I turned and went towards him, and for a silent moment I just studied him in the blue light falling through the glass. My voice was tight when I spoke:
“Where’s the black cape and the ‘finely tailored’ black coat and the silk tie and all that foolishness?” I asked. Eyes locked on each other.
Then he broke the stillness and laughed without making a sound. But he went on studying me with a rapt expression that gave me a secret joy. And with the boldness of a child, he reached out and ran his fingers down the lapel of my gray velvet coat.
“Can’t always be the living legend,” he said. The voice was like a whisper that wasn’t a whisper. And I could hear his French accent so clearly, though I had never been able to hear my own.
I could scarcely bear the sound of the syllables, the complete familiarity of it.
And I forgot all the stiff surly things I had planned to say and I just took him in my arms.
We embraced the way we never had in the past. We held each other the way Gabrielle and I used to do. And then I ran my hands over his hair and his face, just letting myself really see him, as if he belonged to me. And he did the same. Seems we were talking and not talking. True silent voices that didn’t have any words. Nodding a little. And I could feel him brimming with affection and a feverish satisfaction that seemed almost as strong as my own.
But he was quiet suddenly, and his face became a little drawn.
“I thought you were dead and gone, you know,” he said. It was barely audible.
“How did you find me here?” I asked.
“You wanted me to,” he answered. Flash of innocent confusion. He gave a slow shrug of the shoulders.
Everything he did was magnetizing me just the way it had over a century ago. Fingers so long and delicate, yet hands so strong.
“You let me see you and you let me follow you,” he said. “You drove up and down Divisadero Street looking for me.”
“And you were still there?”
“The safest place in the world for me,” he said. “I never left it. They came looking for me and they didn’t find me and then they went away. And now I move among them whenever I want and they don’t know me. They never knew what I looked like, really.”
“And they’d try to destroy you if they knew,” I said.
“Yes,” he answered. “But they’ve been trying to do that since the Theater of the Vampires and the things that happened there. Of course Interview with the Vampire gave them some new reasons. And they do need reasons to play their little games. They need the impetus, the excitement. They feed upon it like blood.” His voice sounded labored for a second.
He took a deep breath. Hard to talk about all this. I wanted to put my arms around him again but I didn’t.
“But at the moment,” he said, “I think you are the one that they want to destroy. And they do know what you look like.” Little smile. “Everybody knows now what you look like. Monsieur Le Rock Star.”
He let his smile broaden. But the voice was polite and low as it had always been. And the face suffused with feeling. There had been not the slightest change there yet. Maybe there never would be.
I slipped my arm around his shoulder and we walked together away from the lights of the house. We walked past the great gray hulk of the copter and into the dry sunbaked field and towards the hills.
I think to be this happy is to be miserable, to feel this much satisfaction is to burn.
“Are you going to go through with it?” he asked. “The concert tomorrow night?”
Danger to us all. Had it been a warning or a threat? “Yes, of course,” I said. “What in hell could stop me from it?”
“I would like to stop you,” he answered. “I would have come sooner if I could. I spotted you a week ago, then lost you.”
“And why do you want to stop me?”
“You know why,” he said. “I want to talk to you.” So simple, the words, and yet they had such meaning.
“There’ll be time after,” I answered. “ ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.’ Nothing is going to happen. You’ll see.” I kept glancing at him and away from him, as