It excites them. They see mockery in this art, love, too…sex, death, and betrayal. Violence. Serenity. The art sharpens their focus and brings them closer to what they will hunt, the population they were once part of: humanity.
They see it all. Theirs is a special sensitivity, approaching empathy.
This is an old ritual.
It attunes them to the night…and the hunt.
*
Elise finds solace under the Howard Street el tracks, under a street lamp’s pool of light. Trains rumble overhead; she barely hears herself breathe. She wants to vanish, to become silent and invisible.
If I had any guts at all,
she thinks,
I’d go into the station, pay the fare, walk upstairs, and fling myself on the tracks just before the next rapidly approaching train.
Think of the excitement, the clamor, the shouts, and the cries. Picture the blood dripping down from the tracks onto the sidewalk and street below. Windshield wipers swishing away blood.
And I would be a part of none of it. I would exist only in memory.
But whose?
Her own memory she would like to extinguish, have an operation to excise that part of her brain that stores what happens to her. There would be a kind of comfort in awakening each day and not remembering what happened before, starting life over every day. It seems there would be more possibilities. But that option has already been explored too much by Hollywood screenwriters and seldom happens in reality.
Besides, she is a nameless entity now, a utilitarian tool, waiting to be used. This other job allows her to disconnect, in a way. It frees her from worrying about where the idea for her next drawing or painting will come. It frees her from wondering if the only thing she has a passion for is anything she’s really good at. If she deserves—one day—to make a living from it.
An el train rumbles by above, the brakes squealing as the muffled voice of a conductor announces, “Howard Street, change here for Evanston/Wilmette trains. Howard Street.”
There’s a rush of people behind her as passengers descend the stairs from the platform. Elise casts her gaze downward when the stares come…in an instant, contempt, desire, and indifference. They know her and they don’t. In some ways, she’s used to the looks, the leers, and the sneers. In others, she will never get used to it. She can never stop being the good Jewish girl from Shaker Heights. She thinks of her mother, to whom she has not spoken in two years, and imagines her shock if she could see her daughter now, the clothes she wears and the blatant advertising the shoes, shirt, and skirt convey. What would her mother do? Try to strong-arm her into coming home? Arrange for a deprogramming?
“Excuse me, miss.”
A wheedling voice. Elise tries not to jump. Before her is a man, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Seersucker suit, frayed around the edges; dirty, colorless hair hanging limp across a creased forehead. Black plastic-frame glasses. The glare on the lenses makes it impossible for Elise to discern color or intention in the eyes beneath.
“What?”
The man slides his hand around in the sweat on his forehead. Thin, pale lips like worms break into a grin. “You sellin’ it?”
What is this?
Elise wonders.
Chicago vice?
He’s got quite a disguise. The nerd routine, perhaps it’s worked before….
“Well?” The man moves even more restlessly, toying with buttons, mopping the sweat that pops up in frantic beads from his forehead.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know,” he says like a whining child. “Come on.”
Elise shakes her head. One of his shoes, a scuffed Hush Puppy, has a hole in it. His baby toe, pink and crowned with a dirty nail, pokes out.
Is this character for real?
“I can’t help you,
sir.”
Elise puts mocking emphasis on this last word. “Unless I know what it is you want.”
“You,” he stammers, “I want you.”
“Well, you can’t have me.” There’s something too odd about this one, something too bizarre. Besides, if he can’t afford even a pair of shoes, how could he afford her?
“Even if I pay?” Words tremble. His shirt collar darkens with perspiration.
Elise looks him up and down, considering.
Something better will come along. Elise’s stomach churns at the thought of this man above her.
Still, the rent will be due in a few days. She has closed her eyes to others before.
No. Even a streetwalker has to have some standards. “Get lost,” she whispers to the guy. “I couldn’t. Not even for a million bucks.”
Even though nothing has blocked the glow from the streetlight, a shadow darkens the man’s face before he turns and hurries away. And Elise shivers. In this commerce, even the most innocent-looking prospect can be a latter-day Jack the Ripper. By refusing, one never knows whom one is pissing off. She’s dealt with outraged rejects before…and in spite of his look of harmless geekiness, this one could have a switchblade in his pocket, the strength of a strangler in his hands.
