Well, I had been strengthened by my ordeal in the desert, that was plain. And I was ready for something to happen ...
... And finally in the early hours of the morning, when I had become a bit melancholy and was grieving a little for the old tumbledown buildings of the 1780s, and when the mists were hanging over the half-frozen river, and I was leaning on the high stone ledge of the bank very near the bridge to the lie de la Cite, I saw my man.
First came that sensation, and this time I recognized it right off for what it was. I studied it as it was happening to me-the faint disorientation which I allowed without ever losing control; and soft delicious ripples of vibration; and then the deep constriction which included my entire form-fingers, toes, arms, legs, trunk-as before. Yes, as if my entire body, while retaining its exact proportions, was growing smaller and smaller, and I was being forced out of this dwindling shape! At the very moment when it seemed damned nigh impossible to remain within myself, my head cleared, and the sensations came to a halt.
This was precisely what had happened both times before. I stood at the bridge, considering this, and memorizing the details.
Then I beheld a battered little car jerking to a stop on the far side of the river, and out he climbed-the young brown-haired one-awkwardly as before, and rising to his full height tentatively and fixing me with his ecstatic and glittering eyes.
He'd left the motor of his little machine running. I smelled his fear as I had before. Of course he knew that I had seen him, there could be no mistake of that. I'd been here a full two hours, waiting for him to find me, and I suppose he realized this as well.
Finally he screwed up his courage and came across the bridge through the fog, an immediately impressive figure in a long greatcoat, with a white scarf about the neck, half walking, half running, and stopping a few feet away from me, as I stood there with my elbow on the rail, staring at him coldly. He thrust at me another little envelope. I grabbed his hand.
"Don't be hasty, Monsieur de Lioncourt!" he whispered desperately. British accent, upper-class, very like David's, and he'd got the French syllables very close to perfect. He was near perishing with fear.
"Who the hell are you!" I demanded.
"I have a proposition for you! You'd be a fool if you didn't listen. It's something you'll want very much. And no one else in this world can offer it to you, be assured!"
I let him go and he sprang back, nearly toppling over, hand flung out to catch the stone rail. What was it about this man's gestures? He was powerfully built, but he moved as if he were a thin, tentative creature. I couldn't figure it out.
"Explain this proposition now!" I said, and I could hear his heart come to a stop inside his broad chest.
"No," he said. "But we shall talk very soon." Such a cultured voice, a polished voice.
Far too refined and careful for the large glazed brown eyes, and the smooth robust young face. Was he some hothouse plant grown to prodigious proportions in the company of elderly people, never having seen a person his own age?
"Don't be hasty!" he shouted again, and off he ran, stumbling, then catching himself, and then forcing his tall, clumsy body into the small car, and driving off through the frozen snow.
Indeed, he was going so fast as he disappeared into St. Ger-main, I thought he would have a wreck and kill himself.
I looked down at the envelope. Another damned short story, no doubt. I tore it open angrily, not sure I should have let him go, and yet somehow enjoying this little game, and even enjoying my own indignation at his cleverness and capacity for tracking me.
I saw that, indeed, it was a videotape of a recent film. Vice Versa was the title. What on earth . . . ? I flipped it over, and scanned the advertisement. A comic piece.
I returned to the hotel. There was yet another package waiting for me. Another videotape. All of Me was the name of it, and once again, the description on the back of the plastic case gave a fair idea of what it was about.
I went to my rooms. No video player! Not even in the Ritz. I rang David, though it was now very near dawn.
"Would you come to Paris? I'll have 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!"