White Rabbit Chapter 28

28.

           

            Delores hurried into Dunkin’ Donuts. A car horn blared as she raced across the street nearly slipping on a patch of ice. A collar of reindeer bells on the doorknob jingled as it closed. There was a Santa Claus inside who waved at her then went back to reading a newspaper. Delores felt uneasy. The Santa looked like he just ended his shift at Macy’s and was sitting alone over a steaming cup and a plate of assorted donuts. Macy’s always hires the best Santa Clauses. She was sure that he was one of theirs. There was a heavy set police officer standing at the counter talking to an older employee who was holding a mop. They both smiled at Delores as she walked to the counter. She forgot to kick the snow from her boots and clumps that fell off on the tile already started to puddle. Bells jingled behind her. She turned back as the girl asked, “May I take your order?”

            There he stood in the flesh. Handsome man in his thirties. Alex De Wolfe. He pretended not to notice Delores and kicked snow off his boots on the mat waving at the police officer and the man with the mop. He walked over to Santa Claus and shook his hand. He was wearing the same old looking suit, high pants and a pair of black boots. He had a gray wool coat and a red and black checkered flat cap. He and Santa were having an amiable conversation and Delores watched curiously. “Miss?” The girl behind the register said politely. “Your order, miss?” A headset hid amongst a mop of black hair contained in a hairnet and she robotically told someone on the other end to please take a minute to look over the menu and she would be with them in a moment.

            “I’m sorry.” Delores said flustered. She ordered coffee and this time a cream- filled donut.  

            Her tray with her plated donut and coffee cup trembled in her hands as she walked to a table by a window with a green-painted Christmas tree colored on it. Alex De Wolfe made his way to the counter. She could see his back and the girl at the counter smiling pleasantly. He had a cup of coffee in hand and turned and made his way toward Delores. Her stomach jittered. She smiled politely as he with no hesitation stood beside her table.

            “Anyone sitting here?”

            “Well,” Delores said hesitantly, “I am expecting someone.”

            “May I, until he arrives?”

            “He is a she. And, um, sure.”

            “Thank you.”

There was a long pause before Delores worked up the nerve and blurted out, “Are you following me?”

Alex took a long breath. “I suppose that would be accurate.” He took a sip of his coffee and set the cup back down gently.

“Well, why? It’s weird and creepy.” Her donut lay forlorn on the plate.

“I guess I am weird and creepy. Been to the train station lately?”

“No. I will be in the morning.”

“Home to Portland?”

“Yes. Unfortunately.”

            “Unfortunately?”

“Home,” she replied slowly, “isn’t where the heart is.”

“Oh. And pity.”

            “What pity?”

            “I’ve yet to get to know you. We met at the train station your first day in Boston and we meet here on your last day in Boston. Strange.”

            “You were following me?”

            “Yes. That’s been established.” Both took a drink. Brian Setzer sang “I Saw Ma Kissin’ Santa Claus.” Rockabilly style.

            “I could tell. But I couldn’t see you.”

            “Of course not.” He replied plainly. “I am an invisible.”

            “An invisible?”

            “Yes. I come and I go.”

            “You are telling me you turn invisible?”

            “Yes.”

            “How?”

            “I don’t know how to explain it. It is like, you whistling.”

            “I can’t whistle.”

            “Blowing bubbles then. And if you can’t do that, blowing raspberries.”

            “Blowing raspberries?”

            “When you put your lips together, tongue out, and do this.” He put his tongue in place and blew out and his lips flapped rapidly. “Sorry if I spit on you.”

            She laughed. “You didn’t. I don’t know if I can do that either.”

            “Try.” He invited.

            Delores laughed. She stuck her tongue out and blew. Nothing. Again. It was like she was trying to start a stalled boat engine. Finally, a good one. “Ha, I guess I can.” she said proudly.

            “Sure. Probably did that long before you said a word.”

            “Yes. I suppose I did. So you disappear just like that?”

            “Sure. Well, kind of.”

            “Well,” she paused, “will you?”

            “Here?” He looked around. “Oh, I like to be discrete.”

            “Oh?”

            “Okay. I will. But quickly.” he warned.

            “I can’t believe this!”

            “Tell me if anyone is looking? I don’t want anyone to see. Especially, not the policeman, or Santa Claus.”

            Delores laughed. “Nah, you’re alright. Santa is reading the newspaper and the policeman is talking to some old lady. Go for it!”

            “Okay. Here goes nothing.”

            “Literally.” Delores jibed.

            But just like that, Alex De Wolfe vanished. No slow fade, no pixilation, no momentary fuzziness, just poof and gone. “Abracadabra!” He said invisible.

