MIAMI BEACH
"I'm telling you," Pasha argued, "it explains everything."
"Oh, come on," Serge scoffed.
The two vampires sat in their favorite booth in their favorite Cuban cafe, where the fluorescent lighting gave everybody a sickly blue-white glow, and not just them. Before it was a cafe, it had been a g*y bar, and before that a boutique hotel, and before that a funeral home, and before that a mansion, and before that a coconut plantation, and before that a hunting ground for crocodiles, and before that, they didn't know. The 1700s were before their time. Of all the incarnations of the property, the cafe was their favorite. It was a place to go before supper, where they could spot gluttonous humans who'd eaten so much that it made them sluggish when they departed. Pasha liked to imagine he could taste a memory of fried plantains in their fatty blood; Serge just liked it that he didn't have to work so hard for a meal. A bloated human was a slow human.
"No, really, listen to me," Pasha urged him. "I'm telling you, Santa Claus is a vampire. It explains so much!" He snapped his fingers with both hands and then pointed his long pale forefingers at Serge. "For instance, how old is he?"
Serge wrapped his hands around his coffee cup, which a waitress had just brought over to him. It was his third one of the evening. The waitresses all knew that "refill" meant they had to empty the mug full of cooled coffee, and bring him back a full fresh hot one. Not for the drink. He never drank any of it. For the warmth.
"Old," he said, grudgingly.
"Nobody really knows how old he is, yes? But definitely more than one human life span. He's ancient," Pasha reminded him excitedly. "Eternal, like us. And he only works at night!" Or "nyight," as Pasha pronounced it, having never entirely lost his Russian "y."
"He's not real, Pasha!"
"Neither are we supposed to be."
That stopped Serge for a moment, even caused his handsome brow to crease.
They were both exceptionally good-looking vamps, having been turned in the prime of their royal Russian twenties. Pasha had been blond as a Hollywood mink long before there was a Hollywood. Serge still had hair as thick, dark, and curly as a Russian black bear's fur. Cousins then, they were related by more kinds of blood than family now.
In the course of Pasha's many "thyeories," over three centuries, there always came a moment that gave Serge pause until he could think his way around it. This time, he thought he had a perfect rebuttal: "But he gets into houses!"
"Yeah, because he's invyited."
"Invited?" Vampires had to be invited into homes; they couldn't just barge in like unwelcome dinner guests. "They're all asleep when he arrives. It's not like they wait by the chimney and holler up, 'Come on in, Santa!'"
Pasha smiled. He loved his theory. He always loved his theories.
"It's the cyookies," he said, with an air of triumph.
"The cookies?" Serge smiled at the unlikely word, then laughed out loud, which revealed his teeth.
In the booth behind Pasha, a little boy climbed up and turned around to look at them. He saw the pointed incisors, longer than they ought to be, and stared with big eyes. Serge growled deep in his throat, loud enough for the boy to hear, low enough to keep anybody else from hearing.
The child turned around again fast, and disappeared below the top of the booth.
"The cookies and the milk!" Pasha exclaimed, caught up in his enthusiasm for his own brilliance. "All those glasses of myilk, all those sugar cookies with sprinkles and icing, what are they but invitations?" His eyes narrowed as he whispered in a dark and meaningful tone, "'The stockings all hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that Saint Nicholas soon will be there.'" Pasha slapped the tabletop triumphantly with the palms of his hands. Silverware jumped. Human customers stared, then looked quickly away as if unnerved by something they couldn't put their finger on. "They're for him, Serge! He knows it. They know it."
"He brings gifts, Pasha."
"So?"
"When's the last time you gave a human anything but a real bad hickey?"
"Yeah, but what about all those people who die right after Christmas is over?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Psychologists think it's because people put off dying until after big events like their birthdays, or Christmas. But that's not it. They're dying after Christmas, because he comes back."
"Back?"
"Of course! That's the genius of it! Christmas Eve, he accepts the invitation into their homes, and creates the illusion that benevolent Santa Claus was there. That's the reason for the gifts. Duh. Then he's in. They've invited him. He can come back anytime he wants to, as often as he likes! I think what he does, see, is he feasts right after the holidays, which accounts for all those obituaries, but he doesn't kill all of them, of course - "
"Of course," Serge said, dryly.
" - because that would be - "
"Self-defeating?"
" - dangerous. And nobody could eat that much in one night anyway. So he saves most of them for return visits. I mean, why do you think he keeps a list?"
Serge leaned forward and said with quiet clarity:
"He. Goes. Down. Chimneys. Pasha."
Vampires could die in flames.
"They're not lit! You think people leave a lighted fire for Santa Claus to come down? Even if he wasn't a vampire, they wouldn't do that! They don't want to burn him, they want those gifts."
Serge feigned disappointment. "But gee, all those pictures of Santa. He's in the living room, by the Christmas tree, and there's always a lighted fireplace." He sighed as if a cherished illusion had been shattered, but then he perked up. "He leaves coal for the bad boys and girls. What's that all about?"
"Code."
"Coal."
"Code. Like a sign to other vamps. 'Bad blood here.'"
"What the hell is bad blood anyway?"
"You know. Old, sour, too salty, whatever."
"I don't know. Seems a little thoughtful to me. When's the last time a vampire did us a favor? And Pasha, answer me this. If he got into everybody's homes the first time, then why does he keep doing it every year? And how does he get around to the whole world in one night? We may be supernatural beings, but we're not supermen who can circle the globe a hundred times in a minute."
"I haven't figured that out yet," Pasha admitted, looking not at all abashed. "But I'm sure there's a reason."