The Gang Tries Falafel
“So in summation,” Dracula shouted over the din of the late-night eating establishment. “This book is about me. Again. Suck it, losers.”
“What?” Anatole called.
Young people came and went, loitered around waiting for their orders. Most stayed clear of the table in the corner where the book club had assembled, but the lack of space and the Brownian motion of the crowd brought people into close contact.
Fenrir yawned and stretched in a way that by no means hid his battle-scarred, slab-like musculature. “As uncalled for as that is, I have to agree with you.”
Dracula opened his mouth to protest, realised that there was nothing to protest, then sat down with a smug grin, squeezing in next to Anatole and Seth D’Asur on the wooden bench that served as their seat.
“Who chose this fetid place?” Anatole asked, grimacing in disgust as much at being that close to Dracula as well as the general surroundings.
“It’s got ambience,” Trenchant said with a wistful smile.
“What it’s got is a whole boneless chicken in peri-peri sauce,” Seth said, dangling the printed page of a menu with one finger and a thumb.
“Come on,” Trenchant said. “Uncle Fah’zi’s is an establishment in this city. I remember the original Hamur Fah’zi when he opened this place with his wife and two daughters. It hasn’t changed in decades.”
“How do you get a boneless chicken?” Seth went on.
“It smells, and inebriated humans traffic it!” Anatole complained.
“If memory serves,” Fenrir said. “What was the event that caused Mr Cavendish to shut the Reading Room for a few weeks, tossing us out to find a new venue? Hmm? Was it perhaps the hysterical human who got hit by a car and spent the whole drive to the hospital babbling about vampires? Could that be the reason?”
“No one’s pointing fingers, Fenrir Jarl,” Trenchant said, opening her copy of ‘Salem’s Lot. “Let’s proceed with the topic at hand, shall we?”
“This book is like a love letter to the original,” Anatole said quickly. “It also very much reminds me of Pale Immortal.”
“Only that book had no vampires in it,” Seth said, letting the menu drift to the floor, where it joined quite a lot of their compatriot menus in pulpy boot-printed strata.
“Allegedly,” Dracula clarified.
“And Pale Immortal was written well after ‘Salem’s Lot,” Seth said.
“I wasn’t insinuating that there was plagiarism, Nitpicky Nine-Pence,” Anatole said, over the din of a particularly rowdy group of humans coming in to bolster their stomachs against impending alcohol poisoning. Anatole followed them with her eyes. “I was just saying that they have a similar feel. If you liked the one, you’d probably like the other. They both have charm, small-town charm. Well, until it all goes down the deep end.”
“A sort of a ‘what if Dracula ended up going to a small town in America instead of to London’,” Trenchant said.
“Only why would I want to?” Dracula said. “The whole point of me going to London was to see the glory of the industrial revolution, the lifeblood of the new world, the culture, the sights, the people. I spent centuries in a backwards country with superstitious peasants. Why would I want to do that again?”
“Most likely, you’d get hit by a yellow cab if you went to New York,” Trenchant said.
“Didn’t get hit by anything in New Babylon,” Dracula said sourly.
“Have you seen our roads? Most of them were planned when owning a vehicle with wheels was inexcusably bourgeois,” Trenchant said.
Seth glanced in mounting horror at the encroaching youths and said: “To get away from the people, I would guess. Sometimes solitude is the best balm for the soul.”
“That why you got stuck under a tree for nearly a century?” Anatole said.
Seth twitched in annoyance.
“That’s not it. Half the vampires of New Babylon were in there with him,” Trenchant added, her smile bordering on manic.
“I remember,” Fenrir said, gritting his teeth.
“So swiftly moving along,” Trenchant interjected herself into the conversation again. “It seems that Dracula wanted a peaceful retreat into the countryside to get away from it all and got killed, as is the tradition in books about him.”
“Again, killed by fools who barely knew what they were doing. It’s heart-breaking, this treatment,” Dracula said.
