I saw him smile before he could stop himself. He knew my vanity, and he probably knew 
that in the early nineties of the twentieth century, Italian fashion had flooded the 
market with so much shapeless, hangy, bulky, formless attire that one of the most erotic 
and flattering garments a man could choose was the well-tailored navy-blue Brooks 
Brothers suit.
  
  Besides, a mop of flowing hair and expert tailoring are always a potent combination. 
Who knows that better than I?
  
  I didn't mean to harp on the clothes! To hell with the clothes. It's just I was so 
proud of myself for being spiffed up and full of gorgeous contradictions a picture of 
long locks, the impeccable tailoring, and a regal manner of slumping against the railing 
and sort of blocking stairs.
  
  He came up to me at once. He smelled like the deep winter out-side where people were 
slipping in the frozen streets, and snow had turned to filth in the gutters. His face had 
the subtle preternatural gleam which only I could detect, and love, and properly 
appreciate, and eventually kiss.
  
  We walked together onto the carpeted mezzanine.
  
  Momentarily, I hated it that he was two inches taller than me. But I was so glad to see 
him, so glad to be near him. And it was warm in here, and shadowy and vast, one of the 
places where people do not stare at others.
  
  "You've come," I said. "I didn't think you would."
  
  "Of course," he scolded, the gracious British accent breaking softly from the young 
dark face, giving me the usual shock. This was an old man in a young man's body, recently 
made a vampire, and by me, one of the most powerful of our remaining kind.
  
  "What did you expect?" he said, tete-a-tete. "Armand told me you were calling me. 
Maharet told me."
  
  "Ah, that answers my first question." I wanted to kiss him, and suddenly I did put out 
my arms, rather tentatively and politely so that he could get away if he wanted, and when 
he let me hug him, when he returned the warmth, I felt a happiness I hadn't experienced 
in months.

  Perhaps I hadn't experienced it since I had left him, with Louis.  We had been in some 
nameless jungle place, the three of us, when we agreed to part, and that had been a year 
ago.
  
  "Your first question?" he asked, peering at me very closely, sizing me up perhaps, 
doing everything a vampire can do to measure the mood and mind of his maker, because a 
vampire cannot read his maker's mind, any more than the maker can read the mind of the 
fledgling.
  
  And there we stood divided, laden with preternatural gifts, both fit and rather full of 
emotion, and unable to communicate except in the simplest and best way, perhaps with 
words.
  
  "My first question," I began to explain, to answer, "was simply going to be: Where have 
you been, and have you found the others, and did they try to hurt you? All that rot, you 
know how I broke the rules when I made you, et cetera."
  
  "All that rot," he mocked me, the French accent I still possessed, now coupled with 
something definitely American. "What rot."
  
  "Come on," I said. "Let's go into the bar there and talk. Obviously no one has done 
anything to you. I didn't think they could or they would, or that they'd dare. I wouldn't 
have let you slip off into the world if I'd thought you were in danger."
  
  He smiled, his brown eyes full of gold light for just an instant.
  
  "Didn't you tell me this twenty-five times, more or less, before we parted company?"
  
  We found a small table, cleaving to the wall. The place was half crowded, the perfect 
proportion exactly. What did we look like? A couple of young men on the make for mortal 
men or women? I don't care.
  
  "No one has harmed me," he said, "and no one has shown the slightest interest in it."
  
  Someone was playing a piano, very tenderly for a hotel bar, I thought. And it was 
something by Erik Satie. What luck.
  
  "The tie," he said, leaning forward, white teeth flashing, fangs completely hidden, of 
course. "This, this big mass of silk around your neck! This is not Brooks Brothers!" He 
gave a soft teasing laugh. "Look at you, and the wing-tip shoes! My, my. What's going on 
in your mind? And what is this all about?"
  
  The bartender threw a hefty shadow over the small table, and murmured predictable 
phrases that were lost to me in my excitement and in the noise.
  
  "Something hot," David said. It didn't surprise me. "You know, rum punch or some such, 
whatever you can heat up."
  
  I nodded and made a little gesture to the indifferent fellow that I would take the same 
thing.
  
  Vampires always order hot drinks. They aren't going to drink them; but they can feel 
the warmth and smell them if they're hot, and that is so good.
  
  David looked at me again. Or rather this familiar body with David inside looked at me. 
Because for me, David would always be the elderly human I'd known and treasured, as well 
as this magnificent burnished shell of stolen flesh that was slowly being shaped by his 
expressions and manner and mood.
  
  Dear Reader, he switched human bodies before I made him a vampire, worry no more. It 
has nothing to do with this story.