"Sshhh, Benji," Sybelle whispered. "You know damned good and well I've bought you the finest watches. Don't touch him. Armand, what can we do now to help you?" She drew close to me. "Look!" she said pointing to the dangling arm of the corpse which hung just below my right elbow. "He has manicured nails. How amazing. "
"Oh, yeah, he always took very good care of himself," said Benji. "You know the watch is worth five thousand dollars. "
"Hush up about the watch," she said. "We don't want his things. " She looked at me again. "Armand, even now you're still changing. Your face, it's getting fuller. "
"Yes, and it hurts," I said. "Wait for me. Prepare a dark room for me. I'll come back as soon as I've fed. I have to feed now, feed and feed to heal the scars that are left. Open the door for me. "
"Let me see if there's anyone out there," said Benji with a quick dutiful rush to the door.
I went out into the hallway, easily carrying the poor corpse, its white arms hanging down, swinging and banging against me just a little.
What a sight I was in these big clothes. I must have looked like a mad poetical schoolboy who had raided the thrift stores for the finest threads and was off now in fancy new shoes to search out the rock bands.
"There isn't anyone out here, my little friend," I said. "It's three of the clock and the hotel's asleep. And if reason serves me right, that's the door of the fire stairs there, at the very end of the hall, correct? There isn't anyone in the fire stairs either. "
"Oh, clever Armand, you delight me!" he said. He narrowed his little black eyes. He jumped up and down soundlessly on the hallway carpet. "Give me the watch!" he whispered.
"No," I said. "She's right. She's rich, and so am I, and so are you. Don't be a beggar. "
"Armand, we'll wait for you," said Sybelle in the doorframe. "Benji, come inside immediately. "
"Oh, listen to her now, how she wakes up! How she talks! 'Benji, come inside,' she says. Hey, sweetheart, don't you have something to do just now, like perhaps play the piano?"
She gave a tiny burst of laughter in spite of herself. I smiled. What a strange pair they were. They did not believe their own eyes. But that was typical enough in this century. I wondered when they would start to see, and having seen, start screaming.
"Goodbye, sweet loves," I said. "Be ready for me. "
"Armand, you will come back. " Her eyes were fall of tears. "You promise me. "
I was stunned. "Sybelle," I said. "What is it that women want so often to hear and wait so long to hear it? I love you. "
I left them, racing down the stairs, hefting him to the other shoulder when the weight on the one side became too hurtful. The pain passed over me in waves. The shock of the outside cold air was scalding.
"Feed," I whispered. And what was I to do with him? He was far too naked to carry down Fifth Avenue.
I slipped off his watch because it was the only identification on him left, and almost vomiting with revulsion from my closeness to these fetid remains, I dragged him by one hand after me very fast through the back alley, and then across a small street, and down another sidewalk.
I ran into the face of the icy wind, not stopping to observe those few hulking shapes that hobbled by in the wet darkness, or to take stock of the one car that crept along on the shining wet asphalt.
Within seconds I had covered two blocks, and finding a likely alleyway, with a high gate to keep out the beggars of the night, I quickly mounted the bars and flung his carcass to the very far end of it. Down into the melting snow he fell. I was rid of him.
Now I had to have blood. There was no time for the old game, the game of drawing out those who wanted to die, those who truly craved my embrace, those in love already with the far country of death of which they knew nothing.
I had to shuffle and stumble along, the mark, in my floppy silk jacket and rolled pants, long hair veiling my face, poor dazzled kid, perfect for your knife, your gun, your fist.
It didn't take long.
The first was a drunken, sauntering wretch who plied me with questions before he revealed the flashing blade and went to sink it into me. I pushed him up against the side of the building, and fed like a glutton.
The next was a common desperate youth, fall of festering sores, who had killed twice before for the heroin he needed as badly as I needed the doomed blood inside him.
I drank more slowly.
The thickest worst scars of my body yielded with much defense, itching, throbbing and only slowly melting away. But the thirst, the thirst would not stop. My bowels churned as if devouring themselves. My eyes pulsed with pain.
But the cold wet city, so full of rankling hollow noise, grew ever brighter before me. I could hear voices many blocks away, and small electronic speakers in high buildings. I could see beyond the breaking clouds the true and numberless stars.
I was almost myself again.