Anatole barked out a vicious laugh. “Weren’t you the one crowing your triumph on yet another book written as a homage to your life a minute ago? Now you’re all sad about the ending?”
“It’s a big book. I was hoping that none of you got that far,” Dracula said.
“My dear boy,” Trenchant said. “Your inevitable death was my main motivation to finish this book! As soon as I realised the archetype of the story, I was simply hooked. King’s a good writer, but knowing what’s going to happen? Simply delicious.”
Dracula looked at the collected vampires and, seeing their co-conspiratorial grins, deflated entirely into a well-dressed puddle in his seat.
Their table number was called. Trenchant grinned and hopped from her bench and glided through the crowd to the collection point. There, she deftly collected their tray and exchanged a few words with the serving girl behind the counter. The return trip necessitated a pirouette.
The girl returned with an elaborate hookah boasting an emerald-green vase.
Nonplussed by the collected book club’s appearance around the low table, she placed the hookah and accoutrements, and departed without a word or smile.
“What is that thing?” Fenrir asked, gesturing at the hookah.
“In my country, peasants smoke whatever herbs they can gather mushed up in those,” Dracula said. “If they were just paid, they smoke the milk of the poppy plant, I think.”
“Today, it is flavoured tobacco,” Trenchant declared and started to assemble the device. The water-filled vase at the bottom, then pipes, then a clay pot, in which she pressed some tobacco. She covered this with foil, then placed a round disc of charcoal on top. She produced a long-barrelled lighter, and after a warning glance at her compatriots, she produced a flame and lit the charcoal. She slipped on a wind cover and sat back with a self-satisfied grin.
“That’s the most manual labour I’ve seen you do in a long while,” Anatole said.
“I’m doing something nice, so you shut it,” she replied.
“You do seem in awful high spirits today,” Fenrir added. “Why do you like this place so much?”
Trenchant glanced at the lurid, geometric carpets on the walls, the doilies on the industrial refrigerators and the tin-foil wrapped packages wielded in exit by intoxicated young people.
“There is an honesty here, a beauty.”
Dracula got jostled by a boy in a tracksuit on his way to the counter. “What there is, is too many rude people who will get punched if they don’t stop bumping the table.”
Anatole took a small puff of the smoke from the pipes attached to the hookah and huffed a cough. She replaced the pipe with a perplexed disgust on her face. “People do this? On purpose?”
“Most do only out of bravado. Drunk people tell the truth or lie so ineptly that the truth is laid bare. This place is the truth of the world. There are those whose lives are so mired in lies that they escape that reality through excess. A soul can only tolerate that many lies before either becoming diminished or seeking a way out. This place is not pleasant, but people think it is, so they keep returning to it seeking escape from the pleasant lies to come to enjoy unpleasant truth.”
“An awful risk for us to come here,” Fenrir said, glancing at the exit to the kitchens and back to the wide-open front of the shop. “Who owns this place?”
“The family that owns this place was patronised by D’Asur, before its fall,” Trenchant continued. “My people claimed them when the holdings were divided and have cared for them from a distance. Not interfering. The family here is unbound and unaware.”
Seth glanced at the surroundings with new eyes, taking in details. Patterns started to emerge. He could see the old iconography hinted at here and there in the tapestry hanging from the walls.
“That’s why you brought us here? To rub it in Nine-Pence’s face that you one-upped him?” Anatole said, still eyeing the young people.
“No,” Trenchant said in mock seriousness, then her facade broke into a smile. “Well, at least not entirely. The book reminded me of this place.” She gestured to the serving counter. “Look at this. A small child is helping to pack canned drinks away. I don’t know much about children, but I would guess they have to sleep an awful lot. Yet here she is, labouring well after her bedtime. A little island of truth, where a traditional family business is working tirelessly to exploit the excesses of the bourgeois class to eke out a living to pass on to their next generation, unchanging. They make enough to survive, but not enough to stop labouring for untold hours. The only people that benefit, really, are the landlords who own the lease on this property. That girl who brought us the hookah, she must be Hamur Fah’zi’s great great granddaughter, yet she bears a striking resemblance to his wife. The bloodline never left here.”
Seth’s eyes traced the girl, her bronze complexion lightened by hours spent not in the sun but serving spiced falafel and hummus encased in pita bread to the ungrateful masses.
“Like the people in the book,” Fenrir said, gathering in a cup of the acrid coffee that Trenchant had ordered before passing it over to Seth. “Some may have left for a time, like Mears and Susan Norton, but most have returned to their lot.”
Seth wafted the steam coming off the small cup to his nostrils. “By all the gods, this stuff’s vile.”
“It’s traditional Turkish coffee,” Trenchant added smoothly. “Made in the traditional manner. Humans believe it able to counteract the effects of alcohol.”
“It will counteract a great many things,” Seth said. “Such as grease build-up on battleship engines.”
Fenrir took up the cup and gave it a speculative sniff. He went as far as to take a speculative sip, which he spat back into the cup. “Might be useful in staining leather,” he declared in the face of Seth’s mixed horror and admiration.
A group of girls in marriage fever battle gear strayed into contact with the club’s table.
“I start to see your point, Baron De Breizh,” Fenrir said, eyeing Trenchant as he replaced the coffee before it was jostled into spilling. “Mears never left ‘Salem’s Lot. His mind was fixated on the Marsden House, even though his body was out documenting war crimes.”
“Alleged war crimes,” Dracula added automatically. “Like I’m about to commit if another bloody idiot bumps into me.”
The girls stayed close, making furtive glances at the specimens arrayed around the table, specifically zoning in on the expanse of battle-scarred chest flesh presented by the Jarl.
One girl, braver or less intoxicated than the others, approached. She lolled her head to one side and put her opposite hand on her hip in nonchalance. She spoke with a noticeable vocal fry. “My friend is going through a Northerner daddy phase, and we don’t see any oathbands on your arms, so we were wondering, if you’d like to go get a drink after, or whatever, mead, or whatever.”
Fenrir’s expression was unchanged. He merely folded his chorded arms over his chest, which simply served to accentuate his musculature.
“She can see us?” Dracula asked.
“Of course she can, you idiot,” Anatole hissed. “Why else would she be talking to us?”
“Yeah,” the girl said, sub-text oblivious. “We like your look… Supes retro.”
“The Mandragora is becoming a problem,” Fenrir said, ignoring the girl’s presence entirely. “I must speak of it with Olaf Jarl.”
“Kids call it Dream Tide,” Seth said, his expression growing icy at the mention of the name. “Real pain at the school.”
“Oh, you’re just down with the lingo, aren’t you, Nines?” Anatole said.
The girl rolled her eyes, putting a hand on her other hip. “Like if you don’t wanna talk to me, just say so, no need to give me evils or whatever.”
With a flick of her hair, she sauntered off, not-quite lowering her voice as she muttered curses.
“Well I, for one-” Seth started to say, before he was forestalled by a particularly boisterous group of young males, who had taken to drunkenly singing their college fight songs. They harassed Fah’zi’s great-great-granddaughter, who slipped past them and back to the safety behind the counter with practised ease.
“Oh, now you’re going to see something,” Anatole said, surreptitiously adjusting her top to a less demure configuration, cleavage spilling out.
The gaggle of girls scattered as well, taking their bored spokesperson with them, but the giggles and glances to the table, especially towards Fenrir, continued unabated.
The boys passed by the table, obtuse glances and pointing at the choicest of the gaggle proceeding them as they caused a bow wave opening before them. There was, however, nothing to see at the table.
Anatole scowled.
“I’m going to ask that girl about the boneless chicken,” Seth declared, making a move to extricate himself.
Trenchant pinned him in his seat with one long finger and a sharp glance. “If you recall, Seth, Praetor D’Asur, that I mentioned this place is no longer under the patronage of your house, but of mine?”
Seth sat back, his expression carefully neutral. His effort did not wholly mask his hunger.
“These people have enough trouble, Nine-Pence,” Anatole said, glowering at the young men. “A severe lack of taste being the most obvious.”
