"I told you I'd work for the food," I said, trying not to look at her breasts. "I'd do anything you asked. Look, I'm sorry. I don't want you to burn in hell. What a dreadful thing to say. It's only that I'm down on my luck now. Bad things have happened to me. Look, that's my dog there. How am I to feed him?"
"That dog!" She looked through the glass at Mojo, who sat majestically in the snow.
"You must be joking," she said. What a shrill voice she had. Utterly without character. So many sounds coming at me had that very quality. Metallic and thin.
"No, he is my dog," I said with faint indignation. "I love him very much."
She laughed. "That dog eats here every night at the back kitchen door!"
"Ah, well, marvelous. One of us will eat. I'm so happy to hear it, mademoiselle. Maybe I should go to the back kitchen door. Perhaps the dog will leave something for me."
She gave a little chilly and false laugh. She was observing me, quite obviously, looking with interest at my face and my clothes. Whatever did I look like to her? I didn't know. The black overcoat was not a cheap garment, but neither was it stylish. The brown hair of this head of mine was full of snow.
She herself had a sort of scrawny, fine-toned sensuality. Very narrow nose, very finely shaped eyes. Very beautiful bones.
"All right," she said, "sit down up there at the counter. I'll have them bring you something. What do you want?"
"Anything, I don't care. I thank you for your kindness."
"All right, sit down." She opened the door, and shouted to the dog: "Go around to the back." She made a quick gesture.
Mojo did nothing but sit there, a patient mountain of fur. I went back out into the freezing wind, and told him to go to the kitchen door. I gestured to the side alley. He looked at me for a long moment and then he rose and moved slowly down the alley and disappeared.
I went back inside, grateful for a second time to be out of the cold, though I realized that my shoes were full of melted snow. I moved into the darkness of the interior of the restaurant, stumbling on a wooden stool that I didn't see, and nearly falling, and then seating myself on the stool. A place had already been set on the wooden counter, with a blue cloth mat and a heavy steel fork and knife. The smell of cheese was stifling. There were other smells-cooked onions, garlic, burnt grease. All revolting.
I was most uncomfortable sitting on this stool. The round hard edge of the wooden seat cut into my legs, and once again, I was bothered that I couldn't see in the dark. The restaurant appeared very deep, indeed to have several more rooms in a long chain. But I couldn't see all the way back there. I could hear frightful noises, like big pots being banged on metal, and they hurt my ears just a little, or more truly I resented them.
The young woman reappeared, smiling prettily as she set down a big glass of red wine. The smell was sour and potentially sickening.
I thanked her. And then I picked up the glass, and took a mouthful of the wine, holding it and then swallowing. At once I began to choke. I couldn't figure what had happened- whether I had swallowed in some wrong way, or it was irritating my throat for some reason, or what. I only knew I was coughing furiously, and I snatched up a cloth napkin from beside the fork and put it over my mouth. Some of the wine was actually caught hi the back of my nose. As for the taste, it was weak and acidic. A terrible frustration rose in me.
I shut my eyes, and leaned my head against my left hand, the hand itself closed around the napkin in a fist.
"Here, try it again," she said. I opened my eyes and saw her filling the glass once more from a large carafe.
"All right," I said, "thank you." I was thirsty, powerfully thirsty. In fact, the mere taste of the wine had greatly increased this thirst. But this time, I reasoned, I wouldn't swallow so hard. I lifted the glass, took a small mouthful, tried to savor it, though there seemed almost nothing there to savor, and then I swallowed, slowly, and it went down the correct way. Thin, so thin, so totally different from a luscious filling swallow of blood. I must get the hang of this. I drank the rest of the contents of the glass. Then I lifted the carafe and filled it again, and drank that down too.
For a moment, I felt only frustration. Then gradually I began to feel a little sick. Food will come, I thought. Ah, there is food-a canister of bread sticks, or so they appear to be.
I lifted one, smelled it carefully, ascertaining that it was bread, and then I nibbled at it very fast until it was gone. It was like sand to the last tiny bit. Just like the sand of the Gobi Desert which had gotten into my mouth. Sand.
"How do mortals eat this?" I asked.
"More slowly," said the pretty woman and she let out a little laugh. "You're not mortal? Which planet are you from?"
"Venus," I answered, smiling at her again. "The planet of love."
She was studying me unreservedly, and a little flush came back to her sharp white little cheeks. "Well, stick around until I get orf, why don't you? You can walk me home."
"I shall definitely do that," I said. And then the realization of what this could mean settled over me, with the most curious effect. I could bed this woman, perhaps. Ah, yes, that was definitely a possibility as far as she was concerned. My eyes drifted down to the two tiny nipples, protruding so enticingly through the black silk of the dress. Yes, bed her, I thought, and how smooth was the flesh of her neck.
The organ was stirring between my legs. Well, something is working, I mused. But how curiously local was this feeling, this hardening and swelling, and the odd way that it consumed all my thoughts. The need for blood was never local. I stared blankly before me. I did not look down when a plate of Italian spaghetti and meat sauce was set down at my place. The hot fragrance went up my nostrils-moldering cheese, burnt meat, and fat.
Go down, I was saying to the organ. This is not the time yet for that.
Finally I lowered my gaze to the plate. The hunger ground in me as if someone had my intestines in both hands and was wringing them out. Did I remember such a feeling? God knows I had been hungry enough in my mortal life. Hunger was like life itself. But the memory seemed so distant, so unimportant. Slowly I picked up the fork, which I had never used in those times, for we had none-only spoons and knives in our crude world- and I shoved the tines under the mess of wet spaghetti and lifted a heap of it to my mouth.
I knew it was too hot before it touched my tongue, but I didn't stop quickly enough. I was badly burnt and let the fork drop. Now, this is plain stupidity, I thought, and it was perhaps my fifteenth act of plain stupidity. What must I do to approach things with more intelligence, and patience and calm?
I sat back on the uncomfortable stool, as well as one can do such a thing without tumbling to the floor, and I tried to think.
I was trying to run this new body, which was full of uncommon weakness and sensation- painfully cold feet, for instance, wet feet in a draught running along the floor-and I was making understandable but stupid mistakes. Should have taken the galoshes. Should have found a phone before coming in here and called my agent in Paris. Not reasoning, behaving stubbornly as if I were a vampire when I was not.
Nothing of the temperature of this steaming food would have burnt me in my vampire skin, obviously. But I wasn't in my vampire skin. That's why I should have taken the galoshes. Think!
But how far was this experience from what I had expected. Oh, ye gods. Here I was talking about thinking when I'd thought I would be enjoying! Ah, I'd thought I would be immersed in sensations, immersed in memories, immersed in discoveries; arid now all I could do was think how to hold back!