everything arranged for you. See you at dinner, eight o'clock tomorrow in the dining room downstairs.
Then I did call my mortal agent, rousing him from bed and instructing him to arrange David's ticket, limousine, suite, and whatever else he should need. There should be cash waiting for David; there should be flowers; and chilled champagne. Then I went out to find a safe place to sleep.
But an hour later-as I stood in the dark dank cellar of an old abandoned house-I wondered if the little mortal bastard couldn't see me even now, if he didn't know where I slept by day, and couldn't come bring in the sun upon me, like some cheap vampire-hunter in a bad movie, with no respect for the mysterious at all.
I dug deep beneath the cellar. No mortal alone could have found me there. And even in my sleep, I might have strangled him if he had, without my ever knowing it.
So what do you think it all means? I said to David. The dining room was exquisitely decorated and half empty. I sat there hi the candlelight, in black dinner jacket and boiled shirt, with my arms folded before me, enjoying the fact that I needed only the pale-violet tinted glasses now to hide my eyes. How well I could see the tapestried portieres, and the dim garden beyond the windows.
David was eating lustily. He'd been utterly delighted to come to Paris, loved his suite over the Place Vendome, with its velvet carpets and gilded furnishings, and had spent all afternoon in the Louvre.
Well, you can see the theme, can't you? he replied.
I'm not sure, I said. I do see common elements, of course, but these little stories are all different.
How so?
Well, in the Lovecraft piece, Asenath, this diabolical woman, switches bodies with her husband. She runs about the town using his male body, while he is stuck at home in her body, miserable and confused. I thought it was a hoot, actually. Just wonderfully clever, and of course Asenath isn't Asenath, as I recall, but her father, who has switched bodies with her. And then it ail becomes very Lovecraftian, with slimy half-human demons and such.
That may be the irrelevant part. And the Egyptian story?
Completely different. The moldering dead, which still possess life, you know . . .
Yes, but the plot.
Well, the soul of the mummy manages to get possession of the body of the archaeologist, and he, the poor devil, is put hi the rotted body of the mummy-
Yes?
Good Lord, I see what you're saying. And then the film Vice Versa. It's about the soul of a boy and the soul of a man who switch bodies! All hell breaks loose until they are able to switch back. And the film All of Me, it's about body switching as well. You're absolutely right. All four stories are about the same thing.
Exactly.
Christ, David. It's all coming clear. I don't know why I didn't see it. But. . .
This man is trying to get you to believe that he knows something about this body switching. He's trying to entice you with the suggestion that such a thing can be done.
Good Lord. Of course. That explains it, the way he moves, walks, runs.
What?
I sat there stunned, reenvisioning the little beast before I answered, bringing up to mind every image of him from every conceivable angle which memory would allow. Yes, even in Venice, he'd had that obvious awkwardness about him.
David, he can do it.
Lestat, don't jump to such a mad conclusion! He may think that he can do it. He may want to try it. He may be living entirely in a world of delusions-
No. That's his proposition, David, the proposition he says that I will want to hear! He can switch bodies with people!
Lestat, you can't believe-
David, that's what's wrong with him! I've been trying to figure it since I saw him on the beach in Miami. That isn't his body! That's why he can't use its musculature or its ... its height. That's why he almost falls when he runs. He can't control those long powerful legs. Good God, that man is in someone else's body. And the voice, David, I told you about his voice. It's not the voice of a young man. Oh, that explains it! And you know what I think I think he chose that particular body because I'd notice it. And I'll tell you something else. He's already tried this switching trick with me and it's failed.
I couldn't