*
The night is alive. Humidity and heat press in, heightening the smells and feel of living, breathing flesh. They are restlessly attuned to the smell of prey. Criteria: Which one is weak enough? Which one has a healthy supply of blood, one that will not pollute their evening repast with disease or drugs that have the power to set their systems on edge and cause them to turn and thrash in their daylight slumber?
Hunger.
They have moved north, to Roger’s Park. Here Terence, Maria, and Edward can mingle with the detritus Lake Michigan and the city has washed up: the homeless, the runaways, drug addicts (crack, coke, meth, and heroin their most popular choices) and those who seek to addict others.
Prostitutes.
The ones no one asks questions about. The ones few notice missing and fewer still care about. These people are especially drawn to their looks, their casual affluence, and the lure of easy money. These are the ones that go missing for days with no one wondering who they are, the ones the authorities don’t spend much time searching for. The three of them prefer the lonely, the alone, the ones who arouse no suspicion upon their departures.
In their clothing, their looks, the images they have chosen to project, the three all are bait. Lures. The twinkling of an eye, a smile, an outstretched hand: all are nothing more than razor-sharp steel, ready to hook the unwary.
Maria sees her first: a whore. Long hair and tight clothes. Stiletto heels and black rubber bracelets climbing up one arm. She stands alone, watching the traffic go by, her eyes staring restlessly into the glass shielding each driver. She tries to appear streetwise and tough, but there’s a vulnerability to her stance, a little too much hunger in her eyes to make the act convincing.
She’s desperate.
She’s perfect.
Maria moves back into the shadows, pulling her companions with her. They are sandwiched between a convenience store and a movie theater, long ago abandoned, a home for nothing more than pigeons and trash. With Jimmy Choo spike heels, she kicks aside a fearless pigeon and a Popeye’s chicken box.
“Look.” She nods toward the whore. All three pairs of eyes train in on the woman across the street. Her beauty draws them, or at least what once could be referred to as beauty; her looks are sliding downhill. She looks beyond tired, a rose whose petals are velvety, but blackened and drooping. What really sets their mouths to watering is her vulnerability. Easy pickings are always the best. Why cast a line into an ocean when you can shoot into a barrel?
At once, each of the three is more aware of the woman than she could ever realize. She is like something small, a rabbit nibbling on grass as a hunter is positioning it in the crosshairs of his rifle. Even from their vantage point across the street, they feel the heat emanating from her body, drifting over to them in shimmering waves. They see it as no one else can: a crimson aura surrounds her body, pulsing in the heat. Her scent, sour body odor not masked at all by cheap cologne, rides the heat like a magic carpet. It smells of fresh game, clean, yet musky. Heavy. The blood pulsing in the whore’s veins reveals itself; almost audible, the tide of it, as the heart pounds out a beat. She is alive, glimmering with life.
Appetizing.
It’s almost too much. A feast of the senses; a cornucopia. Corpuscles of fat floating in the most delicious blood, thick and viscous, with a sharp metallic tang. It excites all sorts of hunger. Maria turns to Terence and wraps her arms around him, her mouth devouring his, tongue exploring the dryness within, sliding over his teeth. Edward presses himself into Maria from behind, thrusting against her, feeling the taut flesh and bone outlined beneath the satin of her dress. Tight between the two men, Maria throws back her head, grinding herself back and forth, pushing their insistent hardness against her. She sighs, imagining someone walking by, deigning to join this impromptu orgy. If someone should, they would never emerge from the shadows again. This trio has always had a problem dealing with the curious, but no problem with swiftly extinguishing that curiosity…forever.
Cold flesh touches cold flesh. Eyes close. Each whispers and moans proclamations of lust and desire. Edward nuzzles the ice skin just below Maria’s hairline in back, biting, biting harder until the skin breaks, exploring the small barren openings his teeth have made with his tongue. Maria arches her back, and stops.
“Now, we should go to her now.” Maria pulls away from the panting men, lust brightening their eyes, even here in the shadows. “Terence, you approach her.”
