" `Stop looking at my buttons,' Lestat said. `Go out there into the trees. Rid yourself 
of all the human waste in your body, and don't fall so madly in love with the night that 
you lose your ways'
  "That, of course, was a wise command. When I saw the moon on the flagstones, I became 
so enamored with it that I must have spent an hour there. I passed my brother's oratory 
without so much as a thought of him, and standing among the cottonwood and oaks, I heard 
the night as if it were a chorus of whispering women, all beckoning me to their breasts. 
As for my body, it was not yet totally converted, and as soon as I became the least 
accustomed to the sounds and sights, it began to ache. All my human fluids were being 
forced out of me. I was dying as a human, yet completely alive as a vampire; and with my 
awakened senses, I had to preside over the death of my body with a certain discomfort and 
then, finally, fear. I ran back up the steps to the parlor, where Lestat was already at 
work on the plantation papers, going over the expenses and profits for the last year. 
`You're a rich man,' he said to me when I came in. `Something's happening to me,' I 
shouted.
  " `You're dying, that's all; don't be a fool. Don't you have any oil lamps? All this 
money and you can't afford whale oil except for that lantern. Bring me that lantern.'
  " `Dying!' I shouted. `Dying!'
  " `It happens to everyone,' he persisted, refusing to help me. As I look back on this, 
I still despise him for it. Not because I was afraid, but because he might have drawn my 
attention to these changes with reverence. He might have calmed me and told me I might 
watch my death with the same fascination with which I had watched and felt the night. But 
he didn't. Lestat was never the vampire I am. Not at all." The vampire did not say this 
boastfully. He said it as if he would truly have had it otherwise.
  "Alors," he sighed. "I was dying fast, which meant that my capacity for fear was 
diminishing as rapidly. I simply regret I was not more attentive to the process. Lestat 
was being a perfect idiot. `Oh, for the love of hell!' he began shouting. `Do you realize 
I've made no provision for you? What a fool I am.' I was tempted to say, `Yes, you are,' 
but I didn't. `You'll have to bed down with me this morning. I haven't prepared you a 
coffin.' "
  The vampire laughed. "The coffin struck such a chord of terror in me I think it 
absorbed all the capacity for terror I had left. Then came only my mild alarm at having 
to share a coffin with Lestat. He was in his father's bedroom meantime, telling the old 
man
  good-bye, that he would return in the morning. But where do you go, why must you live 
by such a schedule!' the old man demanded, and Lestat became impatient. Before this, he'd 
been gracious to the old man, almost to the point of sickening one, but now he became a 
bully. `I take care of you, don't I? I've put a better roof over your head than you ever 
put over mine! If I want to sleep all day and drink all night, I'll do it, damn you!' The 
old man started to whine. Only my peculiar state of emotions and most unusual feeling of 
exhaustion kept me from disapproving. I was watching the scene through the open door, 
enthralled with the colors of the counterpane and the positive riot of color in the old 
man's face. His blue veins pulsed beneath his pink and grayish flesh. I found even the 
yellow of his teeth appealing to me; and I became almost hypnotized by the quivering of 
his lip. `Such a son, such a son,' he said, never suspecting, of course, the true nature 
of his son. `All right, then, go. I know you keep a woman somewhere; you go to see her as 
soon as her husband leaves in the morning. Give me my rosary. What's happened to my 
rosary?' Lestat said something blasphemous and gave him the rosary. . . ."
  "But . ." the boy started.
  "Yes?" said the vampire. "I'm afraid I don't allow you to ask enough questions."
  "I was going to ask, rosaries have crosses on them, don't they?"
  "Oh, the rumor about crosses!" the vampire laughed "You refer to our being afraid of 
crosses?"
  "Unable to look on them, I thought; ' said the boy.
  "Nonsense, my friend, sheer nonsense. I can look on anything I like. And I rather like 
looking on crucifixes in particular."
  "And what about the rumor about keyholes? That you can . . . become steam and go 
through them."
  "I wish I could," laughed the vampire. "How positively delightful. I should like to 
pass through all manner of different keyholes and feel the tickle of their peculiar 
shapes. No." He shook his head. "That is, how would you say today . . . bullshit?"
  The boy laughed despite himself. Then his face grew serious.
  "You mustn't be so shy with me," the vampire said. "What is it?"
  "The story about stakes through the heart," said the boy, his cheeks coloring slightly.
  "The same," said the vampire. "Bull-shit," he said, carefully articulating both 
syllables, so that the boy smiled. "No magical power whatsoever. Why don't you smoke one 
of your cigarettes? I see you have them in your shirt pocket."
  "Oh, thank you," the boy said, as if it were a marvelous suggestion. But once he had 
the cigarette to his lips, his hands were trembling so badly that he mangled the first 
fragile book match.
  "Allow me," said the vampire. And, taking the book, he quickly put a lighted match to 
the boy's cigarette. The boy inhaled, his eyes on the vampire's fingers. Now the vampire 
withdrew across the table with a soft rustling of garments. "There's an ashtray on the 
basin," he said, and the boy moved nervously to get it. He stared at the few butts in it 
for a moment, and then, seeing the small waste basket beneath, he emptied the ashtray and 
quickly set it on the table. His fingers left damp marks on the cigarette when he put it 
down. "Is this your room?" he asked.
  "No," answered the vampire. "Just a room."
  "What happened then?" the boy asked. The vampire appeared to be watching the smoke 
gather beneath the overhead bulb.
  "Ah . . . we went back to New Orleans posthaste," he said. "Lestat had his coffin in a 
miserable room near the ramparts."
  "And you did get into the coffin?"
  "I had no choice. I begged Lestat to let me stay in the closet, but he laughed, 
astonished. `Don't you know what you are?' he asked. `But is it magical? Must it have 
this shape?' I pleaded. Only to hear him laugh again. I couldn't bear the idea; but as we 
argued, I realized I had no real fear. It was a strange realization. All my life I'd 
feared closed places. Born and bred in French houses with lofty ceilings and floor-length 
windows, I had a dread of being enclosed. I felt uncomfortable even in the confessional 
in church. It was a normal enough fear. And now I realized as I protested to Lestat, I 
did not actually feel this anymore. I was simply remembering it. Hanging on to it from 
habit, from a deficiency of ability to recognize my present and exhilarating freedom. 
`You're carrying on badly,' Lestat said finally. `And it's almost dawn. I should let you 
die. You will die, you know. The sun will destroy the blood I've given you, in every 
tissue, every vein. But you shouldn't be feeling this fear at all. I think you're like a 
man who loses an arm or a leg and keeps insisting that he can feel pain where the arm or 
leg used to be.' Well, that was positively the most intelligent and useful thing Lestat 
ever said in my presence, and it brought me around at once. `Now, I'm getting into the 
coffin,' he finally said to me in his most disdainful tone, `and you will get in on top 
of me if you know what's good for you.' And I did. I lay face-down on him, utterly