            “Holy shit!” Delores’ eyes were large as silver dollars. She fidgeted in her seat and knocked the table with her knee spilling her coffee. “Oh, fuck!”

            “Sorry to alarm you, Delores. But you asked.”

            “You are not here!” she cried. “I am imagining you. Imagining your voice now! Imagining all of this!”

            His coffee cup rose up and tipped back and coffee disappeared as it poured from the cup. She stared at him, the lack of him or anything. The cup put itself down on the table with an, “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” from where It came.

            “Someone’s coming!” Delores cried. “I need to be committed. My mother was right! You are not real!” It was the manager with the mop.

            “Saw you spill your coffee, miss. Let me get that for you.” He mopped the floor and wiped up the table with a dry white cloth. “Take your mug to the counter and Paula will get you a refill.”

            “Oh. Well, thank you.” Delores replied jittery.

            “Are you okay, miss?”

            “Sure. Yes. I am sorry. I am, just seeing things.”

            Alex was silent. The manager asked, “Did your friend leave?” He was going to take his mug.

            “My friend?”

            “The gentleman who was sitting with you a moment ago.”

            “Oh, no. No! Um, he is in the, uh, um, restroom, I think. Yeah.”

            The manager smiled. “Well, tell him we are giving free refills, if he likes.”

            “I will,” Delores assured him. “Thank you!”

            The manager left and Delores blew out a sigh of relief. “Alex? Alex?” She whispered louder each time. Then from her right Alex came walking toward her with a paper towel wiping his hands. The manager looked over and smiled at him and he smiled and waved back coolly.

            “Restroom!” he whispered. “Good save! You should be in net for the Bruins.”

            “Practice against my mother.”

            “I see.”

            “They say you can get a free refill.”

            “I heard. I was here for that.”

            “When we met at the train station, you said something like ‘It was the least you could do for a fellow werewolf.’”

            “Yes.” Alex affirmed.

            “So you are a werewolf, too?”

            “Yes. But please don’t ask me to change right now.”

            “Do you need a full moon?”

            Alex laughed. “No the moon is irrelevant. It, too, is like whistling.”     

            “Blowing raspberries, remember?”

            “Sure.” Alex smiled.

            “And, I am a werewolf?”

            “Not yet. But you will be.”

            “How so?”

            “It’s delicate.”

            “Oh.” Delores was very aroused by his demeanor. Sexual feelings are much purer expressed in subtlety, not flagrantly stupid and spoiled by clumsy ineptness, charging right in madly. His methods were purer, as in alcohol pure, not the driven-snow pure. Far more potent by saying nothing, by looks and clever delicacy. He shot straight to her head rupturing her fortifications against such foreign armies, her in-person libido: Deseo sexual, considerado por algunos autores como impulso y raíz de las más varias manifestaciones de la actividad psíquica. She took a cold shower and continued. “I read somewhere that the guy who blew up the plane said he was a werewolf. So is that what you guys do?”

“Claude Van Wert was an artificial werewolf.”

“I can’t believe I am having a serious conversation about werewolves. Artificial?”

“Yes. He was made in a lab by a very bad man who wanted to make super people-animals for profit for the military.”

“You mean sort of like Animorphs?”

“Yes. Sort of.”

“How do you know this?”

“Claude came to a werewolf convention last year. Told his story.”

“A werewolf convention?” Delores laughed. She felt like a fish.

“It was in Minneapolis. Still don’t know how he found out.” Alex mentioned befuddled thinking back. Delores laughed in disbelief rubbing her face with her hands. “He wasn’t very welcomed. We feel really bad about the plane but he wasn’t very nice and no one really wanted him spoiling their good time. We should have embraced him, or killed him.”

Delores looked around. “What do you want from me? Why are you here?”

“I love you, Delores. And you love me.”

“Excuse me?”

“It is true. You and I, Delores, it is true.”

“No. No. No. Impossible. Love doesn’t walk in to Dunkin’ Donuts and sit across from you and, well, you know.”

“Why not?” Alex replied eagerly. “What does it do then?”

“I don’t know but… Wait, how old are you anyway?”

“147.”

“147?” she almost choked on a drink of coffee. Her eyes watered. “Years? You mean, werewolf or invisible man years?”

“Normal years. I am pretty young, actually.”

“What’s that in human years?”

“147.”

“So you were born in like —”

“1864. My dad was a werewolf Captain in the Union Army and my mother was an invisible spy for the south. They, too, were in love like we are in love. They knew it when they met, even under such strenuous circumstances.”

            “147 years old? You must have had a lot of women.”

            “There were a few.”

            “I bet.” Delores sneered.

