The City of Mirrors

I carted Nurse Duff to the bathroom and suspended her body above the tub. Through some lingering womanly instinct, she had looped her arms around my neck; she had yet to notice the water, as was my hope. I was gazing deep into her eyes, beaming thoughts of reassurance. Her trust in me was absolute. What was I to her? Father? Lover? Deliverer? God?

The spell was broken the moment her body touched the water. She began to thrash wildly, fighting to free herself. But her strength was far outmatched by mine. Pressing her by the shoulders, I forced her gargoyle’s face below the surface. Her panic and confusion rippled through me. What betrayal! What incomprehensible deceit! Others would have been moved to mercy, yet these feelings only strengthened my resolve. I felt her take the first breath of water. It ricocheted through her like a hiccup. She took a second, then a third, filling her lungs. A last agonal spasm and she was gone.

I stepped back. The first test had been passed; here was the second. Waiting for the restoration of her human form, I counted off the seconds; when nothing happened, I hoisted her from the water and arranged her facedown on the floor, thinking this might encourage the process. But more minutes ticked away, and I was forced to concede that no change was forthcoming; Nurse Duff had permanently departed from this life.

I retreated from the room and sat on the woman’s bed to ponder the situation. The only conclusion I could draw was that the transformative effect of death by water was for me alone—that my descendants possessed no such gift of resurrection. Yet why this should be so—why I should be sitting there, looking altogether like the man I’d once been, while she should be lying dead on the bathroom floor like a beached sea monster—was beyond my power to explain. Was I simply a more robust version of our species, being the alpha, the original, the Zero? Or could the difference be one not of body but of mind? That I had wanted to live, while she had not? I considered my emotions. I didn’t really have any. I had drowned an innocent woman in a bathtub, yet my feelings were utterly colorless. From the moment I’d sunk my incisors into the soft meat of her neck and taken the first, candy-sweet sip, she had ceased to exist as an entity distinct from myself; rather, she’d been a kind of appendage. Killing her had seemed no more morally noteworthy than trimming a fingernail. So perhaps that was where the difference lay. In the only way that really mattered, Nurse Duff was already dead when I’d shoved her in the water.

Simultaneously, alarm bells were ringing inside me. The light in the room was changing; daybreak, my nemesis, was at hand. I moved hastily through the house, drawing every drape and shade, locking doors both front and back. For the next twelve hours, I was going nowhere.

—

I awoke in delicious darkness, having discovered the most refreshing dream-free sleep I had ever known. No knock on the door had aroused me; Nurse Duff’s departure from the world had yet to be noticed, though surely this would come. I made my preparations quickly. On America’s byways, even a vampire, especially one who wishes to fly beneath the radar, needs money to get by. In a cat-shaped cookie jar, I discovered twenty-three hundred dollars in soft bills, more than enough, and a .38 revolver, which no person in the history of the planet needed less than I.

My plan was to zigzag my way east, avoiding major highways. The journey would take five, perhaps six nights. Nurse Duff’s well-worn Corolla, with its detritus of candy wrappers, pop cans, and worthless scratch-offs, would suffice for the time being but would have to be discarded soon; somebody was bound to catch wind of the dead demon in the bathroom and note her missing automobile. I also felt—and looked—ridiculous in the woman’s oversized sweat suit and shower shoes; a more suitable costume was in the offing.

Eight hours later I was in southern Missouri, where I commenced the pattern that would organize my life for the duration. Each new daybreak found me safely ensconced in an off-brand motel behind closed drapes, duct-taped cardboard panels, and a Do Not Disturb sign; once night fell, I would set out again and drive without stopping until an hour or two before dawn. In Carbondale, Illinois, I decided to ditch the Corolla. I was also very hungry. I lingered at my hotel past dark, sitting in my parked car, so that I might observe the comings and goings of my fellow travelers and identify an appropriate provider of nutrition, clothes, and transport. The man I selected was my approximate height and weight; he also seemed, conveniently, inebriated. As he entered his room I pushed in behind him, killed him tidily before he could utter more than a drunken whimper—he tasted rancidly of nicotine and bar-pour whiskey—wrapped his body in the shower curtain to conceal the stench of putrefaction, shoved him in the closet, helped myself to the contents of his wallet and suitcase (Dockers, no-iron sport shirts of obnoxious plaid, six sets of underpants and a pair of “novelty” boxers with the words KISS ME, I’M IRISH stenciled on the crotch), and skedaddled in his plushly appointed, thoroughly American sedan. The business cards in his wallet identified him as a regional sales manager for a manufacturer of industrial air-circulation equipment. I might as well have been him.