There was snow on his shoulders, on the black shoulders of his vest, and on his white sleeves.
I nodded, and stood up, just so he'd go away. My tie was still in place. My coat was buttoned. My hands were clean. There was snow on my coat.
The snow was falling very lightly all around me. The most beautiful snow.
I went back through the revolving door into the tiled hallway and stood in the door of the bar. I could see the place where we had talked, see his glass still there. Otherwise the atmosphere was unchanged. The bartender was talking in a bored way to someone. He hadn't seen anything, except me bolt, probably, and stumble out into the street.
Every fiber in me said, Run. But where will you run? Take to the air? Not a chance, it will get you in an instant. Keep your feet on the cold earth.
You took Roger! Is that what you followed me for? Who are you!
The bartender looked up over the empty, dusty distance. I must have said something, done something. No, I was just blubbering. A man crying in a doorway, stupidly. And when it is this man, so to speak, that means blood tears. Make your exit quick.
I turned and walked out into the snow again. It was going to be morning soon, wasn't it? I didn't have to walk in the miserable punishing cold until the sky brightened, did I? Why not find a grave now, and go to sleep?
"Roger!" I was crying, wiping my tears on my sleeve. "What are you, damn it!" I stood and shouted, voice rolling off the buildings.
"Damn it!" It came back tp me suddenly in a flash. I heard all those mingled voices, and I fought it. The face. It has a face! A sleepless mind in its heart and an insatiable personality. Don't get dizzy, don't try to remember. Somebody in one of the buildings opened a window and shouted at me to move on. "Stop screaming out there." Don't try to reconstruct. You'll lose consciousness if you do.
I suddenly envisioned Dora and thought I might collapse where I was, shuddering and helpless and jabbering nonsense to anyone who came to help me.
This was bad, this was the worst, this was simply cosrnically awful!
And what in God's name had been the meaning of Roger's expression in that last moment? Was it even an expression? Was it peace or calm or understanding, or just a ghost losing his vitality, a ghost giving up the ghost!
Ah! I had been screaming. I realized it. Lots of mortals around me, high up in the night, were telling me to be quiet.
I walked on and on.
I was alone. I cried quietly. There was no one in die empty street to hear.
I crept on, bent nearly double, crying out loud. I never noticed anyone now who saw or heard or stopped or took note. I wanted to reenact it in my mind, but I was terrified it would knock me flat on my back if I did it. And Roger, Roger . . . Oh, God, I wanted in my monstrous selfishness to go to Dora and go down on my knees. I did this, I killed, I....
Midtown. I suppose. Mink coats in a window. The snow was touching my eyelids in the tenderest way. I took off the scarf tie, wiped my face thoroughly so there was no blood from the tears on it.
And then I blundered into a small bright hotel.
I paid for the room in cash, extra tip, don't disturb me for twenty-
four hours, went upstairs, bolted the door, pulled the curtains, shut off the bothersome stinking heat, and crawled under the bed and went to sleep, The last strange thought that passed through my mind before I went into mortal slumber—it was hours before sunrise, and plenty of time for dreaming—was that David was going to be angry about all this somehow, but that Dora, Dora might believe and understand ...
I must have slept a few hours at least. I could hear the night sounds outside.
When I woke, the sky was lightening. The night was almost up.
Now would come oblivion. I was glad. Too late to think. Go back into the deep vampire sleep. Dead with all the other Undead wherever they were, covering themselves against the coming light.
A voice startled me. It spoke to me very distinctly:
"It's not going to be that simple."
I rose up in one motion, overturning the bed, on my feet, staring in the direction from which the voice had come. The little hotel room was like a tawdry trap.
A man stood in the corner, a simple man. Not particularly tall, or small, or beautiful like Roger, or flashy like me, not even very young, not even very old, just a man. A rather nice-looking man, with arms folded and one foot crossed over the other.
The sun had just come up over the buildings. The fire hit the windows. I was blinded. I couldn't see anything.
I went down towards the floor, just a little burnt and hurt, the bed falling down upon me to protect me.
Nothing else. Whoever or whatever it was, I was powerless once the sun had come into the sky, no matter how white and thick the veil of winter morning.
5
"VERY well," said David. "Sit down. Stop pacing. And I want you to go over every detail again. If you need to feed before you do this, then we'll go out and—"
"I have told you! I am past that. I don't need to feed. I don't need blood. I crave it. I love it. And I don't want any now! I feasted on Roger last night like a gluttonous demon. Stop talking about blood." "Would you take your place there at the table?"
Across from him, he meant.
I was standing at the glass wall, looking right down on the roof of St. Patrick's.
He'd gotten us perfect rooms in the Olympic Tower and we were only just above the spires. An immense apartment far in excess of our needs but a perfect domicile nevertheless. The intimacy with the cathedral seemed essential. I could see the cruciform of the roof, the high piercing towers. They looked as if they could impale you, they seemed so sharply pointed at heaven. And heaven as it had been the night before was a soft soundless drift of snow.
I sighed.
"Look, I'm sorry. But I don't want to go all over it again. I can't.
Either you accept it as I told you, or I... I... go out of my mind."
He remained sitting calmly at the table. The place had come "turnkey," or furnished. It was the snazzy substantial style of the corporate world—lots of mahogany and leather and shades of beige and tan and gold that could offend no one, conceivably. And flowers. He had seen to flowers. We had the perfume of flowers.
The table and chairs were harmoniously Oriental, the fashionable infusion of Chinese. I think there was a painted urn or two also.
And below we had the Fifty-first Street side of St. Patrick's, and people down there on Fifth going and coming on the snowy steps, The quiet vision of the snow.
"We don't have that much time," I said. "We have to get uptown, and I have to secure that place or move all of those precious objects.
I'm not allowing some accident to happen to Dora's inheritance."
"We can do that, but before we go, try this for me. Describe the man again . . . not Roger's ghost, or the living statue, or the winged one, but the man you saw standing in the corner of the hotel room, when the sun came up."
"Ordinary, I told you, very ordinary."
"Anglo-Saxon?"
"Yes, probably."
"Distinctly Irish or Nordic?"
"No. Just a man. Not a Frenchman, I don't think. No, a routine flavor of American. A man of good height, my height, but not overwhelmingly tall like you. I couldn't have seen him for more than five seconds. It was sunrise. He had me trapped there. I couldn't flee, I went blank. The mattress covered me, and when I woke, no man. Gone, as if I'd imagined it. But I didn't imagine it!"
"Thank you. The hair?"
"Ash blond, almost gray. You know how ash blond can fade to where it's really truly a ... a graying brown color, or colorless almost, just sort of deep gray."
He gave a little gesture that he understood.
Cautiously I leant on the glass. With my strength it would have been a simple thing to have accidentally shattered the wall. The last thing I wanted was a blunder.
Obviously he wanted me to say more, and I was trying. I could recall the man fairly distinctly. "An agreeable face, very agreeable.