            “But since I was 16, I have been looking for you.”

            Delores laughed. “For me?”

            “Yes. For you.” Another drink. He smiled politely across the table.

            “Do you have children?”

            “Yes. Three.” He replied.

            “Three?”

            “Well, we have three.”

            “We?!”

            “You have been reincarnated twice since I met you first in New York in 1880, Delores. You were a ballet dancer.”

            “I was?”

            “Yes. You died in 1918, born again in 1918, died again in 1995, born again —”

            “….in 1995. I know when I was born.”

            “July 4, 1995 to be precise. Fantastic fireworks that year.”

            “How do you know I am the same person?”

            “That is difficult to explain.”

            “Try me.”

            Alex laid it out there for the next twenty minutes or so. Delores said “wow” at least thirty two times which constituted a new record of wows for her in twenty minutes.

            “I mean, I always kind of liked older men, but 147…” Delores was faintly speaking. “I guess I never thought, I, would, I mean. I, um, what have you been doing since I was born?”

            “Werewolf stuff.”

            Another drink of coffee. “Werewolf stuff?”

“Invisible man stuff, too. I am a writer.”

“Oh, gee. Written anything I would know?”

“Sure.” He left it at that.

“What is that I should know about werewolves? I mean, the downside of dating a werewolf is…?”

            “Well, we piss on things.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Territorial pissing. Sometimes it’s an urge we cannot overcome. But being that I am both an invisible and a werewolf I am at an obvious advantage.”

            “So sometimes there are just streams of piss floating around?”

“Yes. And yellow snow this time of year.”

“Cute. Have you been to a psychiatric hospital?”

            “Lots. I go there to read books to crazy people. Then I blow their mind by disappearing. When I was a kid I used to travel and do magic shows, too. But the only trick I can do is to disappear and to make a werewolf appear. You need more than two tricks to be a good magician. But the Fraternal Order of Werewolves really frown upon public displays of werewolfism.”

            “What do your children think?”

            “Our children… And they are all deceased. Had all three when we were married the first time.”

            “I’m sorry.”

            “Oh, death is a part of life! You live 147 years and you get used to it. They were all in their eighties when they died and lived very happy lives. None of them inherited either trait. It is hit or miss. I was once so ashamed of my werewolfism and my invisibleness that I told no one and when it became obvious and that I wasn’t aging and I couldn’t hide it any longer by graying my hair and blackening my eyes, I died. Pretend, of course. Even had a marvelous funeral. I laid there in the casket like a log until everyone left the room then I popped out sealed my own casket and went on my way. I stayed with our daughter Josephine and her family as a wolf dog for many years. They named me Biscuit, but Biscuit eventually had to die as well. That was a tough one. Her husband Jack buried me in the backyard and I nearly suffocated digging my way out.”

            “So you can die?”

            “Oh, sure! Just like any other. Not too sure where the silver bullet business came from. Believe it came from the story of a werewolf in the Wild West who was shot eight times but lived to tell about it. The eyewitness to the shooting said the shooter that was mauled by the pissed-off werewolf cursed his copper bullets as he was being killed. Werewolves are far more resilient to gun shots and stabbings than humans, and of course we are exempt from cancer, HIV, or any human diseases, but if a train was to run us over, we would be dead.”

            “My mind is blown.”

            “That is a good start.”

            “But if you are 147 why don’t you look it?”

            “The werewolfism slows down aging tremendously.”

            “How long will you live?”

            “Naturally, 500 years, tops.”

            Silence for the first time in twenty minutes. The climax of this entire relationship, like any other, was before the words, when Alex walked toward the table, coffee mug in hand. But this feels pretty damn close. If lucky, a couple can plateau on cloud nine for a stretch of time before fizzling back to earth like a spent roman candle. Some have done it for as long as seventy years. Alex De Wolfe and Delores Marlowe had done it for about 130.

            Santa Claus came over to the table to say goodbye to Alex and extended a white-gloved hand and a cordial greeting to Delores. He gave her a friendly but skeptical naughty list look.  “Alex, be good! Stay on the good list! And have a Merry Christmas!” He slapped Alex on the back and nodded at Delores.

            “I will, Santa. You can count on me.”

            “Santa?” Delores asked after he had gone.

            “Well, that is his name.”

            “Is he the one who works at Macy’s?”

            “Yes, he does. I have none him for many years.”

            “How many years?”

            “About, um, 140, that I can remember.”

            “You’re telling me…that is Santa Claus? The Santa Claus.” Delores followed him with her eyeballs through the parking lot as he got in a silver Honda Accord. “You are telling me there is a Santa Claus? And he drives a Honda Accord?”

