Now, what should I do? Well, go get something to eat, I thought. And then I realized I was hungry! Yes, that was the precise nature of the discomfort I'd been feeling, along with the full bladder, and a general overall heaviness, since this little saga commenced.
Eat. But if you eat, you know what will happen? You'll have to go back in that bathroom again, or some bathroom, and relieve yourself of all the digested food. The thought almost made me gag.
In fact, I grew so nauseated even picturing human excrement coming from my body that for a moment I thought I would indeed vomit. I sat still, on the foot of the low modern bed, and tried to get my emotions under control.
I told myself that these were the simplest aspects of being human; I must not allow them to obscure the larger questions. And that, further, I was behaving like a perfect coward, and not the dark hero whom I claimed to be. Now, understand, I don't really believe lama, hero to the world. But I long ago decided that I must live as if I were a hero-that I must pass through all the difficulties which confront me, because they are only my inevitable circles of fire.
All right, this was a small and ignominious circle of fire. And I must stop the cowardice at once. Eat, taste, feel, see-that was the name of this trial! Oh, but what a trial this was going to be.
At last I climbed to my feet, taking a slightly longer stride to accommodate these new legs, and I went back to the closet and found to my amazement that there really weren't very many clothes here. A couple of pairs of wool pants, two fairly light wool jackets, both new, and a stack of perhaps three shirts on a shelf.
Hmmm. What had happened to all the rest? I opened the top drawer of the bureau.
Empty. Indeed all of the drawers were empty. And so was the little chest by the bed.
What could this mean? He'd taken these clothes with him, or sent them on to someplace where he'd gone? But why? They wouldn't fit his new body, and he claimed to have taken care of all that. I was deeply troubled. Could this mean that he wasn't planning to come back?
That was absurd. He wouldn't pass up the sum of twenty million. And I could not spend my precious time as a mortal worrying hour by hour about such a thing!
I proceeded down the perilous staircase, Mojo padding softly beside me. I was controlling the new body fairly effortlessly now, heavy and uncomfortable though it was. I opened the hall closet. An old coat remained on a hanger. A pair of galoshes. Nothing else.
I went to the desk in the living room. He had told me that I might find the driver's license here. Slowly I opened the top drawer. Empty. Everything was empty. Ah, but there were some papers in one of the drawers. Seemed to have something to do with this house, and nowhere did the name Raglan James appear. I struggled to understand what these papers were. But the official lingo baffled me. I wasn't receiving an immediate impression of meaning, as I did when I had looked at things with my vampire eyes.
I recalled what James had said about synapses. Yes, my thinking was slower. Yes, it had been difficult to read each word.
Ah, well, what did it matter? There was no driver's license here. And what I needed was money. Ah, yes, money. I'd left the money on the table. Good Lord, it might have blown out into the yard.
At once I went back to the kitchen. It was now freezing cold hi the room, and indeed the table and the stove and the hanging copper pots were covered with a thin layer of white frost. The wallet with the money was not on the table. The car keys were not on the table. And the light, of course, had been smashed.
I got down on my knees in the dark and began to feel about on the floor. I found the passport. But no wallet. No keys. Only bits of glass from the exploded light bulb, which stung my hands, and cut through the skin in two places. Tiny specks of blood on my hands. No fragrance. No real taste. I tried to see without feeling. No wallet. I went out on the step again, careful not to slip this time. No wallet. I couldn't see in the deep snow of the yard.
Ah, but it was useless, wasn't it? The wallet and the keys were far too heavy to have blown away. He'd taken them! Possibly he'd even come back for them! The petty little monster, and when I realized that he'd been in my body, my splendid powerful preternatural body, when he did this, I was absolutely paralyzed with rage.
All right, you thought this might happen, didn't you? It was in his nature. And you're freezing again, you're shivering. Get back into the dining room and close the door.
I did just that, though I had to wait on Mojo, who took his time, as if he were utterly indifferent to the snowy wind. Now the dining room was cold from my having left the door open. Indeed, as I hurried back upstairs, I realized that the temperature of the entire house had been lowered by this little trip to the kitchen. I had to remember to shut doors.
I went into the first of the unused rooms, where I'd hidden the money in the chimney, and as I reached up, I felt not the envelope which I'd lodged there, but a single sheet of paper. I removed it, already in a fury, before I even turned on the light so that I could see the words:
You really are a silly fool to think that a man of my abilities wouldn't find your little stash. One does not have to be a vampire to detect a bit of telltale moisture on the floor and on the wall. Have a pleasant adventure. I shall see you Friday. Take care of yourself! Raglan James.
I was too angry for a moment to move. I was positively fuming. My hands were knotted into fists. "You petty little miscreant!" I said in this miserable, heavy, opaque, brittle voice.
I went into the bathroom. Of course the second stash of money wasn't behind the mirror. There was only another note.
What is human life without difficulty? You must realize I cannot resist such little discoveries. It's like leaving bottles of wine around for an alcoholic. I shall see you Friday. Please walk carefully on the icy sidewalks. Wouldn't want you to break a leg.
Before I could stop myself I slammed my fist into the mirror! Ah, well. There was a blessing for you. Not a great gaping hole in the wall, as it would have been if Lestat le Vampire had done it; just a lot of broken glass. And bad luck, bad luck for seven years!
I turned around, went downstairs, and back into the kitchen, bolting the door behind me this tune, and opened the refrigerator. Nothing inside! Nothing!
Ah, this little devil, what I was going to do to him! How could he think he would get away with this? Did he think I was incapable of giving him twenty million dollars and then wringing his neck? What in the world was he thinking ...
Hmmm.
Was it as hard to figure out as all that? He wasn't coming back, was he? Of course he wasn't.
I went back into the dining room. There was no silver or china in the glass-doored cabinet. But certainly there had been silver and china last night. I went into the hallway. There were no paintings on the walls. I checked the living room. No Picasso, Jasper Johns, de Kooning, or Warhol. All gone. Even the photographs of the ships were gone.
The Chinese sculptures were gone. The bookshelves were half empty. And the rugs. There were precious few of them left- one in the dining room, which had almost caused me to kill myself! And one at the foot of the steps.
This house had been emptied out of all its true valuables! Why, half the furniture was missing! The little bastard wasn't going to return! It was never part of his plan.
I sat down in the armchair nearest the door. Mojo, who'd been following me faithfully, took the opportunity to stretch out at my feet. I dug my hand into his fur and tugged at it, and smoothed it, and thought what a comfort it was that the dog was there.
Of course James was a fool to pull this. Did he think I couldn't call on the others?
Hmmm. Call on the others for help-what a perfectly gruesome idea. It did not take any great feat of imagination to guess what Marius would say to me if I told him what I'd done. In all probability he knew, and was smoldering with disapproval. As for the older ones, I shuddered to think on it at all. My best hope from any standpoint was that the body switch would go unnoticed. I'd realized that from the start.