by Rice, Anne
“What’s wrong?” she said. “Are you sick?”
“May I use this room?” I asked, gesturing to the open door.
“Of course,” she said. “Go ahead.”
Ten minutes, perhaps more, passed before I emerged. I was so powerfully disgusted by the simple process of elimination—by the smell of it, and the feel of doing it, and the sight of it—that I couldn’t speak. But it was finished, done. Only the drunkenness remained now, the graceless experience of reaching for the light switch and missing it, of trying to turn the knob and having my hand—this big dark hand—miss.
I found the bedroom, very warm, and crowded with mediocre modern furniture of cheap laminate and no particular design.
The young woman was now entirely naked and sitting on the side of the bed. I tried to see her clearly in spite of the distortions created by the nearby lamp. But her face was a mass of ugly shadows, and her skin looked sallow. The stale smell of the bed surrounded her.
All I could conclude about her was that she was foolishly thin, as women tend to be in these times, and all the bones of her ribs showed through the milky skin, and that her breasts were almost freakishly small with tiny delicate pink nipples, and her hips weren’t there. She was like a wraith. And yet she sat there smiling, as if this was normal, with all her pretty wavy hair hanging down her back, and hiding the small shadow of her pubis beneath one limp hand.
Well, it was perfectly obvious which marvelous human experience was meant to come now. But I could feel nothing for her. Nothing. I smiled, and I began to take off my clothes. I peeled off the overcoat, and was immediately cold. Why wasn’t she cold? I then took off the sweater and was immediately horrified by the smell of my own sweat. Lord God, was it really like this before? And this body of mine had looked so clean.
She didn’t seem to notice. I was grateful for that. I then removed my shirt and my shoes and my socks and my pants. My feet were still cold. Indeed, I was cold and naked, very naked. I didn’t know whether or not I liked this at all. I suddenly saw myself in the mirror over her dressing table, and I realized that this organ was of course utterly drunk and asleep.
Again, she didn’t seem surprised.
“Come here,” she said. “Sit down.”
I obeyed. I was shivering all over. Then I began to cough. The first cough was a spasm, catching me completely by surprise. Then a whole series of coughs followed, uncontrollably, and the last was so violent that it made a circle of pain around my ribs.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her.
“I love your French accent,” she whispered. She stroked my hair, and let her nails lightly scratch my cheek.
Now, this was a pleasant sensation. I bent my head and kissed her throat. Yes, this was nice also. It was nothing as exciting as closing on a victim, but it was nice. I tried to remember what it had been like two hundred years ago when I was the terror of the village girls. Seems some farmer was always at the castle gates, cursing me and swinging his fist at me and telling me that if his daughter was with child by me, I’d have to do something about it! It had all seemed such wonderful fun at the time. And the girls, oh the lovely girls.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. I kissed her throat again. I could smell sweat on her body too. I didn’t like it. But why? These smells were nothing as sharp, any of them, as they were to me in my other body. But they connected with something in this body—that was the ugly part. I felt no protection against these smells; they seemed not artifacts but something which could invade me and contaminate me. For instance, the sweat from her neck was now on my lips. I knew it was, I could taste it and I wanted to be away from her.
Ah, but this is madness. She was a human being, and I was a human being. Thank God this would be over Friday. But what right had I to thank God!
Her little nipples brushed against my chest, very hot and nubby and the flesh behind them was squashy and tender. I slipped my arm around her small back.
“You’re hot, I think you have a fever,” she said in my ear. She kissed my neck the way I’d been kissing hers.
“No, I’m all right,” I said. But I didn’t have the slightest idea of whether or not this was true. This was hard work!
Suddenly her hand touched my organ, startling me, and then bringing about an immediate excitement. I felt the organ lengthen and grow hard. The sensation was entirely concentrated, and yet it galvanized me. When I looked at her breasts now, and down at the small fur triangle between her legs, my organ grew even more hard. Yes, I remember this all right; my eyes are connected to it, and nothing else matters now, hmmm, all right. Just get her down on the bed.
