Lifeblood - Chapter Two

[kalinara]

Last time, we reunited with Jack and Escott as they dealt with an issue of a stolen stamp. Now that matter is over, it's three in the morning, and Jack's off to see the last member of our main character trio (and my personal OT3), Bobbi Smythe.



Bobbi seems to be doing pretty well. She's no longer singing at the Nightcrawler, and isn't living there anymore, but she's staying in a very swanky hotel with a marble floored lobby and a desk clerk that knows Jack on sight. Jack heads on up (taking the stairs because the kid manning the elevator is asleep on his stool) and when he sees light in her rooms, he knocks.

Bobbi is very happy to see him, and as usual, I'm rather fascinated by how she's described in these books:

"This is dressing down; something informal, yet intimate." She was wearing some baby blue satin lounging pajamas that made it difficult for me to think straight. When she walked, her legs made a pleasant susurrous sound. Slightly hypnotized by the rhythm, I followed her into the living room as we curled up on the sofa.

It occurs to me that Bobbi is rarely described in terms of sight, if that makes sense. We know she's beautiful, has blond hair and generally an idea of what she's wearing (a long silver gown when they met, blue satin here). But the rest is more touch and sound. It's an interesting touch, telling us how engaged Jack is. In a different way from Escott, but equally as significant.

She does note, rather amused, that he smells like a distillery. He mentions that he thought he'd lost the smell when he changed, and interestingly, Bobbi asks "into what?"

See, she's been reading up. Or at least, she's been reading Dracula. It's the only book she knows about vampires. But it's cute, she wants to know more about him. She jokes that, per the book, he'll be turning her into a vampire any time now. Jack hears, beneath the joke, that she is a little concerned about that.

Jack reassures her though:

I took the book and flipped through until I found the right page. "There, read that part and try to ignore the scary language. Until we do this there is no chance of you ever turning into a vampire." I waited, listening to her soft breathing as she read, my arm close around her shoulders. She finally let the book droop.

"That scene wasn't in the movie."

"Too erotic."

"Erotic?" She sounded doubtful.

"Don't let the description put you off until you've tried it."

It's hilarious that Jack immediately knows what passage he's looking for. I feel like he and Maureen might have used this as romantic enticement a few times.

Bobbi, with the instincts of an amiable girlfriend, picks up that Jack would like to do it with her. Not unless she wants to, he asserts. It's her decision.

So the talk here about what could happen if they do: well, the one guarantee is a hell of a climax. Which she's pretty on board with. The catch is that it might work. If she ingests HIS blood, there is a remote chance she could end up like him after she dies.

It won't kill her though. Jack doesn't know the percentage of success either, though he thinks a lot of people must be immune, or there'd be more vampires around.

Bobbi points out that there could be, and Jack just never noticed. He doesn't stand out in a crowd. And that's an interesting point indeed. Can vampires sense each other somehow like Highlander immortals? We don't know yet.

The conversation moves into more interesting areas:

She settled in again. "This kind of reproduction… is that why we don't make love the usual way?"

"Yes," I said shortly.

"Hey, don't clam up on me, I was just asking."

"I know, honey."

I tried to relax and succeeded to some extent. She'd hit a sore spot, but it wasn't an unexpected blow. I wasn't—to put it delicately—fertile in the way that men are usually fertile with women. The pleasure centers and how they operated had drastically shifted. Oddly enough, I did not feel deprived, physically or mentally; I just felt that I should feel deprived, or that maybe Bobbi was losing out on things. There was no justification for it, so far our relationship was as mutually satisfying as anyone could wish for.

She snuggled closer under my arm. "If you want to know, I really prefer it your way."

"You mean that?"

She lifted my hand and pressed it against the soft, warm skin of her throat. "When you do it this way, it just goes on and on…"

I like this a lot. It's a conversation that I don't remember seeing a lot in vampire fiction, at least that I've read. I'd bet it comes up more in vampire romance novels though. They're not my cup of tea, so I haven't read very much.

But I'm really liking this frank conversation about sex and what they like, and what they might or might not be fulfilled by. I like that Jack is concerned about Bobbi's needs. And I like them having the vampire reproduction discussion.

My biggest issue with Jack and Bobbi last book was that they were a bit too quick to get into bed together, and I thought Jack really should have talked about this first. This is making up for that. Consent is good, yo.

So anyway, Bobbi is definitely happy with the vampire way. And she particularly likes that she doesn't have to worry about pregnancy. (Interestingly, when Jack brought up "vampire reproduction" earlier in the conversation, her mind immediately goes there. I wonder if she's had something in her past. That's possible. It's also possible that she, like many other young women, simply isn't interested in having children right now. Maybe ever.)

