In one of those sat the person Lilia had come to see. She was in a wheelchair, wrapped in blankets and looking out the window at the sunlight and water. The woman had seemed ancient to Lilia that morning years before at the Flea Market when she examined the candlesticks and told the man to spare her his sour grapes stories. Now Myrna Lavaliere was a mummy: nothing more than skin and bones and a voice.
“When one is old the smell of rot is omnipresent. Men are the worst but none are immune. Each time you come here you are awestruck by my age and corruption. I don’t blame you. I am well over a hundred. My addiction, first to blood and then to Ichordone, prolonged my life, but look at the result.
“Up in the hospital they’d have me in restraints with my head immobilized because they are afraid I’d bite them.” She laughed noiselessly and showed Lilia her toothless gums.
“All I want,” she said, “is to die in this room with a bit of privacy, not up in that cadaver warehouse.” She indicated the main hospital building. “Like everything else in this country, that requires money.”
In earlier meetings she had told Lilia how much longer she had to live, how much that would cost, and how many treasures from Myrna’s Place and other clubs she had stashed in storage lockers.
Lilia had told her of a plan she had. Today she told her what was required to implement it. “I need more bait for the market,” she said.
Their eyes met and they understood one another. A nurse’s aide was called and she brought Lilia a package of collectibles like the one she’d been given the week before.
3.
Lilia waited until she was back at her shop before answering one of Larry’s calls.
Immediately he asked, “Where did you find it?” She heard voices echoing behind him in Stepelli, his large gallery space in West Chelsea.
She told him a tale of the Garage, that last sad remnant of the once sprawling Sixth Avenue Flea Markets, and the napkin she found the Sunday before when she ducked in there to get out of the rain.
“Was there anything else from Myrna’s Place?” he asked.
“That’s all that was left,” she said. “But the dealer said there was quite a flurry when she opened. Young people apparently.”
“Where did she get it? Does she have any more?”
“Yes,” Lilia told him and gave no hint of her amusement. “She got it from a woman who got it from and a man who may have more. I have a lead on her source.”
None of this was entirely true, but in his eagerness that escaped him.
It was Friday afternoon. They made plans to visit the Garage early Sunday morning.
Her shop, Reliquary: once so very trendy and notorious, later a charmingly creepy holdover, a bit of stylish nostalgia, now hung by a thread. The landlord, unable to find another tenant, had let Lilia slide on the rent from month to month. His patience was running out.
That afternoon as Lilia went on various errands, she remembered the Saturday night and Sunday morning after Larry and her first triumph.
That second week they brought all their good Myrna’s Place stuff: the flasks, the scarves, the elephant foot umbrella stand. They were surrounded from the moment they set foot in the flea market. All the flashlights were around them. Customers from the previous week were back and others as well.
The dealers who looted a house each week had a daycare center’s worth of children’s chairs, toys. They paused to watch the commotion across the aisle.
Larry and Lilia discovered that the first deathpunk girl had been a harbinger. Out of the night, smelling of cigarettes and amyl nitrate, came club boys and girls in black from head to pointed-toe shoes. There were the retro and extreme retro kids, dressed as twenties flappers, Edwardian roués, and whores. One young man with a cravat and a face painted almost white carried a small, antique medical bag, and was called Doctor Jekyll.
They bought small souvenirs—a teacup or a doily. When asked what was so fascinating about Myrna’s Place they shrugged and said this was Nightwalker stuff, the new thing.
Then, in the pre dawn, the club kids, awestruck, watched as half a dozen figures flitted toward them like bats, like shadows. Lilia heard the flea across the way call out to someone, “Dracula and company just showed up!”
The newcomers all seemed tall, elongated. They wavered in the first light. Many of them actually wore capes. They were thin and their smiles were a brief flash of teeth.
As they moved through the kids around Larry and Lilia’s tables, one of them reached over and, almost too fast to see, pulled down the collar of a girl’s jacket, and first kissed then nipped her neck. The club girl shivered with ecstasy.
Lilia was uneasy, but Larry was star struck. Here was true glamour, the very heart of the most exclusive club back rooms. The sky was getting light. The newcomers surveyed the booth, nodded, put on sunglasses, exchanged glances and smiled. These people were impressed with him.
Raised cloaks hid what happened from the casual customers. In an eye-flash Larry’s leather jacket and shirt were pulled off his shoulders. The smiles and fine sharp teeth looked like the ones on the Myrna’s Place logo.
Larry’s eyes went wide. A tiny trickle of blood ran down his chest. He stared after them as they left the market and didn’t even notice Lilia pulling his clothes back in place.
Other customers appeared. Larry and Lilia were Flea celebrities and had a good day—even the dollhouse sold.
Larry was bedazzled. Lilia knew that he always gravitated to the key clique and always managed to get himself accepted. Now he’d found a group so special it was legend and they loved him.
That week Larry was distant and distracted. He got on her nerves. She got on his. The next Sunday morning they brought to market all the remaining Myrna’s Place material and everything else they had for sale.
In the predawn the flashlights found them and so did the woman with the neck scarf and sunglasses. The club kids stared at her reverently. She glanced at Larry and almost smiled. She gave Lilia a slip of paper with some names.
“In one’s old age, collections, however beloved become a burden. These are ones who are ready to give up theirs.”
As she turned to go, the young Nightwalkers appeared. They bowed their heads and parted for her.
“Myrna,” Lilia heard them murmur, “Myrna Lavaliere.” The woman nodded and disappeared into the last of the night.
When the Nightwalkers exposed Larry’s neck, Lilia told them not to because it had made him stupid. But he pointed at her and capes were raised, Lilia’s arms were pinned, her blouse opened. Before she could even cry out, she felt teeth and a nick on the side of her neck.
Lilia turned to see who had done that but the effort made her head spin. Lilia knew a few things about drugs. None felt like this: it was like acid cut with heroin. She and Larry were in trances for the rest of that day and most of the next.
When they recovered, they took the list of names and telephone numbers the one the Nightwalkers called Myrna had given them. The people on the list were old and fragile, looking like they might break. But their eyes were sharp and sometimes their teeth. They all had memorabilia they were ready to get rid of. One or two liked to bite but they were mostly harmless.
4.