingo.
She’d found her next evil victim.
Thank you, Stewart.