We don't get the sex scene itself, but we do get the comfortable afterglow. Bobbi muses about how she's gotten used to things like Jack not breathing. It used to bother her, but now she thinks it's normal. Also the no heartbeat thing. Which leads into a tangent that amuses me:

"Umm… the no-heartbeat thing. But if you live on blood, how does it get through your body?"

"Beats me. Charles is speculating it's some kind of osmosis."

"What's that?"

I'd asked Escott the same question and tried to repeat his answer to her. It must have been garbled—laboratory biology and chemistry had never been my best studies—but she took in enough to understand.

"It sounds like the way a root draws water up into a plant," she suggested.

OT3! And I love that Bobbi seems to understand a bit better than Jack does. She also wonders about why Jack doesn't show up in mirrors. THAT is something she's still not quite used to. Neither is Jack, for that matter. (Also, he needs a haircut.)

They banter a bit more and start getting a little frisky, which hits us to the one downside of vampire sex. Jack does NOT want to take too much of Bobbi's blood. He doesn't take a lot, but "[n]either did those doctors who killed a king from too much bloodletting."

Bobbi does point out that she's very healthy, and been eating liver like crazy. And she HATES liver. Jack is tempted but no. She asks who taught him this restraint.

So the conversation shifts now to Maureen. Jack's a bit hesitant, and Bobbi's sensitive to that. She's curious but if he doesn't want her to ask anymore, she won't. Jack answers though, after a bit.

This bit is sweet and I like it a lot. Bobbi understands that Jack loved/loves Maureen. She says she's noticed that sometimes he looks at her, and she thinks he might be seeing Maureen instead. She doesn't blame him though. She's glad that he was happy, and had a love like that. She never had.

Aw. Bobbi's a saint. But then, maybe that's just the nature of their relationship. Afterall, when she got with Jack, she'd also been seeing Morelli. Theirs definitely wasn't the love match that Jack and Maureen had, but it was important to her too. Jack had been worried about her, but not jealous.

Bobbi does say she hopes he believes her, that she likes vampire sex better. He asks if she misses "the old way". She compares it to apples and oranges. She likes both when done right, but doesn't particularly miss it.

Jack takes this excuse to be amorous. He's not going to take any more blood from her tonight, and maybe the plumbing doesn't work the same way anymore, but that doesn't mean he can't offer some "oranges". Hah.

So now, Bobbi's asleep. And we actually get a more detailed description than ever before:

Asleep, she looked younger than her twenty-four years. Sleep lent vulnerability and vulnerability brought youth. I watched her protectively, feeling a fierce, quiet joy at the sight of her relaxed features. A little makeup clung to the pale skin, a trace of powder high on one cheek and the faint line of drawn-on brows. Her own had been carefully plucked away to follow the current fashion. I had seen many pretty faces, but few classic beauties, and fewer still with brains and personality. She was beautiful, at least as I perceived it, with the kind of looks that artists sometimes capture, if they have the talent.

Sadly, the sunrise is coming and Jack has to head home. I feel like he could probably move his trunk to her closet at some point and be very comfortable, but maybe they're not at that stage in their relationship yet.

After being with Bobbi, it was always a rude jolt to come back to my own spartan hotel room. The essentials were there: a bed, rarely used, a chest of drawers, a chair, a bath, even a radio. For $6.50 a week it was luxurious, but not really a home.

Bobbi knew where I hung my hat, but had never been invited over. There was little reason for it since her own place was more comfortable and larger. For one thing, she did not have a three-by-five-foot steamer trunk taking up most of the floor space. More than once the bellhop had asked if I wanted to have it stored in the basement. I tipped well so he was always alert to do me a favor. A basement might be better to avoid sunlight, but was not as safe. During the day I needed a DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from the doorknob and the door firmly locked against curious eyes. The trunk was locked as well, the key on a chain hanging from my neck. Once, after getting back too late, the sun had caught me out. I'd been unable to sieve inside as usual and suffered a painful and panicky search for the key, an incident I planned never to repeat.

This is a passage that intrigues me because I wonder if men and women read it the same way. I, personally, am non-binary, but I've used the phrase "female-adjacent" to describe myself before. I'm AFAB and I have been raised with all of the usual cis female socialization and expectation. As far as I'm aware, Ms. Elrod is a woman herself, and reading between the lines, I think we're getting an instance of Jack's narrative unreliability here.

Bobbi having a more comfortable home is true, but it's also an excuse. There's an intimacy involved in bringing someone to your home. Your home is where you are the most vulnerable. It reveals a lot about you. And while there can be a certain level of psychological power in having the romantic liaison in your own home, there's also a layer of trust there too.