“Whoa!” she whispered. “Now that’s a piece of equipment!”
“Is it?” I looked down. The monstrous thing had doubled in size. It did seem grossly out of proportion to everything else. “Yes, I suppose it is. Should have known James would have checked it out.”
“Who’s James?”
“No, doesn’t matter,” I mumbled. I turned her face towards me and kissed her wet little mouth this time, feeling her teeth through her thin lips. She opened her mouth for my tongue. This was good, even if her mouth was bad tasting. Didn’t matter. But then my mind raced ahead to blood. Drink her blood.
Where was the pounding intensity of drawing near the victim, of the moment right before my teeth pierced the skin and the blood spilled all over my tongue?
No, it’s not going to be that easy, or that consuming. It’s going to be between the legs and more like a shiver, but this is some shiver, I’ll say that.
Merely thinking of the blood had heightened the passion, and I shoved her roughly down on the bed. I wanted to finish, nothing else mattered but finishing.
“Wait a minute,” she said.
“Wait for what?” I mounted her, and kissed her again, pushing my tongue deeper into her. No blood. Ah, so pale. No blood. My organ slid between her hot thighs, and I almost spurted then. But it wasn’t enough.
“I said wait!” she screamed, her cheeks coloring. “You can’t do it without a condom.”
“What the hell are you saying?” I murmured. I knew the meaning of these words, yet they didn’t make much sense. I pushed my hand down, felt the hairy opening, and then the juicy wet crack, which seemed deliciously small.
She screamed at me to get off of her, and she shoved at me with the heels of her hands. She looked very flushed and beautiful to me suddenly in her heat and rage, and when she nudged me with her knee, I slammed down against her, then drew up only long enough to ram the organ into her, and feel that sweet hot tight envelope of flesh close around me, making me gasp.
“Don’t! Stop it! I said stop it!” she screamed.
But I couldn’t wait. What the hell made her think this was the time to discuss such a thing, I wondered, in some vague crazed fashion. Then, in a moment of blinding spasmodic excitement I came. Semen came roaring out of the organ!
One moment it was eternal; the next it was finished, as if it had never begun. I lay exhausted on top of her, drenched with sweat, of course, and faintly annoyed by the stickiness of the whole event, and her panic-stricken screams.
At last I fell over onto my back. My head was aching, and all the evil smells of the room thickened—a soiled smell from the bed itself, with its sagging, lumpy mattress; the nauseating smell of the cats.
She leapt out of the bed. She appeared to have gone mad. She was crying and shivering, and she snatched up a blanket from the chair and covered herself with it and began screaming at me to get out, get out, get out.
“Whatever is the matter with you?” I asked.
She let loose with a volley of modern curses. “You bum, you miserable stupid bum, you idiot, you jerk!” That sort of thing. I could have given her a disease, she said. Indeed she rattled off the names of several; I could have gotten her pregnant. I was a creep, a prick, a putz! I was to clear out of here at once. How dare I do this to her? Get out before she called the police.
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sp; A wave of sleepiness passed over me. I tried to focus upon her, in spite of the darkness. Then came a sudden nausea sharper than I’d ever felt. I struggled to keep it under control, and only by a severe act of will managed not to vomit then and there.
Finally, I sat up and then climbed to my feet. I looked down at her as she stood there, crying, and screaming at me, and I saw suddenly that she was wretched, that I had really hurt her, and indeed there was an ugly bruise on her face.
Very slowly it came clear to me what had happened. She had wanted me to use some form of prophylactic, and I’d virtually forced her. No pleasure in it for her, only fear. I saw her again at the moment of my climax, fighting me, and I realized it was utterly inconceivable to her that I could have enjoyed the struggle, enjoyed her rage and her protests, enjoyed conquering her. But in a paltry and common way, I think I had.
