A new home
Scene – Night. A young woman is standing in front of a notice board in the lobby of a building, mailboxes on the wall next to the notice board indicate it is an apartment building. She is holding a box of donuts.
“Ah donuts. The sweetest way to die.” Jaxx said to herself as she stuffed the still-warm Boston Cream into her mouth.
“Um, Excuse me.” A soft voice came from behind her. Jaxx choked on the donut as she turned to face the source of the voice. Her eyes came upon a young man standing close behind her. He was devastatingly handsome and Jaxx felt her cheeks burn as she continued to choke down the donut.
She scolded.
“Yophh schared mne.” She said as she swallowed the last bits of donut.
“Sorry. I’m looking for the super. Do you know where I can find him?” He smiled at her as he spoke, obviously amused at her attempt to regain composure.
“You’re looking at her. You must be the guy Tony told me about, you’re interested in the apartment downstairs. He didn’t tell me your name.”
“Angel.” He extended his hand towards her and she shook it. Cold. Considering the August heat outside this struck her as a little odd.
“Danielle Jaxx. Everyone just calls me Jaxx. Donut?” She offered him the box and he selected one. “Well follow me and I’ll give you the grand tour.”
She started off towards the elevator and he followed slightly behind her. They rode the elevator in silence the humid air sapping the energy she had for any small talk. As the doors opened when they reached the basement, a blast of cool air swept over them. Jaxx liked the basement this time of year. The building was early thirties construction and had central heating but the present owner hadn’t bothered to install air-conditioning, some apartments had individual units, but the rest of the apartments took on the attributes of a six storey solarium in the summer. The heat just seemed to accumulate from day to day and never dissipate, the wallpaper in the sixth floor hallway had even begun to slide off the walls as the glue melted. The basement was dark and cool, a welcome refuge from the heat. There were two basement apartments; one was quite a large studio-type apartment with two bedrooms, which belonged to Jaxx. The other was a small one bedroom place that had recently been vacated by a highly strung writer who had taken a swan-dive off the roof of his publisher’s downtown high-rise.
“I haven’t had the opportunity to remove the previous tenants belongings yet, I can’t seem to find any next of kin.” She explained as they stepped off the elevator and crossed the narrow hallway to the apartment door.
“Do you have much stuff? ‘Cause I can move his stuff out if it's in the way.”
“I don’t have anything really. I got… um sick and lost it all.”
“Really? Bummer. Well actually I was going to give all this stuff to charity, but you can keep it if you like. Till you get some of your own.” Jaxx opened the door and stepped aside so she could see his face as he looked around the apartment. The cops she had shown around had been in a shocked stupor when they had walked in, but Angel stayed stoic.
“I guess he was a little bit “out-there”?” He said after a few moments. Jaxx raised her eyebrows.
“Just a little? Trust me he was beyond “out-there” he lost track of reality a long time ago, actually I’m not sure he was ever in touch.” Angel nodded his agreement as he walked slowly through the living area. The décor was surreal. Gafoe had painted the entire apartment to look the set of a B-grade slasher flick blood covered the walls, floor and ceiling. He had placed mangled and mutilated mannequins in various positions throughout the apartment. Jaxx had almost thrown up when they found his “rape/murder” victim in the bedroom, she decided against telling Angel about that. Angel caught sight of an arm that was sticking out of the garbage disposal and raised his eyebrows.
“The former tenant was named Gafoe Stevetis. He wrote murder mysteries.” She said, by way of explanation. “According to his publisher this was ‘inspiration’. If I had known he was doing this I’d have given him the ‘Big A’ a long time ago. But don’t worry, the cops said it’s only stage blood. All I have to do is get rid of the mannequins, and give it a new paint job and it will be perfectly habitable for a sane person. I already have the paint: some nice I’m-not-a-homicidal-maniac pastels.”
Angel looked at a stack of books piled up on the coffee table as he spoke.
“I guess you haven’t had too many people eager to rent?” Jaxx shook her head .
“We’ll I guess I’ll take it…” Angel trailed off as he opened the door to the bathroom “… but that has got to go.” He continued indicating the dismembered dummy that had been placed in a bath filled with bloodied water. Jaxx smiled at him.
* * *
Angel watched as the flames engulfed the bags of trash he’d thrown into the incinerator. He’d spent the day helping Jaxx clean out his new apartment. She had covered the two small windows with cardboard to prevent curious locals from getting an eye-full. He couldn’t blame her really. The previous tenant had been seriously disturbed and had decorated his apartment in a Hannibal Lechter type motif. Angel had seen worse, he’d done much worse to real people in his life as a vampire. But Gafoe hadn’t been a vampire he was just a man. It sickened Angel when he thought of humans committing such haenous acts. He had long ago accepted Vampire’s killing people, as Spike had once pointed out to him it was their ‘reason d’être’, their reason for existing. They had no soul, no compassion, and no regrets. He hated thinking that humans were capable of the same atrocities, that they could be completely soulless and still is called human?
He hadn’t really wanted to live in the apartment after this man, but he had been desperate to get away from the abandoned factory he had been staying in and establish some sort of stable existence. The apartment itself was perfect for his needs, small, secluded, dark. He even found himself liking Jaxx; she was naturally warm and friendly. He could tell she didn’t like being in the apartment much though, what normal person would? She had been grateful for his offer to help her clean and repaint it, not so much she couldn’t do it, but she didn’t want to do it alone.
He walked back to his apartment trying not to think about Buffy. She weighed heavily on his mind since he’d left Sunnydale. Cleaning this apartment had been the first distraction he’d had from thinking about her. Now he thought about it, this was the first time today she had entered his thoughts. It had been quiet since he’d arrived in LA, vampire activity was low as most of the locals had joined with the Mayor’s Ascension party and had been dusted. The lack of activity was a blessing of sorts as it allowed him to establish contacts without to many people, or otherwise, being aware of his presence.
As he entered his apartment he spotted Jaxx, with her back to him, in the kitchenette repairing a hole in the dry wall. She was oblivious to his presence, engrossed in her work and singing, suprisingly well, to a song playing on the small portable radio she had positioned near herself. She was very attractive, in a tomboyish way. What struck him most about her, was her eyes, which were called gray, but to him looked more like quicksilver. Someone had once told him you could tell everything about a person from their eyes alone. When he looked in Jaxx’ eyes he had seen kindness and happiness, but at unguarded moments she showed pain and anguish. It was quite obvious Jaxx was a woman with secrets, which she guarded well. He looked at her and wondered if he would ever know those secrets and if she would ever know his.
To be continued…..
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