Jack isn't quite ready to expose himself completely to Bobbi. This isn't a bad thing. Trust and intimacy take time. I bet you ten-to-one though that Bobbi has noticed this. She doesn't seem to mind, though. She may not be ready herself. Or she may just be patient.

I wonder if a man would read it the same way. I've never thought to ask.

So Jack takes a hot bath and gets comfortable, filling in the rest of the night by looking through newspapers. His eyes go to the personal ads. If you recall from Bloodlist, Jack has been posting the same ad for five years: "Dearest Maureen, is it safe yet? Jack."

He's never had a response.

The papers went into the wastebasket. I thought of Bobbi. and with a sharp twist of guilt, I thought of Maureen.

I remembered the touch of her body, smaller and stronger, with dark hair and light blue eyes. I remembered the long nights spent loving her and our hope that it would last forever. Together we decided to at least try to make it so. I had no guarantee that it would work for me, but the hope was there; it would have to be enough. After taking from me, she tilted her head back, drawing the skin taut, and used her fingernail in a deft movement over the vein in her throat. She pulled me close and I tasted the warmth of what had been my blood, filtered through her body and returned again. Its red heat hit me from the inside out like the rush of air from an open furnace. A shock of fire, a flash of inner light, and then the shimmer of her life filling me…

My hands clenched. There was no comfort in remembered passion, it was all gone. Maureen was gone.

But Bobbi was here, vital and loving. I wanted and needed her just as much. It was hardly fair to her to have my mind drifting back to Maureen at awkward moments, nor was it fair to myself.

Oh, Jack.

So that's when he makes his decision. He gives his instructions to the night clerk who promises to take care of it. A minute for each year of searching and waiting, and that was how long it took to break off my last hope of contacting her.

He's stopped the personal ad. He's moving on. I think that's for the best.

We segue into the next evening. The bellhop is at the door, worried. Apparently, Escott's been calling all day, but Jack had never answered the door so they assumed he was out. Jack reads that for what it is: a sign of trouble. Escott knows that Jack's completely out until sunset.

So Jack calls Escott, who is more cryptic than usual over the phone. He asks if Jack has dined yet and offers to "talk details over dinner". There's someone in the office with him, obviously. Jack is duly warned.

There's an interesting bit about day-to-night transition here as Jack complains that "dusk was taking its own sweet time". The sky is "harsh and bright" and Jack puts on sunglasses to ease it. He gets to Escott's office to check it out. He goes into an interesting partial mist state (all the solidity of a double exposed photo and half the weight) and heads up to the second story window. (He doesn't look down. Hilariously, our vampire hates heights.)

In between form is very useful for stealth. He's still visible but can see, talk and move silently. Creepy as fuck though. He ends up going full mist and drifting close enough to give Escott a chill. Escott clears his throat and makes some conversation with his guest, so that Jack can get a fix on locations. And he knows that the guest, who is female, is armed.

So Jack disarms the lady and he and Escott get her pinned down. It's Selma Jenks/Miss Green from the night before. They discuss what to do with her. Escott can press charges, but Jack's not exactly equipped for a court appearance as a witness, and it'd be his word against hers. She does have a criminal record, though, so it may not be necessary. That said, Escott would LIKE to press charges. He's had a rough day.

They manage to get the girl handcuffed (of course Escott has handcuffs. This is the guy who pegged Jack as a size queen at their first meeting after all), and they gag her to boot.

Her skirt's riding up, but when Jack makes a move to fix it, she seems to be about to struggle again, so he lets it be.

Escott fills Jack in on his day: the lady came in at two o'clock and kept him there for five hours. She's upset about last night, found Escott's name in the phone directory. He thinks she might be just a little loony.

(This time Jack gets to balk at Escott's word choice. Hee.)

"That's the word." He sighed deeply and drew a handkerchief over his face. "She kept me calling your hotel to get you over here, I did what I could to warn you."

"It worked."

"Thank heaven. Spending the day a bare two yards from a nerved-up woman holding a hair trigger is not my idea of entertainment."

"It isn't?"

He shot me a considering look and let it pass. "Well, I suppose it's time to call the police."

...both Escott and I are having interesting notions about what you and Bobbi get up to, Jack.

Jack suggests Escott take a look around to make sure her henchman Sled isn't outside. This is actually an excuse. Selma tries to escape, and there's an impromptu wrestling match. Then:

She abruptly stopped fighting, her breath loud and labored through her nose, and stared at me with pure loathing, waiting for my next move. She knew nothing about me, Escott was gone, along with any protection his presence offered. I was someone unknown to her and taking advantage of the opportunity while it was available. No doubt from certain points of view I would be guilty of a kind of rape, but for me it would make things a lot easier.

