But I might have backed off from Satan's Night Out and roamed about for a few years, 
stunned and trying to gather my wits.
  
  The men -- Alex, the sleek delicate young drummer, and his taller blond-haired brother, 
Larry -- recognized my name when I told them it was Lestat.
  
  Not only did they recognize it, but they connected it with a body of information about 
me that they had read in a book.
  
  In fact, they thought it was delightful that I wasn't just pretending to be any 
vampire. Or Count Dracula. Everybody was sick of Count Dracula. They thought it was 
marvelous that I was pretending to be the vampire Lestat.
  
  "Pretending to be the vampire Lestat?" I asked.
  
  They laughed at my exaggeration, my French accent.
  
  I looked at all of them for a long moment, trying to scan their thoughts. Of course I 
hadn't expected them to believe I was a real vampire. But to have read of a fictional 
vampire with a name as unusual as mine? How could this be explained?
  
  But I was losing my confidence. And when I lose my confidence, my powers drain. The 
little room seemed to be getting smaller. And there was something insectile and menacing 
about the instruments, the antenna, the wires.
  
  "Show me this book," I said.
  
  From the other room they brought it, a small pulp paper "novel" that was falling to 
pieces. The binding was gone, the cover ripped, the whole held together by a rubber band.
  
  I got a preternatural chill of sorts at the sight of the cover. Interview with the 
Vampire. Something to do with a mortal boy getting one of the undead to tell the tale.
  
  With their permission, I went into the other room, stretched out on their bed, and 
began to read. When I was halfway finished, I took the book with me and left the house. I 
stood stock-still beneath a street lamp with the book until I finished it. Then I placed 
it carefully in my breast pocket.
  
  I didn't return to the band for seven nights.
  
  DURING MUCH OF THAT TIME, I WAS ROAMING AGAIN, CRASHING through the night on my 
Harley-Davidson motorcycle with the Bach Goldberg Variations turned up to full volume. 
And I was asking myself, Lestat, what do you want to do now?
  
  And the rest of the time I studied with a renewed purpose. I read the fat paperback 
histories and lexicons of rock music, the chronicles of its stars. I listened to the 
albums and pondered in silence the concert video tapes. And when the night was empty and 
still, I heard the voices of Interview with the Vampire singing to me, as if they sang 
from the grave. I read the book over and over. And then in a moment of contemptible 
anger, I shredded it to bits.
  
  FINALLY, I CAME TO MY DECISION.
  
  I met my young lawyer, Christine, in her darkened skyscraper office with only the 
downtown city to give us light. Lovely she looked against the glass wall behind her, the 
dim buildings beyond forming a harsh and primitive terrain in which a thousand torches 
burned.
  
  "It is not enough any longer that my little rock band be successful," I told her. "We 
must create a fame that will carry my name and my voice to the remotest parts of the 
world."
  
  Quietly, intelligently, as lawyers are wont to do, she advised me against risking my 
fortune. Yet as I continued with maniacal confidence, I could feel her seduction, the, 
slow dissolution of her common sense.
  
  "The best French directors for the rock video films," I said. "You must lure them from 
New York and Los Angeles. There is ample money for that. And here you can find the 
studios, surely, in which we will do our work. The young record producers who mix the 
sound after -- again, you must hire the best. It does not matter what we spend on this 
venture. What is important is that it be orchestrated, that we do our work in secret 
until the moment of revelation when our albums and our films are released with the book 
that I propose to write."
  
  Finally her head was swimming with dreams of wealth and power. Her pen raced as she 
made her notes.
  
  And what did I dream of as I spoke to her? Of an unprecedented rebellion, a great and 
horrific challenge to my kind all over the world.
  
  "These rock videos," I said. "You must find directors who'll realize my visions. The 
films are to be sequential. They must tell the story that is in the book I want to 
create. And the songs, many of them I've already written. You must obtain superior 
instruments -- synthesizers, the finest sound systems, electric guitars, violins. Other 
details we can attend to later. The designing of vampire costumes, the method of 
presentation to the rock television stations, the management of our first public 
appearance in San Francisco -- all that in good time. What is important now is that you 
make the phone calls, get the information you need to begin."
  
  I DIDN'T GO BACK TO SATAN'S NIGHT OUT UNTIL THE FIRST agreements were struck and 
signatures had been obtained. Dates were fixed, studios rented, letters of agreement 
exchanged.
  
  Then Christine came with me, and we had a great leviathan of a limousine for my darling 
young rock players, Larry and Alex and Tough Cookie. We had breathtaking sums of money, 
we had papers to be signed.
  
  Under the drowsy oaks of the quiet Garden District street, I poured the champagne into 
the glistening crystal glasses for them: