Resurrection

Chapter Fourteen

Her words having gushed from her from afternoon until dusk – she had to double-check her watch to verify that she had indeed spent three hours relating every grim detail to Theo – Claire finally stood up from the sofa in the study for a stretch.  The sun teased its descent beyond the horizon and the sky burned a dramatic orange.  This was her favorite part of the day, that last glimpse of warmth before night came on.  Lately she would cling to that golden hour more petulantly, because of how cold and lonely her nights had become.

She glanced at the elephant – a hewn block of wood, yes, but a sinister block of wood – and resisted the urge to look behind her as she walked away from it.  Claire had hardly taken a moment outside of the elephant's presence for the last several days.  To do so now filled her with equal measures of anxiety and courage.

When she left Theo's study, the door shutting confidently behind her, the courage billowed into delirious excitement.  Her brain was unhindered by thoughts of cold.    Instead, a welcome warmth rising from the dance floor below her beckoned her.  Within seconds, her feet carried her down the spiral staircase and into a drunken sea of black and leather.

Claire hadn't expected that dancing in the company of vampires could be so liberating.  Dressed in dramatic swaths of ink and red, covering their hot-blooded humanity in white base and sharp-angled eyeliner, they laughed and caressed each other with drifting hands.  Spilled grenadine splotched the floor, glowing menacingly under the strange chandeliers.

Eyes drifted across Claire's grimless plaid shirt and blue jeans, followed by knowing smiles.  This little piggy came to the wrong party, and wolves loved lost piggies.   But she was exactly where she needed to be.   Safe amongst strangers.  She swung her hips and arms, relishing the fleeting brush of other hands.  Her hair glistened as she perspired.  This buzz, this constant drifting of eyes and hands; this was the beauty of distraction.  This was a wonderful way to forget.

Her body wept great drops of sweat, streams of sorrow draining from the last month of her life.    Chad's addictive misery trailed down her temple.  The pirate's bitter cigarette breath evaporated from her back in plumes of steam.  Even Berlioz, the icy stowaway that took up residence in every nook that she didn't know fear could fill, trailed down the back of her wrist in a sensuous labyrinth.  She hadn't known she could feel this way again.  Light.

She felt hope beneath the lifting days of terror, felt a memory of the Claire she had been before Berlioz.  A Claire that laughed at well-told jokes and snorted at bad ones.  A Claire that enjoyed the random calls from her mother on lazy evenings.  A Claire that fundamentally believed people were good at heart.  Believed that shadows weren't waiting for the lights to go out so they could dine on her sleep.  She missed that Claire, missed her so desperately.

But she thought that she was rediscovering her now, the mundane delights she looked forward to, the smiles she couldn't hide when an act of kindness made her heart flutter.  That Claire was here, somewhere, drifting in this comforting sea of black and red.

Across the room she glimpsed the bleached hair moving a bootstrap step at a time over the aquarium floor, the punk cowboy laved in an aquatic crimson sheen.  He parted the clustered vampire-dancers like a disguised demigod emanating divine mystery from his pores.  They all seemed to recognize him, their eyes glazing over with a memory; that or else they recognized the protagonist of a rumor.  Many wanted to touch him, but a cloak of respect shrouded him and they dared not breach that contract of distant admiration.  He swept past his guests with a quiet grace, no vain conceit or blustery bravado in his gait.

Blushing, Claire realized that she'd just created a fantasy of how Theo related to his patrons.  She didn't know if they actually recognized him.  Her mind had created a narrative that her own respect and wonder supported.  In mere hours, he'd shown her that her fear wasn't unbreakable or indefinable.  The curtain had been pulled back enough for light to ruin the illusion of total danger.  Even the old Claire had been glimpsed in the light.  Which made him, she supposed, a kind of Dorothy to her Lion.