"That is charming, David," I said. "It is a long time since anyone has charmed me. I'll 
meet you there... tomorrow night."
  And then a wickedness possessed me. I came towards you and embraced you, knowing that 
the hardness and coldness of my ancient body would strike the deepest chord of terror in 
you, newborn as you were, passing so easily for mortal.
  But you didn't draw back. And when I kissed your cheek, you kissed mine.
  I wonder now, as I sit here in the cafe, writing... trying to give you more with these 
words perhaps than you ask for... what I would have done had you not kissed me, had you 
shrunk back with the fear that is so common in the young.
  David, you are indeed a puzzle.
  You see that I have begun to chronicle not my life here, but what has passed these two 
nights between you and me.
  Allow this, David. Allow that I speak of you and me, and then perhaps I can retrieve my 
lost life.
  When you came into the cafe tonight, I thought nothing much about the notebooks. You 
had two. They were thick.
  The leather of the notebooks smelled good and old, and when you set them down on the 
table, only then did I detect a glimmer from your disciplined and restrained mind that 
they had to do with me.
  I had chosen this table in the crowded center of the room, as though I wanted to be in 
the middle of the whirlpool of mortal scent and activity. You seemed pleased, unafraid, 
utterly at home.
  You wore another stunning suit of modern cut with a full cape of worsted wool, very 
tasteful, yet Old World, and with your golden skin and radiant eyes, you turned the head 
of every woman in the place and you turned the heads of some of the men.
  You smiled. I must have seemed a snail to you beneath my cloak and hood, gold glasses 
covering well over half my face, and a trace of commercial lipstick on my lips, a soft 
purple pink that had made me think of bruises. It had seemed very enticing in the mirror 
at the store, and I liked that my mouth was something I didn't have to hide, My lips are 
now almost colorless. With this lipstick I could smile.
  I wore these gloves of mine, black lace, with their sheared-off tips so that my fingers 
can feel, and I had sooted my nails so they would not sparkle like crystal in the cafe. 
And I reached out my hand to you and you kissed it.
  There was your same boldness and decorum. And then the warmest smile from you, a smile 
in which l think your former physiology must have dominated because you looked far too 
wise for one so young and strong of build. I marveled at the perfect picture you had made 
of yourself.
  "You don't know what a joy it is to me," you said, "that you've come, that you've let 
me join you here at this table."
  "You have made me want this," I said, raising my hands, and seeing that your eyes were 
dazzled by my crystalline fingernails, in spite of the soot.
  I reached towards you, expecting you to pull back, but you entrusted to my cold white 
fingers your warm dark hand.
  "You find in me a living being?" I asked you.
  "Oh, yes, most definitely, most radiantly and perfectly a living being."
  We ordered our coffee, as mortals expect us to do, deriving more pleasure from the heat 
and aroma than they could ever imagine, even stirring our little cups with our spoons. I 
had before me a red dessert. The dessert is still here of course. I ordered it simply 
because it was red - strawberries covered in syrup - with a strong sweet smell that bees 
would like.
  I smiled at your blandishments. I liked them.
  Playfully, I mocked them. I let my hood slip down and I shook out my hair so that its 
fullness and dark brown color could shimmer in the light.
  Of course it's no signal to mortals, as is Marius's blond hair or that of Lestat. But I 
love my own hair, I love the veil of it when it is down over my shoulders, and I loved 
what I saw in your eyes.
  "Somewhere deep inside me there is a woman," I said.
  To write it now - in this notebook as I sit here alone - it gives architecture to a 
trivial moment, and seems so dire a confession.
  David, the more I write, the more the concept of narrative excites me, the more I 
believe in the weight of a coherence which is possible on the page though not in life.
  But again, I didn't know I meant to pick up this pen of yours at all. We were talking:
  "Pandora, if anyone does not know you're a woman, then he is a fool," you said.
  "How angry Marius would be with me for being pleased by that," I said. "Oh, no. Rather 
he would seize it as a strong point in favor of his position. I left him, left him 
without a word, the last time we were together - that was before Lestat went on his 
little escapade of running around in a human body, and long before he encountered Memnoch 
the Devil - I left Marius, and suddenly I wish I could reach him! I wish I could talk 
with him as you and I are talking now."
  You looked so troubled for me, and with reason. On some level, you must have known that 
I had not evinced this much enthusiasm over anything in many a dreary year.
  "Would you write your story for me, Pandora'?" you asked suddenly.
  I was totally surprised.
  "Write it in these notebooks?" you pressed. "Write about the time when you were alive, 
the time when you and Marius came together, write what you will of Marius. But it's your 
story that I most want."
  I was stunned.
  "Why in the world would you want this of me?"
  You didn't answer.
  "David, surely you've not returned to that order of human beings, the Talamasca, they 
know too much -"
  You put up your hand.
  "No, and I will never; and if there was ever any doubt of it, I learnt it once and for 
all in the archives kept by Maharet."
  "She allowed you to see her archives, the books she's saved over the course of time"
  "Yes, it was remarkable, you know... a storehouse of tablets, scrolls, parchments - 
books and poems from cultures of which the world knows nothing, I think, Books lost from 
time. Of course she forbade me to reveal anything I found or speak in detail of our 
meeting. She said it was too rash tampering with things, and she confirmed your fear that 
I might go to the Talamasca - my old mortal psychic friends. I have not. I will not. But 
it is a very easy vow to keep."
  "Why so?"
  "Pandora, when I saw all those old writings - I knew I was no longer human. I knew that 
the history lying there to be collected was no longer mine! I am not one of these!" Your 
eyes swept the room. "Of course you must have heard this a thousand times from fledgling 
vampires! But you see, I had a fervent faith that philosophy and reason would make a 
bridge for me by which I could go and come in both worlds. Well, there is no bridge. It's 
gone."
  Your sadness shimmered about you, flashing in your young eyes and in the softness of 
your new flesh.