Since that awful night, Rose had been in a kind of a daze. She'd lost all appetite for school, for friends, for everything. She'd been moving around the campus as if in a half sleep, scared to death of running into Gardner anywhere or everywhere, and her mind kept circling back over what had happened. Maybe it would do her good to read these books and see just how unfair to her Gardner had been.
Rose read the entire weekend. On Monday, she cut class and continued reading, complaining to Marge of an upset stomach. Sometime around Wednesday, she heard voices outside the little house and looked down to see Murray arguing with Gardner Paleston at the curb. Murray was clearly angry, but then so was Gardner. Finally the professor turned and walked off, shaking his head, his hand flung out before him, clawing at the air, and he appeared to be murmuring to himself.
By Friday of that week, Rose felt remarkably calm about the situation. Whatever she was thinking no longer had much to do with Gardner. She was thinking of the books she'd been reading and she was thinking of Uncle Lestan.
She knew now why Gardner had made his distasteful and hostile accusations. Yes, she could see it quite clearly. Gardner was a self-centered and inconsiderate man. But she knew now why he had said what he had said.
Uncle Lestan's physical description perfectly matched that of "the Vampire Lestat," and his friend and lover, "Louis de Pointe du Lac" was certainly a dead ringer for the Louis who'd rescued Rose from Amazing Grace Home for Girls. Dead ringer. Now that was a good pun.
But what did it mean that this was the case?
Not for one moment did Rose believe in vampires. Not for one second. She no more believed in vampires than she believed in werewolves, or Bigfoot, or the Yeti, or aliens from outer space, or little winged fairies living in gardens, or elves capturing people in dark woodlands and transporting them to Magonia. She didn't believe in ghosts, or astral travel, or near-death experiences, or psychics or witches or sorcerers either. Well, maybe she believed in ghosts. And well, maybe she believed in "near-death experiences," yes. She had known a number of people who had those.
But vampires?
No. She did not believe in them. Whatever the case, she was intrigued by this series of fictional stories about them. And there was not a single description in any of them of the Vampire Lestat, or
a single line of dialogue spoken by him, that did not check completely with her vision of Uncle Lestan. But that was sheer coincidence, surely. As for Louis, well, the character with the similar name was indeed exactly like him, yes, but that was sheer coincidence, too, wasn't it? Well, it had to be! There was no other explanation.
Unless they belonged to some organization, her uncle and this man, in which they engaged in role-playing games of some sophisticated sort modeled after the characters in these novels. But that was ridiculous. Playing roles was one thing. How in the world could anyone make himself look the way Uncle Lestan did?
She felt a strange embarrassment at the very thought of asking Uncle Lestan whether or not he'd read these books. It would be insulting and demeaning to do this, she thought, rather like Gardner insulting her when he threw the book at her face, and went on with his accusations.
But the entire problem began to obsess Rose. Meanwhile she read every last word of every book she could find with these characters.
And the stories in truth amazed her, not only by their complexity and depth, but by the peculiar dark turns they took, and the chronology they laid out for the main character's moral development. She realized that she was now thinking of Uncle Lestan as that main character. He'd been wounded, shocked, the victim of a series of disasters and adventures. He'd become a wanderer in these books. And his skin was tanned because he kept letting himself suffer the effects of sunlight in a painful attempt to mask his preternatural identity.
No, this is impossible.
She barely noticed when Marge told her that Gardner had gotten hold of their home number and she had had to change it. Rose keyed the new number into her cell and forgot about it. She didn't use the landline much, but of course it was the principal way to reach Marge. So she had to have that number.
"Do you want to tell me what's the matter?" Marge asked. "I know something happened."
Rose shook her head. "Just reading, thinking," she said. "I'm better now. I'm going back Monday. I have a lot of catching up to do."
In class, she could barely keep her mind on the lecture. She kept drifting off, thinking about that long-ago night when Uncle Lestan had caught her in his arms and carried her up and up from that island. She saw him in that dim, shadowy little lawyer's office in Athens, Texas, saying, "Make it happen!"
Well, there had to be some explanation. And then it struck her. Of course. Her uncle knew the author of these books. Her uncle had perhaps inspired them. It was so simple she almost laughed out loud. That had to be it. He and his friend Louis had inspired this fiction. And when she'd tell him she'd found the books, of course, he would laugh and explain how they'd come to be written! He'd probably say he'd been honored to be the inspiration of such bizarre and romantic ramblings.
Sitting in the back of a history class, oblivious to the teacher's words, she slipped Interview with the Vampire out of her purse and checked the copyright: 1976. No, that couldn't be right. If her uncle had been a grown man by that time, well, now he'd be nearly sixty. No way was Uncle Lestan that old. That was positively ridiculous. But then ... how old was he? How old had he been when he'd rescued her from that island earthquake? Hmmm ... this wasn't adding up. Maybe he'd been just a boy, then, when he'd rescued her and he'd looked like a grown man to her--a boy of what, sixteen or seventeen, and now he was what, forty? Well, that was possible. But hardly likely. No, this did not add up, and overshadowing it all was her vivid conviction of his demeanor, his charm.
Class was over. Time to shuffle on, and go through the motions someplace else, to drift until she saw Murray waiting for her on some curb somewhere.... But surely there was a logical explanation.
Murray drove her away from the campus to a restaurant she particularly liked where Marge was to meet her for an early dinner.
It was getting dark. They had a regular table and she was glad that she had a little while to sit there alone, enjoy a badly needed cup of black coffee, and just think to herself.
She was looking out the window, paying very little attention to much of anything, when she realized someone had sat down opposite her.
It was Gardner.
She was badly startled.
"Rose, do you realize what you've done to me?" he asked. His voice was deep and tremulous.
"Look, I want you to leave," she started. He reached across the table and tried to take hold of her hand.
Drawing it back, she stood up and stumbled away from the table, running towards the back of the restaurant. She hoped and prayed the one small ladies' room would be empty.