Three of the boys peeled off of their comrades and approached the table.
Anatole brightened and leaned a little forward in her seat.
The leading boy was an impressive specimen, his tracksuit barely containing him. “You, wolf-man,” he said, pointing at Fenrir. He glanced at his friends to make sure they laughed appropriately at his insult. “You looking at my girl?”
“Are you serious?” Anatole said. “What am I, a boneless chicken?”
The boy’s eyes flicked to Anatole, then back at Fenrir. He made the effort to look nonchalantly fierce.
Fenrir didn’t even move a muscle.
The boy’s confidence wavered for a moment but then returned with reinforcements. “Yeah, that’s right, you just sit there.” He gathered his followers and, not taking his glare of smug satisfaction from Fenrir, left to commit more acts of harassment elsewhere.
“Honestly,” Anatole said. “Who even comes to places like this if not by sheer accident. It is the worst. The people are the worst, the food-”
“Is apparently irresistible,” Seth said, again enthralled into abjectivity by a boy picking a slice of grilled aubergine off of his pants from, where it had fallen out of the back of a ruptured pita bread before stuffing it in his mouth wholesale. ”Can you hear the sounds they are making?”
“Exactly,” Trenchant said with a satisfied smile on her face. “Like this place, even though it was built on both charm, low-grade evil, and most of all lies big and small, the people here seem happy enough to continue this miserable momentum. Like small towns, people romanticise this, even though just beneath the surface, it is as vile as the coffee they serve.”
“I don’t think those things can be eaten neatly,” Dracula added. “And if they provided cutlery, I think people would be as likely to stab each other with it than spear the food.”
“The patronage is insufferable,” Anatole said, readjusting her clothes.
“They may just not be ready for your particular charms,” Trenchant said, giving Anatole a mock reassuring smile.
“I don’t see them looking at you that much either,” Anatole snapped back.
“And I do not see that as a particularly odious affliction,” Trenchant said, smile deepening to a shark-like grin. “The one who seems to be getting the most attention here is our dear Jarl.”
Fenrir rolled his prodigious shoulder. “I must get going. My presence here will cause this place to unravel soon.”
Seth stiffened in sudden realisation, and the tension drew out of him. “Like Barlow.”
Trenchant smiled. “In both the cases of the book and this place, one outsider can cause a bit of trouble.”
“I’ll argue that some places deserve to be ruined,” Dracula said, clearly trying to be away from the press of humanity. “I’ve had enough, sorry to be rude, but I can’t take it anymore. I’ll come with you.”
“Ready to head to a small town in America already?” Anatole said.
“Anything’s better than this,” he said. “People are the worst.”
“Yet, we need them,” Trenchant said. “And sometimes, they need something to remind them of the true dark.”
“Like a forest needs a forest fire?” Fenrir said, gathering up his belongings.
“I’ll try the coffee and the hookah,” Seth said, steeling himself.
Trenchant smiled beatifically and assisted him.
They watched Fenrir and Dracula making their way out of the open-fronted building. A scuffle broke out outside, raising the noise level another few octaves.
“They’ll be back,” Trenchant said, leaning back in her seat with her eyes closed and a smile on her features. “They always are.”
The scuffle got a bit louder for a moment, then at its crescendo, the crowd dissipated, much to the confusion of those still inside.
Dracula came back inside, expression sheepish.
Trenchant barked a laugh.
“What happened?” Anatole asked.
“Ehr, we’d all better be going,” Dracula said.
Then they heard it too.
“Fenrir’s wolves?” Anatole asked.
“Fenrir’s wolves,” Dracula added miserably. “One of those young men punched me. Why punch me? They were cross at the Jarl.”
“Will he be all right?” Anatole asked, craning her neck to see outside.
Seth spat out the coffee. “Old Gods, that stuff’s vile.”
“You mean the Jarl?” Dracula asked.
“Who?” Anatole muttered in abject distraction as she gazed at the college boy rubbing his bruised knuckles.