            Alex smiled. “You have to believe for yourself, Delores. That, I cannot prove to you.”

            “Oh, Lord!”

            “That too.”

            “Are there vampires as well?”

            “Sure!”

            “Are you enemies?”

            “Sort of.”

            “Like Twilight?”

            “No.” Alex laughed. “Vampires are mostly evil. They use people for blood and feed off their souls. Think of them as human mosquitoes. But you don’t turn into a vampire by being bitten or, well, you know.” He winked. “They are bred. Oh, and they are only female. There are no male vampires in the world. It is impossible. So the “goth” boys with powdered faces and black clothing that you see walking around are no threat to your blood or life. They are like gnats. And vampires stick to their codes as well. They will never be so obvious. They feed mostly off virgin boys, luring them seductively. They never feed on human female blood. Some keep goats or sheep and feed off them because unlike werewolves, vampires are not impervious to HIV which has wiped out most of their population. They will take a human form but when they are feeding they will be in their true form, naked, winged beasts with giant claws and veins popping out all over. Ugly as sin.” He shuddered at the thought.

            “Spooky!”    

            “Yes. So, Delores, are you ready to get married?”

            “Married? I am fifteen!” She replied in a loud whisper.

            “Delores, age is but a number. Love is love. You know it in your heart.”

            “I leave tomorrow for home.”

            “I can follow. I, too, am from Portland.”

            “Starting to think that wasn’t such a coincidence.”

             “Oh?”

            “You waited around in Portland for me to grow up? That explains my feelings of a ‘Him’ being present. That is sort of creepy.”

            “As I said, I am creepy. But I creepy for you.”

            “Why now? Why didn’t you wait until I was eighteen, or some other time?”

            “It’s your pheromones.”

            “My pheromones?”

            “Yes. You’re levels are through the roof. I would have waited until after high school or college but I can smell you. You are giving off the scent. The wonderful scent of a girl who is desperately longing for sexual contact with a male.” Delores blushed and discretely tried to smell herself. Nothing. “Remember, my nose is seventy times stronger than a human’s.” He closed his eyes and breathed deep giving Delores chills. “Like a bouquet of roses in a vaginal vase!”

            “Chanel N°5?”

            “Somewhat, but far more…” another deep sniff, “….natural! I could smell you for forty miles!”

            “Wow.” Thirty three times, and counting. Delores looked at her watch. “My friend will be here in a few minutes…”

            “Oh, I am sorry. I will go.” Alex quickly finished his coffee and got up. He quickly put on his hat and coat. Delores didn’t know what to do. Should she shake his hand or hug him? She hoped that he would say something more and not simply disappear again but she wasn’t at all sure what she wanted him to say.  “Maybe tonight, if you can’t sleep…”

            “Tonight?” she replied, voice cracking.

            “Yes.”

            “If, uh, I can’t sleep.” She somewhat boldly agreed. He started to leave. “Um, well, don’t you want my, uh, number or, um, my address?” She was trembling with anticipation and the feeling under the table in her V was that of a busy summer glass factory. All the workers were underpaid and sweating profusely. She chastised herself in her head for being too bold but she knew she would regret it if she wasn’t bold enough. “Fuck, I’m sorry. Never mind! I thought you, um…”

            “No, I don’t need it! Remember, I can smell you.” The reindeer bells jingled and Whitney walked in not seeing Delores but grinning wildly making her way to the counter. Delores nodded in her direction. Alex took notice. He whispered. “Come to your window later,” he said, “if you can’t sleep!” Then he vanished. Delores took a deep breath and nearly fainted where she sat. Whistles blew in the factory below. Whitney saw her and headed to the table with her mug of cappuccino with whipped cream on top.

            “Delores! Delores! How wonderful! Thank you!” Whitney went on and on about Bruce, his parents and his little sister and didn’t notice Delores’ unsteadiness. She did pause for a second to ask about the extra cup of coffee.

            “Free cup.” Delores smiled.

            “Oh,” Whitney replied, “Well, with all that coffee there is no way you will be able to sleep tonight!”

            “I don’t think I possibly will.” Delores put her head back and breathed slow controlled breaths. One. Exhale. Two. Exhale. Three. Exhale.

            “What is that? Delores! Look!” Whitney pointed out the window and there was a wolf standing there looking in. His breath fogged up the window and his tongue lagged out long and pink. A perfect, beautiful wolf. Before people began to notice he took off. “Was that a Siberian Husky? Or was it a…?”

            “Wolf!” Delores smiled. “And his name is Biscuit.”

            “Oh.” Whitney laughed confused. “So, how was your evening?”

            Delores sighed, “WOW!” Thirty four.