The whole thing seemed overwhelmingly dismal. It filled me with despair. The pleasure itself had been nothing! I can’t bear this, I thought, not a moment longer. If I could have reached James, I would have offered him another fortune, just to return at once. Reached James … I’d forgotten altogether about finding a phone.
“Listen to me, ma chère,” I said. “I’m so sorry. Things simply went wrong. I know. I’m sorry.”
She moved to slap me but I caught her wrist easily and brought her hand down, hurting her a little.
“Get out,” she said again. “Get out or I’ll call the police.”
“I understand what you’re saying to me. It’s been forever since I did it. I was clumsy. I was bad.”
“You’re worse than bad!” she said in a deep raw voice.
And this time she did slap me. I wasn’t quick enough. I was astonished by the force of the slap, how it stung. I felt of my face where she’d hit me. What an annoying little pain. It was an insulting pain.
“Go!” she screamed again.
I put on my clothes, but it was like lifting sacks of bricks to do it. A dull shame had come over me, a feeling of such awkwardness and discomfort in the slightest gesture I made or smallest word I spoke that I wanted simply to sink into the earth.
Finally, I had everything buttoned and zipped properly, and I had the miserable wet socks on my feet again, and the thin shoes, and I was ready to go.
She sat on the bed crying, her shoulders very thin, with the tender bones in her back poking at her pale flesh, and her hair dripping down in thick wavy clumps over the blanket she held to her breast. How fragile she looked—how sadly unbeautiful and repulsive.
I tried to see her as if I were really Lestat. But I couldn’t do it. She appeared a common thing, utterly worthless, not even interesting. I was vaguely horrified. Had it been that way in my boyhood village? I tried to remember those girls, those girls dead and gone for centuries, but I couldn’t see their faces. What I remembered was happiness, mischief, a great exuberance that had made me forget for intermittent periods the deprivation and hopelessness of my life.
What did that mean in this moment? How could this whole experience have been so unpleasant, so seemingly pointless? Had I been myself I would have found her fascinating as an insect is fascinating; even her little rooms would have appeared quaint to me, in their worst, most uninspiring details! Ah, the affection I always felt for all sad little mortal habitats. But why was that so!
And she, the poor being, she would have been beautiful to me simply because she was alive! I could not have been sullied by her had I fed on her for an hour. As it was, I felt filthy for having been with her, and filthy for being cruel to her. I understood her fear of disease! I, too, felt contaminated! But where lay the perspective of truth?
“I am so sorry,” I said again. “You must believe me. It wasn’t what I wanted. I don’t know what I wanted.”
“You’re crazy,” she whispered bitterly without looking up.
“Some night I’ll come to you, soon, and I’ll bring you a present, something beautiful that you really want. I’ll give it to you and perhaps you’ll forgive me.”
She didn’t answer.
“Tell me, what is it you really want? Money doesn’t matter. What is it you want that you cannot have?”
She looked up, rather sullenly, her face blotched and red and swollen, and then she wiped at her nose with the back of her hand.
“You know what I wanted,” she said in a harsh, disagreeable voice, which was almost sexless it was so low.
“No, I don’t. Tell me what.”
Her face was so disfigured and her voice so strange that she frightened me. I was still woozy from the wine I’d drunk earlier, yet my mind was unaffected by the intoxication. It seemed a lovely situation. This body drunk, but not me.
“Who are you?” she asked. She looked very hard now, hard and bitter. “You’re somebody, aren’t you … you’re not just …” But her voice trailed off.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
She turned her head even more sharply to the side, studying me as if it was all going to come to her suddenly. She’d have it figured out. I couldn’t imagine what was going on in her mind. I knew only that I felt sorry for her, and I did not like her. I didn’t like this dirty messy room with its low plaster ceiling, and the nasty bed, and the ugly tan carpet and the dim light and the cat box reeking in the other room.
“I’ll remember you,” I said miserably yet tenderly. “I’ll surprise you. I’ll come back and I’ll bring something wonderful for you, something you could never get for yourself. A gift as if from another world. But right now, I have to leave you.”
