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I let him go and he sprang back, nearly toppling over, hand flung out to catch the stone rail. What was it about this man's gestures He was powerfully built, but he moved as if he were a thin, tentative creature. I couldn't figure it out.
Explain this proposition now! I said, and I could hear his heart come to a stop inside his broad chest.
No, he said. But we shall talk very soon. Such a cultured voice, a polished voice.
Far too refined and careful for the large glazed brown eyes, and the smooth robust young face. Was he some hothouse plant grown to prodigious proportions in the company of elderly people, never having seen a person his own age
Don't be hasty! he shouted again, and off he ran, stumbling, then catching himself, and then forcing his tall, clumsy body into the small car, and driving off through the frozen snow.
Indeed, he was going so fast as he disappeared into St. Ger-main, I thought he would have a wreck and kill himself.
I looked down at the envelope. Another damned short story, no doubt. I tore it open angrily, not sure I should have let him go, and yet somehow enjoying this little game, and even enjoying my own indignation at his cleverness and capacity for tracking me.
I saw that, indeed, it was a videotape of a recent film. Vice Versa was the title. What on earth . . . I flipped it over, and scanned the advertisement. A comic piece.
I returned to the hotel. There was yet another package waiting for me. Another videotape. All of Me was the name of it, and once again, the description on the back of the plastic case gave a fair idea of what it was about.
I went to my rooms. No video player! Not even in the Ritz. I rang David, though it was now very near dawn.
Would you come to Paris I'll have everything arranged for you. See you at dinner, eight o'clock tomorrow in the dining room downstairs.
Then I did call my mortal agent, rousing him from bed and instructing him to arrange David's ticket, limousine, suite, and whatever else he
should need. There should be cash waiting for David; there should be flowers; and chilled champagne. Then I went out to find a safe place to sleep.
But an hour later-as I stood in the dark dank cellar of an old abandoned house-I wondered if the little mortal bastard couldn't see me even now, if he didn't know where I slept by day, and couldn't come bring in the sun upon me, like some cheap vampire-hunter in a bad movie, with no respect for the mysterious at all.
I dug deep beneath the cellar. No mortal alone could have found me there. And even in my sleep, I might have strangled him if he had, without my ever knowing it.
So what do you think it all means? I said to David. The dining room was exquisitely decorated and half empty. I sat there hi the candlelight, in black dinner jacket and boiled shirt, with my arms folded before me, enjoying the fact that I needed only the pale-violet tinted glasses now to hide my eyes. How well I could see the tapestried portieres, and the dim garden beyond the windows.
David was eating lustily. He'd been utterly delighted to come to Paris, loved his suite over the Place Vendome, with its velvet carpets and gilded furnishings, and had spent all afternoon in the Louvre.
Well, you can see the theme, can't you? he replied.
I'm not sure, I said. I do see common elements, of course, but these little stories are all different.
How so?
Well, in the Lovecraft piece, Asenath, this diabolical woman, switches bodies with her husband. She runs about the town using his male body, while he is stuck at home in her body, miserable and confused. I thought it was a hoot, actually. Just wonderfully clever, and of course Asenath isn't Asenath, as I recall, but her father, who has switched bodies with her. And then it ail becomes very Lovecraftian, with slimy half-human demons and such.
That may be the irrelevant part. And the Egyptian story?
Completely different. The moldering dead, which still possess life, you know . . .
Yes, but the plot.
Well, the soul of the mummy manages to get possession of the body of the archaeologist, and he, the poor devil, is put hi the rotted body of the mummy-
Yes?
Good Lord, I see what you're saying. And then the film Vice Versa. It's about the soul of a boy and the soul of a man who switch bodies! All hell breaks loose until they are able to switch back. And the film All of Me, it's about body switching as well. You're absolutely right. All four stories are about the same thing.
Exactly.
Christ, David. It's all coming clear. I don't know why I didn't see it. But. . .
This man is trying to get you to believe that he knows something about this body switching. He's trying to entice you with the suggestion that such a thing can be done.