Terence doesn’t need further encouragement. He loves this part of the hunt. Breaking away, Terence waits for the passing cars and dashes across the street. He knows exactly how he looks, the blond hair shining in the artificial neon brightness of the night, the high cheekbones and full lips. The costume of tight leather and pewter latex. A whore’s dream: money and beauty, too.
The whore is about to light a cigarette. An opportunity. Terence brings out his silver lighter and hurries to her, flame erect, before she can raise the cheap plastic disposable in her hand. He meets her eyes as the flame transfers some of its glow to the tip of her cigarette.
“Thanks.” She exhales twin streams of smoke through her nostrils, and appraises him, taking in the leather and latex, wondering perhaps what someone like him is doing in her part of town. She draws in hard on the cigarette, cheeks collapsing. Thin tusks of blue gray smoke rise. She burns.
“Hot tonight.” Terence smiles and looks around him, as if for the source of the heat.
The whore smiles, shakes her head. “You gotta do better than that for an opening line.” She laughs. “Ah, but the way you look, what do you need lines for?” She cocks her head, suddenly the coquette.
“Flatterer.” Terence touches the whore’s bare shoulder.
She flinches, shrugging his hand away. “Baby, you’re cold. How’d you manage that?”
Terence thinks for a moment. “Just got out of air conditioning.”
The whore looks around, trying to locate the building from which Terence has emerged.
More conversation. Cheap words mouthed to get to the real purpose. Finally, the whore cuts short the compliments and inanities about the weather and cuts to the chase, not knowing that the chase began a while back.
“What do you get into?” Her eyes flicker, moving down Terence’s body like liquid. Her voice has a broad, Midwestern twang: flat A’s, sharp and nasal.
“There are three of us.”
“Group scene.” The whore nods. “Been there. There’s no group rate, though. It’ll cost each of you the same as if you came to me individually.”
“So that’s all right with you?”
“Anything’s all right, so long as it’s worth my while.” She takes one more drag off the cigarette, drops it to the pavement, and grinds it under her toe. “I assume you got a place. Otherwise, it’s extra. There’s a motel on Sheridan.”
“No need for that. We have a car nearby. Come with us?”
“What kinda car?”
“A black Mercedes.”
Eyes light up. “Let’s go.”
The Mercedes idles at a corner, just steps away from Lake Michigan. It’s quieter here, away from the bustle of Howard Street. Once in a while, someone strolls down to the lakefront, or a figure passes across a lighted window. Otherwise, here so close to the lake, it’s deserted.
“Shit! Why you wanna make me walk so far in these shoes? Couldn’t you have had one of your friends come and pick us up? Jesus, don’t you have a cell?” The whore bends down and pulls off the black spike heels and grips them angrily in one hand, continuing in a tight little barefoot canter. “You’re gonna have to give me some money for new hose.”
“Sorry,” Terence says, not bothering to explain, but there is a reason: Maria always plans ahead; she’s cautious. The car will be close to the lake, away from the bright lights and bustle. This way, there will be fewer witnesses. Even whores, sometimes, have friends. There have been times when they had taken the wrong person. There was trouble, and they had to flee. Terence and Maria have lived all over the world, nomads with the stench of death following them, too cunning to be caught, but unable to stay—and feed—in one place for too long.
“Not to worry, my dear. Our vehicle is just ahead.” Terence nods at the Mercedes, black, shimmering, and reflecting the moon. There’s a low hum, the song of solid German engineering. The windows are black.
“Nice car.” She giggles, running a red fingernail across the trunk.
Terence opens the back door for her. She slides in; Terence follows, closing the door behind them with a muffled
thunk
.
The whore settles in, grinning and leaning back into the leather. It takes her a second to notice Maria in the front seat. “Ah,” she says, “we got a lady here.”
Maria turns. “I hope that’s not a problem.”
“Problem? Honey, it’s a bonus.” The whore smiles at Maria, engaging her with her eyes. She tries to keep their gazes locked. Maybe that way, Maria won’t notice the crooked teeth and the slash across her right cheek, the smooth white scar.
“This is Maria.”
The whore offers her hand. Maria makes a kissing expression in its direction but does not touch it. “I’m very pleased.” Maria gestures toward Edward, sitting next to her. “And this is Edward.”