“Yes,” she said, “you’d better go.”
I turned to do exactly that. I thought of the cold outside, of Mojo waiting in the hallway, and of the town house with its back door shattered off the hinges, and no money and no phone.
Ah, the phone.
She had a phone. I’d spied it on the dresser.
As I turned and went towards it, she screamed at me, and hurled something at me. I think that it was a shoe. It struck my shoulder, but caused no pain. I picked up the receiver and punched the zero twice for long distance, and called my New York agent collect.
On and on it rang. No one there. Not even his machine. Most strange, and damned inconvenient.
I could see her in the mirror, staring at me in stiff and silent outrage, the blanket pulled around her like a sleek modern dress. How pathetic was all of this, down to the last jot.
I called Paris. Again it rang and rang, but finally there came the familiar voice—my agent roused from sleep. Quickly in French I told him I was in Georgetown, that I needed twenty thousand dollars, no, best send thirty, and I must have it now.
He explained that it was just sunrise in Paris. He would have to wait until the banks opened, but he would wire the money as soon as he could. It might be noon in Georgetown before it reached me. I memorized the name of the agency where I was to collect it, and I implored him to be prompt and see that he did not fail. This was an emergency, I was penniless. I had obligations. He gave me assurance that all would be handled at once. I put down the phone.
She was staring at me. I don’t think she had understood the phone call. She could not speak French.
“I’ll remember you,” I said. “Please, forgive me. I’ll go now. I’ve caused trouble enough.”
She didn’t answer. I stared at her, trying for the last time to fathom it, why she seemed so coarse and uninteresting. What had been my vantage point before that all life seemed so beautiful to me, all creatures but variations on the same magnificent theme? Even James had had a horrid glittering beauty like a great palmetto bug or a fly.
“Good-bye, ma chère,” I said, “I’m very sorry—truly I am.”
I found Mojo sitting patiently outside the apartment, and I hurried past him, snapping my fingers for him to come, which he did. And down the steps we went and out in the cold night.
In spite of the wind gusting into the kitchen, and creeping around the dining room door, the other rooms of the town hous
e were still quite warm. A stream of heated air came from the little brass grilles in the floors. How kind of James not to have turned off the heat, I thought. But then he plans to leave this place immediately that he has the twenty million. The bill will never be paid.
I went upstairs and through the master bedroom into the master bath. A pleasant room of new white tile and clean mirrors and a deep shower stall with doors of shining glass. I tried the water. Hot and strong. Quite deliciously hot. I peeled off all the damp and smelly clothes, laying the socks on the furnace grille and neatly folding the sweater for it was the only one I had, and then I stood in the hot shower for a long time.
With my head back against the tile, I might have actually fallen asleep standing up. But then I began to weep, and then just as spontaneously, to cough. I felt an intense burning in my chest, and the same burning deep inside my nose.
Finally I got out, toweled off, and looked again at this body in the mirror. I could not see a scar or a flaw anywhere in it. The arms were powerful but smoothly muscled, as was the chest. The legs were well formed. The face was truly beautiful, the dark skin quite nearly perfect, though there was nothing of the boy left in the structure of it, as there was in my own face. It was very much the face of a man—rectangular, a little hard, but pretty, very pretty, perhaps on account of the large eyes. It was also slightly rough. Beard coming in. Have to shave. Nuisance.
“But really, this ought to be splendid,” I said aloud. “You’ve the body of a twenty-six-year-old male in perfect condition. But it’s been a nightmare. You’ve made one stupid error after another. Why can’t you meet this challenge? Where is your will and your strength?”
I felt chilled all over. Mojo had gone to sleep on the floor at the foot of the bed. I shall do that, sleep, I thought. Sleep like a mortal, and when I wake, the light of day will be coming into this room. Even if the sky is gray, it will be wondrous. It will be day. You will see the world of day as you’ve longed to see it all these years. Forget all this abysmal struggle and trivia and fear.