Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 12:58:17 +0000 From: Gayle McCreedy Just the Fangs, Ma'am! by Gayle McCreedy (for Erika, who has had better days...) All Forever Knight characters belong to TPTB, I'm only borrowing them momentarily and will return them in more or less the condition I found them. All other characters belong to me. I have used trademark names in this story, and acknowledge they belong to their owners with the same mea culpas for usage as above. Sexually suggestive material and bad jokes contained within. This story probably reads best if you imagine a female voice doing a very bad "Dragnet" overvoice. It was a Friday. It was a dateless Friday. It was the kind of dateless Friday that makes you wander restlessly around your apartment going slowly crazy. The kind of Friday that not only makes you decide to redecorate your apartment, but makes you decide that you can sew those curtains yourself instead of paying for custom-size drapes. I was there. I was the sewer. I was standing on a cheap step stool from Woolworth's trying to measure the third six-foot window of the trio in the living room when I first spotted the girl. I was using a broken yardstick and a measuring tape that the cat had had a party with one afternoon. She was using very long legs and a very short skirt. She was a hooker. I put my palm against the window. It was cold. Very cold. It was January. My father used to say that weather like this would freeze a witch's... well, let's leave my father out of this. It was cold enough to make business bad for the hookers. Bad enough that they walked the six blocks from their usual beat to work my street. When it's cold enough to make a man stop thinking about cheap, meaningless sex, that's gotta be pretty cold. And she, she was the sort of woman that men would find hard to ignore. At least, if I were a man, I'd have trouble ignoring her. I think. I mean, having never been a man it's hard to know what they think. But I think that they would think that she was beautiful. She had very long legs. Oh-I said that before. Well, they *were* long. She was probably five-eight or so. Her skin was a milky color, and she had long, dark hair. She had one of those perky noses that you only really see in California, and we were one hell of a long way from L.A. now. She wore a tight skirt, leather, maybe, and a white fur jacket. She was hot. I'd never looked that together on my best date night, and here she was...Well, let's just stop thinking about my dating life right now. I climbed off the step stool. I began to wrestle with the six hundred miles of corduroy that I had bought for the windows. Why corduroy? Because it's cheap. I wanted velvet. Velvet or damask. Something expensive. Something that would look Victorian, to match these ten-foot ceilings that sucked up all the heat from the radiators so that I needed a sweater in September. Something that wasn't corduroy, but I'm on a budget. Eventually, I threw the material to the floor with a curse. I flicked off the lights and flicked on the stereo. It was a real stereo, a mother stereo, a floor model made out of some indefinable wood with big knobs and a yellow light that flowed out of the middle section when the lid was up. I kept the lid up. Climbing up onto the top of the stereo, I knocked back a slug of Coke. Regular coke. I wanted all the sugar and caffiene one body could handle on a night like this. Then I looked out of the window. She was still out there. As I watched, a car slowed, then stopped. She leaned over, talked to the driver. An old Billie Holiday tune was pouring out of the stereo. Somehow, it seemed like the right backdrop for the scene in front of me. The hooker started to open the door of the blue Cadillac, and I thought the show was over. I was wrong. A tall man moved swiftly to close the door of the car. I hadn't noticed him before, and at the speed he moved, he could have been on Xenon before and just arrived on my street that moment. He was that fast. The hooker looked pretty angry when the Cadillac pulled away, but looked considerably less so when the tall guy waved a sheaf of bills under her nose. That was a lot of moola. A whole lot to be casually waving around in a neighborhood like mine. But the tall guy didn't even look around before he did it. I caught myself looking around for him, but the street was empty. This guy was tres lucky, for sure. I can't help wondering what that kind of money buys. I tossed back another slug of Coke and wondered if I should be watching this at all. The stereo switched to some jazz singer I didn't recognize, and it was so mellow I decided not to move for just another minute or so. It was the music - really. Not any part of me that would want to watch or anything like that. I mean, I have my principles. Out on the street the tall guy was making very sharp moves on the hooker. Like that was necessary. Anyway, he's moving her up the street a few steps at a time, like some sort of elaborate dance. They talk for a few minutes, she laughs. He kisses her, a deep sort of serious kiss. Either she's a better actress than Merle Streep, or those kisses are pretty tasty. He pulls back. They walk a little ways up the street, the scene repeats. He is totally smooth and confident. I am totally jealous. Eventually, they stroll into the alley out of my line of vision. I stay sitting on the stereo for a moment, debating, then I move into the bedroom where I can keep watching. What good is a corner apartment if you can't look out of all of the windows, I reason. By the time I get there, they are into some serious necking. There are hands flying, she looks like she is having a *very* good time. I think I am watching a remake of 9 1/2 Weeks. Yikes! And then, just when the action should start getting truly interesting, everything stops. By that, I mean that the two of them just clutch each other, the tall guy nuzzling her neck, but all the frenzied passion stops. She or he must have a real neck thing, because they just have this long embrace with him kissing her neck. Maybe he's a hickey kind of guy. I dated one of those in high school, but that's a totally different story... Anyway, this tall guy finally releases her, and the hooker sorta sinks to the ground. Like she's in some swoon. I've never swooned at any guy kissing me, but I am totally jealous now. But then, the tall guy does something that makes a little bell go off in my head. He reaches down to where she's lying on the ground, and instead of trying to help her up, he rearranges her into a little ball so she looks like she's fallen asleep. The little bell becomes one huge, amazingly large fire alarm. And then before I can think what to do, the tall guy turns around and looks right at me. Right at *me.* I am toast. I am the black crumbs falling out the bottom of your toaster. I am that scummy stuff that the dishwasher never cleans off the pan that you cooked spaghetti in. I am so dead. There is not exactly a point in moving now. How hard is my apartment to find, really, now that he knows which windows are mine? So, I'm standing there staring at this tall guy in the alley, and this tall guy is standing there staring at me. And then, neat as you please, this guy wipes a little bit of something dark, something I can only assume is blood, off his chin with one finger. Dainty, even. And then, just as tidy, he licks the blood off his finger. I'm telling you, his eyes never left mine. This is something he wants me to see. Now, here's the really spooky part. When he opens his mouth to lick his finger, I can see his teeth. I don't know, trick of the light maybe, but I swear, his teeth are *huge.* I mean, my rotweiler didn't have teeth like that! And just about the time that I'm thinking about Eddie Murphy, he's gone. Just gone. Back to Xenon or wherever. I don't know, and I don't care, because I am still breathing. Or at least, I started to again once I remembered how to do it. So, that's my big story about a slow Friday night. That's how I came to be dialing 911 about the stiff in the alley. Now, of course, when I was talking to that cute detective, I didn't tell him all what I'm telling you. I'm not sure the blond with him bought the story, but he seemed to just fine. I left out all of that wierd stuff. I mean, I don't want them thinking I'm a total loon, now do I? No, I just bit my tounge. Better me than him, I'd say. But I tell you one thing - those cordury curtains do keep the light out really nicely. Say, listen - I was just thinking about catching a bite. Why don't you join me? ******************************************************************* by Gayle McCreedy Please send all comments to me directly at gmccree@cms.cc.wayne.edu