The tale of the body thief - By Anne Rice Page 0,106

I looked up and realized that the fretful female attendant was still there.

“You’re sick,” she said, “you’re very, very sick.”

“Nonsense, ma chère,” I said, “I have a cold, a mortal cold, no more and no less.” I fished in my shirt pocket for my wad of bills, gave her several twenties, and told her to go. She was very reluctant.

“That’s quite a cough,” she said. “I think you’re really sick. You’ve been outside a long time, haven’t you?”

I stared at her, absolutely weakened by her concern, and realizing that I was in true danger of bursting stupidly into tears. I wanted to warn her that I was a monster, that this body was merely stolen. How tender she was, how obviously habitually kind.

“We’re all connected,” I said to her, “all humankind. We must care for each other, mustn’t we?” I figured she would be horrified by these sloppy sentiments, issued with such thick drunken emotion, and that she would now take her leave. But she did not.

“Yes, we are,” she said. “Let me call a doctor for you before the storm gets any worse.”

“No, dearest, go now,” I said.

And with one last worried look at me, she did at last go out.

After I’d consumed the plate of fancy cheese-sauced noodles, another bit of salt and tastelessness, I began to wonder if she wasn’t right. I went into the bathroom and switched on the lights. The man in the mirror did look dreadful, his eyes bloodshot, his entire body shivering, and his naturally dark skin rather yellowish if not downright pale.

I felt of my forehead, but what good did that do? Surely I can’t die of this, I thought. But then I wasn’t so sure. I remembered the expression on the face of the attendant, and the concern of the people who’d spoken to me in the street. Another fit of coughing overcame me.

I must take action, I thought. But what action? What if the doctors gave me some powerful sedative which so numbed me that I couldn’t return to the town house? And what if their drugs affected my concentration so that the switch could not be made? Good Lord, I had not even tried to rise up out of this human body, a trick I knew so well in my other form.

I didn’t want to try it either. What if I couldn’t get back! No, wait for James for such experiments, and stay away from doctors with needles!

The bell sounded. It was the tenderhearted female attendant, and this time she had a sackful of medicines—bottles of bright red and green liquids, and plastic containers of pills. “You really ought to call a doctor,” she said, as she placed all of these on the marble dresser in a row. “Do you want for us to call a doctor?”

“Absolutely not,” I said, pushing more money at her, and guiding her out the door. But wait, she said. Would I let her take the dog out, please, as he had just eaten?

Ah, yes, that was a marvelous idea. I pushed more bank notes into her hand. I told Mojo to go with her, and do whatever she said. She seemed fascinated by Mojo. She murmured something to the effect that his head was larger than her own.

I returned to the bathroom and stared at the little bottles which she had brought. I was leery of these medicines! But then it wasn’t very gentlemanly of me to return a sick body to James. Indeed, what if James didn’t want it. No, not likely. He’d take the twenty million and the cough and the chills.

I drank a revolting gulp of the green medicine, fighting a convulsion of nausea, and then forced myself into the living room, where I collapsed at the desk.

There was hotel stationery there and a ballpoint pen which worked fairly well, in that slippery skittery fashion of ballpoint pens. I began to write, discovering that it was very difficult for me with these big fingers, but persevering, describing in hurried detail all that I had felt and seen.

On and on I wrote, though I could scarce keep my head up, and scarce breathe for the thickening of the cold. Finally, when there was no more paper and I could not read my own scrawl any longer, I stuffed these pages into an envelope, licked it and sealed it, and addressed it to myself care of my apartment in New Orleans, and then stuffed it into my shirt pocket, secure beneath my