– Joe, anything to make it right.
I push him off, stand on my own two.
– Hell, Chubby, when the night started I was living underground. I was feeding on dregs. I was hiding from the world and acting like I had an idea of what to do next. But all I really was was in the dark. Look at me now.
I brush at some filth on my tattered jacket.
– A night on the town. Visits with old pals. Rousing adventure.
I fit the zip and pull it up until it snags and stops at my sternum.
– I’m a changed man.
I drag my fingers through my hair.
– You want to do something for me. You can make a couple phone calls, bring some people up to date on the new state of things. And in the meantime.
I sweep a hand at the door.
– You can take me over to see my girl.
Last hour. Dark before the dawn. Empty city. A quiet waiting for the next big thing in the new day.
We drive through it.
– I didn’t think you would help.
I put my head out the open window to feel the cold air.
– When you’re right, Chubby, you’re right.
He leans from the backseat of the Riviera and taps Dallas’s shoulder.
– Up here.
Dallas changes lanes, takes the car around the corner onto Greenwich.
Chubby settles back into the seat.
– I don’t want to shirk my responsibility for the deception, but it was in fact Percy’s idea.
– Percy.
He takes out his humidor, looks at it, removes the cap and pulls one of the cigars half from the humidor.
– As you must have gathered, I embellished a bit when I told Delilah those stories. From a very early age she’s had such macabre taste. Her mother had read to her the original Grimm’s tales. Heels chopped from feet, eyes pecked out, children sacrificed. I am myself no stranger to lurid material. Some of the most baroque scenarios my films have been based on were those I penned myself.
He pushes the cigar back into place.
– I even wrote one that was Vampyre-themed. But thought it better to leave it unproduced. There was no telling whose ire it might have raised.
He recaps the humidor.
– But I allowed my whimsy full freedom when I had occasion to tuck Delilah into bed. Thanks to the estrangement between her mother and myself, those were rare occurrences, and I hoped to leave an indelible impression. One that would outlast the charm of whichever of my ex’s current infatuations might be lurking about.
He waves the humidor.
– I told stories that were appropriately grotesque, but tended toward full and happy resolutions. Percy was a kind wizard who drifted in and out of my narratives, guiding a pair of star-crossed naifs. One of them Vampyre, one not.
He shoves the humidor into his jacket.
– A common-enough trope. Am I entirely responsible for putting the idea in her head? Please. Popular vampire fiction is rife with such relationships. It is a rampant cliché of the genre. What is Dracula if not the story of an undead’s hopeless love for a mortal?
He cuts the air with the edge of his hand.
– Can I be solely to blame that she took it quite so to heart?
The storefronts along Greenwich flick past the window. I stick a finger under my eyepatch and scratch the scar.
– You’re her dad.
He looks at me.
– What has that to do with it?
I bare my teeth as a cramp ripples through my belly, exhale as it passes.
– I don’t really know, Chub, but it seems daddies have a bit of an impact on their daughters. Or so I’ve heard. Could just be a rumor.
He rubs his forehead.
– Yes, yes, of course, yes. These things start early and run deep. Of course.
He wipes his mouth.
– But the past is prologue. And I was saying?
I cough on something in my throat. Maybe a loose piece of my throat, I can’t say.
– Percy. Why the hell did you get me involved?
He looks at the roof of the car.
– Percy said I should.
I groan.
Chubby shakes his head.
– When I first called, the children were actually with him. I was prepared to go uptown and attempt to speak some form of reason to them. Ferry them to an underground location somewhere away from Manhattan while the troubles here sorted out. I am not without resources. I could have found means to keep Ben supplied. And the baby, whatever its needs may turn out to be. I was to go and fetch them myself.
He lifts his hands from his knees, drops them.
– At the last moment Percy called and told me it had become more complicated. The children had run off. Delilah had been disillusioned by what she found in both Percy and the Hood. She was talking about shelter in the dragon’s very den. Well, that was clear enough. Still, I said I could go myself. But Percy said he’d heard troublesome rumors about the Cure house. Unsafe.
He scrunches the material of his slacks.
– He told me to send you.
He looks over at me.
– Honestly, Joe, I had no idea where to find you. I doubt it would have occurred to me to look for you at all. But Percy said it needed a tough hand. Said you were the fit for the job. And I could hardly argue.
– How’d he know where to find me?
– I can’t say for certain. He said he knew someone keeping tabs on you down there. You mentioned someone watching us when we were in the tunnel. Perhaps?
I think about the old man of the underground. I think about Percy. Enclave and Enclave.
– Yeah, that fits.
He pats his ‘fro.
– Still, I told him I didn’t think you’d help.
He looks out the side window.
– And he mentioned a girl. Sketched a few details. Gave me a name. Mentioned Enclave.
He turns to me, tears, trembling chins.
– Joe, if it hadn’t been my daughter, Joe. If it hadn’t. I would never have. Not just because I have more sense than to cross you. But because. I wouldn’t want to lie to a man about something like that. Not a man I know. Not a friend. Joe.
He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.
– Just. My daughter. That’s why.
He catches a sob, huffs it out.
– I didn’t want to cause you all this trouble.
He draws a loose shape in the air with his fingers.
– I’m sorry, Joe.
I look out the windshield. We’re coming up on Gansevroot. I move my feet around, making sure I can still do that. Legs seem to work. Arms. My brain keeps drifting in and out of fog banks. But that’s hardly new. I could keep myself clear, I’d never have fallen for this deal.
Too late now. I was reeled in, cut open, gutted, and there’s nothing left but the grill. No reason not to just put myself on it. It’s only fire. And you can only burn once.
I stick my head a little farther out the window.
I point.
He sees it, taps Dallas.
– Here.
Dallas wheels us around the corner of Little West Twelfth Street.
– You sure, Joe?
I lean against the door.
– Make those calls, Chubs.
– Of course.
I pull the door handle.
– I’m glad you got to see your daughter, Chubby.
He nods, half laughs.
– Yes. Precious minutes.
I push the door open an inch.
– See you around.
– See you, Joe.
Dallas cuts the wheel, rubber breaking traction on the cobbles as he makes his U-turn, and I tumble myself from the car, rolling off the momentum until I rest in the gutter, watching Chubby’s Riviera whip around the corner back onto Greenwich and out of sight.
Alone again. I close my eye to enjoy it for a second.
Got any regrets?
The thing you did? The thing you passed on doing?
I never played that game much. I take something back here, take a little extra there, next thing you know I’m watching one set of bodies rising from their graves, and another set going into the ground. Been a long time since I did anything that mattered when it didn’t involve dying for someone. Some folks I’ve been happy to put away. Some I’ve been OK with seeing them get another day or two. Most I don’t having feelings one way or the other. So why go back and tinker with things that can’t be changed anyhow.