Eye Patch leans back, frowning.
“Silent movies? Those are as scary as a damp sponge.”
“That means you wouldn’t like Metropolis. I have the only totally complete copy in the world with the original score, you know.”
He shakes his head.
“Not interested.”
This isn’t the first time this has happened. We only have one rack of special discs. We’re still building up inventory. You think it’s easy conjuring video and film from other dimensions? It’s not. And the young curandera I contracted with to get them charges a fortune for each one.
“What is it you want?”
“Action. Guns. Explosions.”
“Go home, crack open a light beer, turn on your TV, and find some Michael Bay shit.”
“Come on, man. You have any Clint Eastwood?”
“No special ones. You like his spaghetti westerns?”
The shorter vampire comes over when I mention westerns.
“Who doesn’t?” he says.
I point to an old poster on the wall.
“You know that gangster flicks are the natural descendants of those Italian westerns, right? Action. Crime. Lawless loners and gangs riding the range, only in cars, not on horseback. Antiheroes and ambiguous heroes who aren’t all good or all evil. You follow me?”
Eye Patch says, “Look at you. The philosopher.”
“Once Upon a Time in America is what you want. Leone shot it to run five hours. The studio cut it to ninety minutes. Later there was a three-hour version, but it still wasn’t the whole thing. If you like cowboys, you’ll like it.”
“Who’s in it?” says Eye Patch. His buddy goes over to the poster and reads off names.
“Robert De Niro. James Woods. Joe Pesci. Tuesday Weld. William Forsythe …”
“Sold,” says Eye Patch.
“Good choice,” I say, taking a disc from under the counter. I put it in a couple of plastic bags to keep it from getting wet.
“Your turn to pay,” says Eye Patch. His friend sighs, which always hits me as slightly creepy. I mean, vampires don’t breathe, so sighing is something they have to practice. Willing their diaphragms to move, sucking air in and pushing it out again. It’s a lot of work just to sound disgusted.
Short guy slaps a hundred-dollar bill on the counter.
“Your prices are highway robbery.”
“You can find any of our movies somewhere cheaper, go rent from them.”
Eye Patch puts the disc in the pocket of his PVC jacket.
“I always wondered about that. How do you keep people from bootlegging your wares?”
I get out another disc, an original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons, and show him the runes inscribed around the edge.
“The discs are hexed. They know when they’re being copied and melt down like a nuke plant, killing themselves and whatever machine they’re in. We have an alarm rigged up that goes off when it happens. Store policy is that you kill my disc, well, you know.”
“You kill them?”
“Don’t be stupid. I can’t kill off my customer base. No, I just cut off their fingers and feed them to Kasabian.”
From the back room Kasabian yells, “I heard that. Fuck you.”
“See? A barely controlled beast.”
“Take it easy, Stark,” says Eye Patch. “How long do we have the movie?”
“Three days. After that, it’s a hundred-dollar-a-day late fee.”
The short vampire gets their umbrellas from the bin up front.
“You’re a fucking thief, you know that?” he says.
“Wrong. I’m P. T. Barnum. You want to see the Fiji mermaid, I’m the only one in town who has one and no one gets in free.”
“This movie better be fucking great.”
“If you don’t like it, come back and you can exchange it for one of these.”
I hold up my middle finger.
Eye Patch laughs. When his friend takes a step toward me, he puts a hand on his shoulder and he backs down. Yeah, the short one is new to the bloodsucker game. Anxious to show off his power. Good thing he’s got Eye Patch looking out for him. He might actually make it to New Year’s.
The Lyph comes over and asks for Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible Part 3.
“You have good taste,” I say.
She lays down a hundred.
“You too,” she says. Her horns are still a little damp. Rain beads on them like she’s glued rhinestones there too.
“You okay getting home with your radar showing?”
She realizes I mean her horns and grins.
“I’m fine. The umbrella has a glamour on it.”
She picks it up and instantly looks like the kind of sweet old lady who spends her days baking apple pies for orphans.
“Nice trick.”
“Thanks,” she says, setting the umbrella against the wall. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“Why do you wear that one glove?”
I hold up my left hand. The prosthetic one. Flex the fingers.
“I paid good money for this manicure. I’m not messing up my cuticles around here.”
She hesitates.
“People call you Michael Jackson behind your back, you know.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
She purses her lips in embarrassment.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just, you hear stories.”
I hand her the disc.
“No problem. For a hundred dollars a movie, I guess you’re entitled to a question or two.”
She glances around the store.
“You have some really nice stuff, but you ought to expand into BBC shows.”
“Which ones?”
“In the early sixties they used to erase a lot of TV to save on videotape. They lost old Doctor Whos. The Avengers. Cool shows like that. I have friends who’d kill for those.”
“Tell you what, make me a list of what you want and I’ll see what I can do.”
From the back, Kasabian yells, “That’s TV. We don’t do TV.”
I shake my head.
“Ignore him. He’s a snob. Bring me the list and your next rental is free.”
“Awesome,” she says. She gets her umbrella, does her old lady trick, and heads out. Stopping by the door she says, “Merry Christmas.”
“Same to you, Mrs. Cratchit.”
She opens the door and a blast of wind blows rain inside. It’s coming down hard enough that the street out front is flooding again. I lock the door behind her.
“Cute girl,” says Kasabian, coming out of the back. His mechanical