Fat White Vampire Blues

ONE Jules Duchon was a real New Orleans vampire. Born and bred in the working-class Ninth Ward, bitten in and smitten with the Big Easy. Driving through the French Quarter, stuck in a row of bumper-to-bumper cars that crept along Decatur Street like a caravan of bone-weary camels, Jules Duchon barely fit behind the steering wheel of his very big Cadillac taxicab. Even with the bench seat pushed all the way back. Damn, he was hungry. His fat fingers quivered as they clutched the worn steering wheel more tightly. It was only nine p.m.; early yet. He didn't used to get this hungry, back in the old days. Could he be coming down with diabetes? Jules thought about this. Could somebody like him get diabetes? Half the population of New Orleans over the age of forty had it, and Jules was well past forty. He had half a mind to drive over to Charity Hospital and get himself checked out. Yeah, right, he thought to himself. He rubbed the side of his nose and tilted down his sun visor, forcing himself to look at the clipping from last week's Times-Picayune he'd pinned there. new orleans fattest city in nation, study shows. Front-page news. Talk about restating the goddamn obvious. Them scientists actually get paid to tell us this stuff? He glanced quickly at the visor's lit vanity mirror, where his reflection would be, if he could still cast one. What the hell; he knew what he looked like. He still had the delicate, whitish complexion that women had made such a fuss about during his younger days. Back then, they'd said he looked like Rudy Valentino in The Sheik. Now he looked more like the Pillsbury Doughboy. "Diabetes or no diabetes, if I don't get something down my gullet, I'm gonna keel over." Waiting at a stoplight, Jules considered his options. The streets and sidewalks of the French Quarter, glistening with a recent rain, were bustling with tourists. But that was the problem. Too much of a good thing-there were people and eyes everywhere. The light turned green, and Jules crossed Canal Street, heading for less popular parts of town. He would have to dig into his wallet for tonight's meal. A few minutes later he was trolling past the New Orleans Mission, a soup kitchen and homeless shelter. It squatted in the shadow of the Pontchartrain Expressway, an elevated highway that separated the business district from a vast slum called Central City. Jules chewed his lower lip as he scanned the long line of human refuse that waited on the broken sidewalk outside the mission's door. Then he spotted her, standing near the end of the line. He'd seen her around town before, sitting on bus shelter benches or panhandling in front of fried chicken joints. A big-boned woman, as his mother used to say. Her thick, chocolate-brown neck was nearly hidden by a motley heap of metallic beads left over from last winter's Carnival parades, and her upper body oozed out the armholes of a tank top several sizes too small for her. Yeah, she fit the bill. Jules stopped his cab, a Caddy Fleetwood of mid-1970s vintage, pressed the wobbly rocker switch that jerked his electric windows reluctantly to life, and stuck his head into the humid night air. "Hey, baby. You interested in some dinner?" The woman swung her head around, her sparse eyebrows raised in surprise. "You talkin' to me?" "Yeah, baby. I asked if you were hungry. You look hungry." The woman took half a step toward the cab, giving its vast white bulk the once-over, then eyeing the equally imposing white bulk of its driver. "What you selling, mister? You a dealer? I ain't got no money to be buying no drugs, now." Jules sighed heavily. His hunger was growing exponentially. "You hear me say anything about crack? I want some company, is all. I wanna buy you dinner." The woman crossed her big arms in front of her ample chest. "I got me dinner right here, thank you. An' it'sFox, Andrew is the author of 'Fat White Vampire Blues' with ISBN 9780345463333 and ISBN 0345463331.