
Part 2 - Chapter 2
Then his father gave him the test. On a visit home, Amadeo was asked if he would like to live forever. Amadeo said that he did, of course. His father warned him to consider what it meant. To watch others die. Amadeo wanted to live forever. And then, his father asked Amadeo if he would, if given the choice of having immortality, at the price of killing one human every night that he lived, accept. Amadeo thought about it. He would kill almost 400 people a year. If he could live until the sun destroyed the Earth in an estimated 5 billion years then he would kill something around 2 trillion people. Amadeo wondered how many people were on the Earth now. But imagine it, you would be like a god. Amadeo didn't have the courage to say no.
When he said yes, his father told him that he would not ever have total control over the family company. Amadeo asked why. It wasn't that he wanted the company, but he felt as if he'd just been punished for telling the truth. "Your great-grandfather came in control of the company after his father and his father's father who founded it. He was a mortal man, until about a hundred years ago, and it was not the Vampyres that gave him immortal life. He does not kill. And he uses his money and influence to do what he believes is right. He asked me the same question, when I was a young man. I was his first descendant to answer no. Your sister has said no, but she does not really want the responsibility. If one of you does not have a child who can honestly answer no, before I die, then she will take over until one does. You're cousins have answered the same as you. Or else, I pray, my grandfather comes back."
Amadeo decided he wanted to go to New York University near his home and become a writer. After he graduated High School, he spent his time in libraries, looking up books and videos on Vampyres and sitting in cafes drinking chocolate.
It was very soon after graduation, and Amadeo was reading Dracula, while siting at a table out on the sidewalk. He had taken to wearing denim shorts almost constantly, and anything in velvet he could find, which he bought from vintage clothing stores in the Village, and dying his hair black. The contrast made him look pale. Still it was a look he liked overall, though his sister told him she didn't. She and grew out her red hair even longer.
Amadeo was just reading the part about Lucy wandering off in the night to meet the Vampyre, when he heard someone call his name, Amadeo. It made him look up curiously, he didn't recognize the voice and only his family called him Amadeo, everyone else knew him as Amad.
He looked up and saw Matt coming toward him, with a short, blonde young woman. He was sure she had called to him. He got up to embrace Matt. Matt gave him a kiss on the cheek before he stepped back. He began signing wildly. Amadeo pulled another chair over and had them sit. The girl introduced herself as Kim.
Amadeo sat with them for over an hour. Matt and Kim had met at school. She had a learning disability, and had had trouble learning to read, especially the flashing text of the monitor. She wore blue colored lenses in her glasses; and shaved the underside of her hair, though it was quite long at the top.
Kim said she was going to be a painter, she was going into her second year at Parsons, which was close to New York University and in the Village. Amadeo had coincidentally met a girl who was a freshman at Parsons the past week and gone out with her, charmed the girl enough to get her to agree to have sex with him, which you didn't see happen frequently in that day and age. Matt said he planned on putting of deciding as long as he could. Amadeo invited them home with him.
It was early evening and Amadeo's mother asked if they would like to eat dinner. The whole Jewel family had been raised as vegetarians. It was a hot day and they were going to have a big salad. The family were all glad to see Matt. Amadeo hadn't seen much of him in the past four years. And Kim was introduced to everyone.
After dinner, they went into they room that used to be the playroom when they were children. Matt told Kim that Amadeo used to be a lot shorter and he had red hair.
"He's like the willo twisps," Kim said.
Amadeo asked what that meant.
"That is what she calls the girls at the Limelight that dye their hair black."
"It's the proper color for Vampyres."
They laughed at him. Kim asked if he had been there before. Amadeo told her that he had been in a boarding school for 4 years. It was real work for him to meet people. Then Matt suggested they all go that night. "You have to dress up," he told Amadeo, "But not too much; you look like them already." Amadeo didn't know what they meant. But he said he would go.
They couldn't show up before 11 without looking really pathetic so they had to do something with themselves for several hours. Amadeo played some of his music collection for them and Matt was impressed by how very Fay it was. Kim said that Fay was what they called most of the young people at the clubs because they were absolute Faeries as far as anyone else was concerned, they didn't care who they had sex with. Matt stressed that it was really so very innocent the way they did it, for the sake of others happiness and their own if they followed the golden rule. And he said they were disgustingly healthy.
Matt liked the same music Amadeo had fallen in love with. Kim said they played it at the Limelight. The Fay didn't like pop music. Amadeo let them up to his room. Matt looked in his closet. He asked where Amadeo got all his clothes. "I buy old clothes. We have a closet in our hall with clothes that are very old. We don't throw clothes away, because my parents say they will always come back in style some day. We have so much old junk here, like a museum."
Amadeo had thought he was apologizing for the oddness of his family, but Matthew and Kim assured him they both thought it fab that someone as rich as Amadeo bought old clothes and listened to dance music.
Matt asked if they could look in the closet. Amadeo didn't think it would hurt to look. And when he opened the doors it was more clothing than he remembered being there. Matt was asking if he could wear some. Amadeo asked his mother to come up. She set it all straight. Everything was sealed in plastic against aging. "All these here are mainly suits worn by Steven, Cameron, and your father, and maybe his brothers," his mother said.
"Grandunca Cameron?" asked Matt.
"Yes," Amanda said with a smile, "and all the other side is women's clothing, probably everyone back to Helen. The children's clothes are on the shelves. The trunks are all clothes from the Fortnight estate."
"What's the Fortnight estate?"
"Everything found in the apartment of the girl in your painting. Very interesting story from a purely legal point of view. Ms Fortnight was a poor young woman who had, shall we say, a very wealthy lover, and several very wealthy friends through this relationship. As it happened, they died together in a car accident and every one of them had left their fortunes to her. Large amounts of money from at least two heirless families went to her. And then...she left all that to your great-grandfather, Steven who already had his own family money. This is why the Jewels own so much property in New York and we are so fortunate today. Anyway, I remember a lot of young women's clothing in black and purple, but Nancy said there were clothes that must have belonged to several people, as if Ms. Fortnight had even kept their clothes when they died."
"Can we look at them?" Amadeo asked.
"You may wear them if you want. That is why they're here. Don't worry, no one died in these clothes. Just try not to make a mess."
Amadeo opened the trunks right away. He found a bag of neatly folded clothes that would fit him, two velvet coats in black and blue, black denim pants, silk shirts. Matt gave him a jacket. It said it was made of rayon and had been painted on, and it made a picture of a still life, roses and a mirror and a wine bottle and Greek statues on the sleeves, more flowers on the front with gold filigree painted onto the lapels. "Does it fit you?" Amadeo asked. Matt shook his head. Matt was too tall for it, his arms would be too long. Amadeo gave him a black velvet jacket and a blue silk shirt. He let Kim keep a pair of boots with labels that said "Air Wair" on them.
When he got dressed, Amadeo wore on of his own sheer white shirts with the painted jacket and his usual shorts. Kim drove them to the club in her car. "If I leave, or you want to leave and you want a ride home, go to the coffee house after the club closes, everyone goes there," Kim said.
"I can always catch a cab wherever I am."
Matt told him that if he looked Fay or was with the Fay they might just turn on their fare lights and pass by.
"They would do that?" Amadeo asked.
Matt just nodded.
Before they got out of the car, Kim turned around and put gloss on Amadeo's lips. "You think he looks good?" she asked Matt.
"I would take him in a second."
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