Free Vampire Rising by Larry Benjamin Page B

in
black, sucked his teeth, and looking at the waiter in white,
mumbled something under his breath. Barnabas couldn’t make out the
words but there was no mistaking the contempt in his voice.
    It was in the music room, then, that
Barnabas saw Gatsby for the first time since graduation some seven
years before. Barnabas paused to let his eyes adjust to the room’s
dimness, for his night vision was poor.
    It was a room of pearl grays and faded gold
damask, dark wood and darker carpets, all shadowed in flickering
candlelight. Gatsby was seated at an ebony nine-and-a-half foot
Bosendorfer Concert grand piano—the one with ninety-five keys,
rather than the standard eighty-eight—which dominated the room.
Gatsby himself had a pewter finish: silvery hair swept back, eyes
like pieces of ice, pale cheekbones that gleamed. He was cool and
pale, champagne in an ice bucket. Playing selections from “A Chorus
Line” for a crowd of stalwart admirers, he was radiant in that
darkened room. He was gorgeous and charismatic, a charmer of snakes
and men.
    He looked up and, seeing Barnabas in the
doorway, gasped, for Barnabas was as beautiful as he’d remembered:
his caramel skin glowed with youth and vigor. His wide, innocent
eyes were clear and his dark hair was cropped short; gone was the
defiant retro Afro he’d worn in high school. Staring at him, the
frisson of lust and love that shot through him caused Gatsby to
miss a note, and frown. He bent over the keyboard; his face dipped
into shadow, dissolving into triangles of violet and purple.
    To Barnabas, Gatsby looked exactly as he had
when he had been his teacher seven years before, and yet he seemed
more glamorous; he looked like a 1930s film star perfectly
preserved on silver nitrate.
    Barnabas, unsure, started to walk across the
room to where Gatsby sat at the piano. Gatsby, without taking his
eyes off Barnabas, rose and, closing the piano’s lid, murmured
something to his audience, who turned to watch Barnabas. Keeping
his gaze on Barnabas, Gatsby drifted over, bringing with him sepia
tones and a martini.
    “Hello, Barnabas,” Gatsby whispered. A
smile, fragile as tissue paper, wrapped around his words. He
offered his hand like an argentine gift of inestimable value.
    Barnabas took his hand shyly and murmured
back, “Hi, Mr. Calloway.”
    “Please! We’re no longer in high school. I’m
no longer your teacher. Call me Gatsby.”
    Barnabas nodded. “Gatsby.” He’d always
addressed him as Mr. Calloway, but he thought of him, in his head,
as Gatsby. Still, saying his name aloud sounded strange to his ears
but he liked the way the syllables felt in his mouth:   Gats-by .
    “Ah. That’s better.”
    The room was cool and Barnabas shivered.
“You’re cold,” Gatsby said, taking his arm.
    There was something antique about him.
Heightening the effect was the way he treated Barnabas—with a
certain genteel courtliness that in itself seemed of a different
age. Indeed Barnabas noticed most of the men in the room exhibited
a similar old world mannerliness.
    “Come, let us sit by the fire.” Gatsby
gestured for Barnabas to sit.
    As Barnabas sank into a worn leather club
chair, Gatsby placed his martini glass on a passing waiter’s tray
and took from it two fresh Martini glasses. “A Vesper martini,
tonight’s signature cocktail,” he explained handing one to
Barnabas. “Two more,” he said to the waiter before sitting in the
chair opposite Barnabas.
    Gatsby smiled and it was then that Barnabas
saw the canine teeth. He’d suspected it but still he jumped a
little. Gatsby noticed the tremor that passed through Barnabas. He
stopped smiling and stared into the middle distance as firelight
played over his features, painting them now pink, now pearl. After
a moment the tension passed and they continued as before.
    “Tell me, what have you been up to since
high school?”
    They began to talk, Gatsby’s voice as soft
and seductive as the crackle and pop of the wood in the