Vampyres of Hollywood by Adrienne & Scott Barbeau

hall. He’d insisted on black leather sofas and glass-topped tables with limestone bases. He’d sourced the limestone from the same quarry the Getty Museum was built from. I love the museum; I hate the stench. It smells like hundreds of people with bad body odor. It’s the stink of the limestone. Personally, I think it’s only fit for mausoleums. Thomas’s outer office smells only slightly less offensive than a cemetery in New Orleans, which is why we generally hold our meetings in mine.
    I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the glass over his Lichtenstein. Don’t believe everything you read about vampyres. Of course we reflect in mirrors and glass; it would defy all the laws of physics if we didn’t. But it makes a great movie effect, always did, right from the moment Lugosi strapped on the cape.
    Right then I wasn’t too happy with what I saw. My black curly hair was no longer cascading down my back in Christophe-styled ringlets. It was frizzed out about a foot in all directions, reacting to the change in my aura. I leaned forward and pulled down my lower eyelid. The whites of my eyes were filled out with tiny threadlike veins. Soon the entire white of my eye would turn red. I could feel my lower teeth pushing out of their sheaths and my incisors growing to meet them. Forget the Hollywood image of two nice, neat Christopher Lee fangs; think tiger canines instead, top and bottom. Plus—and this really pissed me off because I’d just had a manicure—my nails were elongating, flakes of coral nail polish spiraling to the floor.
    I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing, using techniques that would have made a yogi proud, techniques I’d perfected over half a millennium of existence.
    I opened my eyes and stared at the Lichtenstein, not seeing the art, just my reflection in the glass. The whites of my eyes were pink again and I could smile without showing teeth. My nails were a mess and my hair still looked like shit, but that could be explained.
    I pushed open the door and strode into Thomas’s office.
    Thomas was standing in front of the Warhol, talking on the phone, with his back to me. He had on black Dolce & Gabbana jeans, a white XOXO T-shirt and a black Armani silk jacket, black Kenneth Cole loafers, no socks. I may have been pissed, but I know my designers. I’d also lay money that he was wearing the Patek Philippe watch I’d given him in a moment of weakness and was carrying a quintet of platinum cards in the alligator wallet that just slightly disturbed the line of his jeans. There was the faintest hint of blood in the air; obviously his little session in the dungeon in Boys Town had gone well. I’ve been whipped and beaten, burned, branded, stabbed, shot, and poisoned. Every one of them hurt like a bitch and I’ve no intention of repeating any of them, so I simply cannot understand people like DeWitte who pay to have someone beat on them. And it’s only the human race that does it.
    Thomas and I had been lovers when I was going through my “wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to take care of me for a change” stage. That lasted about four minutes. Beneath his aging Tom Selleck exterior—complete with moustache—was a weasely little Mickey Rourke with welts on his ass. Once I realized I wasn’t the one making them, I kissed him good-bye. But I didn’t kiss him off. He managed to be both a remarkably inventive lover—for a man—and a sexual slime at the same time. He was also a good exec; I think it had something to do with being a sleazy ass-kissing ego-maniac. I offered him 20 percent of Anticipation Studios and a seven-year contract. He bought the limestone tables.
    He also bought some really good art. Two Hockneys, a Sam Francis, an Edward Ruscha, and the Warhol I coveted. Dear Andy, I had wanted so badly to Turn him. Something I rarely do. I wanted that talent to be immortal. But once I saw the pain he was in, I couldn’t perpetuate it. He never knew, of course.
    I