"I'm thankful you didn't pick H. P. Lovecraft," I said with an exaggerated sigh of relief. "Do we have to leave now?"
"Yes, we do. I've already called the taxi. We must get some tropical clothing before we go, or we'll look perfectly ridiculous. There isn't a moment to lose. Now, if you will use those strong young arms of yours to help me with this suitcase, I shall be forever obliged."
"I'm disappointed."
"In what?" He stopped, stared at me, and then almost blushed as he had earlier that day. "Lestat, there is no time for that sort of thing."
"David, assuming we succeed, it may be our last chance."
"All right," he said, "there is plenty of time to discuss it at the beachside hotel in Grenada tonight. Depending of course on how quick you are with your lessons in astral projection. Now, do please show some youthful vim and vigor of a constructive sort, and help me with this suitcase. I'm a man of seventy-four."
"Splendid. But I want to know something before we go."
"What?"
"Why are you helping me?"
"Oh, for the love of heaven, you know why."
"No, I don't."
He stared at me soberly for a long moment, then said, "I care for you! I don't care what body you're in. It's true. But to be perfectly honest, this ghastly Body Thief, as you call him, frightens me. Yes, frightens me to the marrow of my bones.
"He's a fool, and he always brings about his own ruin, that's true. But this time I think you're right. He's not at all eager to be apprehended, if in fact he ever was. He's planning on a long run of success, and he may tire of the QE2 very soon. That's why we must act. Now pick up this suitcase. I nearly killed myself hauling it up those stairs."
I obeyed.
But I was softened and saddened by his words of feeling, and plunged into a series of fragmentary images of all the little things we might have done in the large soft bed in the other room.
And what if the Body Thief had jumped ship already? Or been destroyed this very morning-after Marius had looked upon me with such disdain?
"Then we'll go on to Rio," said David, leading the way to the gate. "We'll be in time for the carnival. Nice vacation for us both."
"I'll die if I have to live that long!" I said, taking the lead down the stairs. "Trouble with you is you've gotten used to being human because you've done it for so damned long."
"I was used to it by the time I was two years old," he said dryly.
"I don't believe you. I've watched two-year-old humans with interest for centuries. They're miserable. They rush about, fall down, and scream almost constantly. They hate being human! They know already that it's some sort of dirty trick."
He laughed to himself but didn't answer me. He wouldn't look at me either.
The cab was already waiting for us when we reached the front door.
TWENTY
THE plane ride would have been another absolute nightmare, had I not been so tired that I slept. A full twenty-four hours had passed since my last dreamy rest in Gretchen's arms, and indeed I fell so deep into sleep now that when David roused me for the change of planes in Puerto Rico, I scarce knew where we were or what we were doing, and for an odd moment, it felt entirely normal to be lugging about this huge heavy body in a state of confusion and thoughtless obedience to David's commands.
We did not go outside the terminal for this transfer of planes. And when at last we did land in the small airport in Grenada, I was surprised by the close and delicious Caribbean warmth and the brilliant twilight sky.
All the world seemed changed by the soft balmy embracing breezes which greeted us. I was glad we had raided the Canal Street shop in New Orleans, for the heavy tweed clothes felt all wrong. As the cab bounced along the narrow uneven road, carrying us to our beachfront hotel, I was transfixed by the lush forest around us, the big red hibiscus blooming beyond little fences, the graceful coconut palms bending over the tiny tumbledown hillside houses, and eager to see, not with this dim frustrating mortal night vision, but in the magical light of the morning sun.
There had been something absolutely penitential about my undergoing the transformation in the mean cold of Georgetown, no doubt of it at all. Yet when I thought of it-that lovely white snow, and the warmth of Gretchen's little house, I couldn't truly complain. It was only that this Caribbean island seemed the true world, the world for real living; and I marveled, as I always did when in these islands, that they could be so beautiful, so warm, and so very poor.
Here one saw the poverty everywhere-the haphazard wooden houses on stilts, the pedestrians on the borders of the road, the old rusted automobiles, and the total absence of any evidence of affluence, making of course for a quaintness in the eye of the outsider, but something of a hard existence perhaps for the natives, who had never gathered together enough dollars to leave this place, even perhaps for a single day.
The evening sky was a deep shining blue, as it is often in this part of the world, as incandescent as it can be over Miami, and the soft white clouds made the same clean and dramatic panorama on the far edge of the gleaming sea. Entrancing, and this is but one tiny part of the great Caribbean. Why do I ever wander in other climes at all?
The hotel was in fact a dusty neglected little guesthouse of white stucco under a myriad complex of rusted tin roofs. It was known only to a few Britishers, and very quiet, with a rambling wing of rather old-fashioned rooms looking out over the sands of Grand Anse Beach. With profuse apologies for the broken air-conditioning machines, and the crowded quarters-we must share a room with twin beds, I almost burst into laughter, as David looked to heaven as if to say silently that his persecution would never end!-the proprietor demonstrated that the creaky overhead fan created quite a breeze. Old white louvered shutters covered the windows. The furniture was made of white wicker, and the floor was old tile.
It seemed very charming to me, but mostly on account of the sweet warmth of the air around me, and the bit of jungle creeping down around the structure, with its inevitable snaggle of banana leaf and Queen's Wreath vine. Ah, that vine. A nice rule of thumb might be: Don't ever live in a part of the world which will not support that vine.
At once we set about to changing clothes. I stripped off the tweeds, and put on the thin cotton pants and shirt I'd bought in New Orleans before we left, along with a pair of white tennis shoes, and deciding against an all-out physical assault upon David, who was changing with his back turned to me, I went out under the graceful arching coconut palms, and made my way down onto the sand.
The night was as tranquil and gentle as any night I've ever known. All my love of the Caribbean came back to me-along with painful and blessed memories. But I longed to see this night with my old eyes. I longed to see past the thickening darkness, and the shadows that shrouded the embracing hills. I longed to turn on my preternatural hearing and catch the soft songs of the jungles, to wander with vampiric speed up the mountains of the interior to find the secret little valleys and waterfalls as only the Vampire Lestat could have done.
I felt a terrible, terrible sadness for all my discoveries. And perhaps it hit me in its fullness for the first time-that all of my dreams of mortal life had been a lie. It wasn't that life wasn't magical; it wasn't that creation was not a miracle; it wasn't that the world was not fundamentally good. It was that I had taken my dark power so for granted that I did not realize the vantage point it had given me. I had failed to assess my gifts. And I wanted them back.