My eyes on hers, I said her name.

It's interesting to me that Jack has comparatively little by way of vampire angst. Except this. He still has a lot of issues with vampire mind control. But he'll use it.

They call the police, and Escott goes off with her. Jack makes his escape before anyone notices him. He and Bobbi had plans for the movies, and they still have time to catch the second feature. (Bobbi is a saint.)

Bobbi had wanted to see Last of the Mohicans because she liked Randolph Scott, but Escott's accent had given me a taste for Shakespeare, and I talked her into going to Romeo and Juliet instead. Much to her own surprise, she enjoyed it.

"You can understand what they're saying in this one," she commented during intermission. We'd arrived late and missed the newsreel and cartoon, but were in no particular hurry to leave. I bought her an extra soda and popcorn while we waited for the next cycle of features to start.

"Why not? The sound's good."

"Well. I saw this once as a stage play and it was awful. The actors were bellowing to reach the back row and talked so fast you couldn't understand a thing. This kind of stuff you gotta talk clearly so you know what's going on. I like it as a movie better than on the stage."

"I should get you and Charles together to discuss it."

"Oh, yeah, but he's a good egg, he'd let me win just to be polite."

My OT3 lives!!!

Jack isn't so sure that Escott would give in, actually. He has "firm ideas about the stage and Shakespeare in particular" (hee, "firm")

That said, Bobbi's opinions about Shakespeare say a lot of interesting things about her:

"Like this show, it was good, but the girl was a nitwit for not running away from home to start with. That's what I would have done. She was wearing enough jewels to live off of for years."

This gets me thinking about where Bobbi would fall in the Escott-Jack pragmatism vs. practicality debate. I don't think she's quite in the same place as either of them. Maybe a bit in between. She's not as sentimental as Jack nor as coldly ruthless as Escott. But, as we've seen, she's definitely more than capable of doing what needs to be done.

And this conversation is interesting too:

What made you want to see this instead of Randolph Scott?"

"He makes me jealous."

"No, really."

"They had the biggest ad in the paper and this is a fancier theater. I wanted to impress you."

This is not consistent with the reason Jack gave US for wanting to see it (Escott's accent). But I'm not sure he's being honest with either of us. Last night, Jack took a big step in letting go of his past true love. Watching a romantic tragedy with one of his new loves might be good catharsis for that.

Speaking of, after he sees Bobbi home, he returns to his hotel room to find his OTHER new love, drowsing in Jack's only chair, "his feet propped up on the trunk"

He blinked fully awake and alert. "I think not. Did you enjoy your movie?"

"How'd you know I went to a movie?"

He indicated the paper I'd left on the bed, opened to the entertainments section. "Or perhaps you went to a nightclub, but I recall hearing Miss Smythe state she was fed up with them for the time being."

"She is, but how'd—"

"Her rose scent is quite distinctive, and traces of it linger on your clothes. What film did you see?"

"Romeo and Juliet. It was pretty good."

"Yes, the principals were decent enough, if a little old for their parts, but the fellow playing Tybalt seemed to know what he was doing."

I had no illusions that he'd been waiting all night to deliver a review.

I feel like Escott is TOTALLY someone who would wait all night to deliver a review.

But he is here for a reason: to satisfy his curiosity. After Selma Jenks was taken to the police station, she made a full and complete confession. She admitted to every robbery and extortion and gave up the location of her partner.

Escott asks if Jack hypnotized her.

My tie suddenly felt too tight. I tore it loose and tossed it on the bed. He waited patiently, knowing there were some things about my nature I was reluctant to discuss.

"It seemed like the easiest thing to do. I didn't want her talking about me or giving you more trouble than you needed. I just calmed her down and gave her a few suggestions."

He was amused. I'd expected reproach. "Suggestions? Good Lord, you should be in the district attorney's office with that talent. You'd never lose a case. I doubt if a priest could have gotten so thorough a confession."

Pragmatism vs. Practicality. I wonder what Bobbi would think.

Escott asks why Jack was so reluctant to tell him. Jack's not sure himself, but he doesn't like talking about what he's done. Escott tells him that it's nothing he needs to be ashamed of.

He might be right. Jack compared it to a rape, and he's possibly not wrong. But he didn't force her to confess to anything that she didn't actually do. So...it's squirrelly. It's probably always going to be squirrelly. That's probably a good thing. As great as Escott is, it's probably better that the character who has this power is the one who errs toward discomfort rather than ease in its use.

But that brings us to the end of the chapter. See you later!

Comments

[copperfyre]

YAY for the OT3!

Also Jack's unreliable narrator tendencies are so good.

[kalinara]

Jack is so reliable, until he isn't. :-)