china of Chinese blue and white, so neatly stacked, with plates displayed. Behold the 
dog-eared cookbooks. And how spotless her table with its shining oilcloth of pure yellow, 
and waxen green ivy growing in a round bowl of clear water, which projected upon the low 
ceiling a single quivering circle of light.
  
  But what filled my mind as I stood there, rigid, pushing the door shut with my fingers, 
was that she was unafraid of death as she read her Betty Smith novel, as she occasionally 
glanced at the glittering screen. She had no inner antenna to pick up the presence of the 
spook who stood, sunk into madness, in the nearby street, or the monster who haunted her 
kitchen now.
  
  The killer was immersed so completely in his hallucinations that he did not see those 
who passed him by. He did not see the police car prowling, or the suspicious and 
deliberately menacing looks of the uniformed mortals who knew all about him, and that he 
would strike tonight, but not who he was.
  
  A thin line of spit moved down his unshaven chin. Nothing was real to him-not his life 
by day, not fear of discovery- only the electric shiver which these hallucinations sent 
through his hulking torso and clumsy arms and legs. His left hand twitched suddenly. 
There was a catch at the left side of his mouth.
  
  I hated this guy! I didn't want to drink his blood. He was no classy killer. It was her 
blood I craved.
  
  How thoughtful she was in her solitude and silence, how small, how contented, her 
concentration as fine as a light beam as she read the paragraphs of this story she knew 
so well. Traveling, traveling back to those days when she first read this book, at a 
crowded soda fountain on Lexington Avenue in New York City, when she was a smartly 
dressed young secretary in a red wool skirt and a white ruffled blouse with pearl buttons 
on the cuffs. She worked in a stone office tower, infinitely glamorous, with ornate brass 
doors on its elevators, and dark yellow marble tile in its halls.
  
  I wanted to press my lips to her memories, to the remembered sounds of her high heels 
clicking on the marble, to the image of her smooth calf beneath the pure silk stocking as 
she put it on so carefully, not to snag it with her long enameled nails. I saw her red 
hair for an instant. I saw her extravagant and potentially hideous yet charming yellow 
brimmed hat.
  
  That's blood worth having. And I was starving, starving as I have seldom been in all 
these decades. The unseasonal Lenten fast had been almost more than I could endure. Oh, 
Lord God, I wanted so to kill her!
  
  Below in the street, a faint gurgling sound came from the lips of the stupid, clumsy 
killer. It cleared its way through the raging torrent of other sounds that poured into my 
vampiric ears.
  
  At last, the beast lurched away from the wall, listing for a moment as if he would go 
sprawling, then sauntered towards us, into the little courtyard and up the steps.
  
  Will I let him frighten her? It seemed pointless. I have him in my sights, do I not? 
Yet I allowed him to put his small metal tool into the round hole in her doorknob, I gave 
him time to force the lock. The chain tore loose from the rotten wood.
  
  He stepped into the room, fixing upon her without expression. She was terrified, 
shrinking back in her chair, the book slipping from her lap.
  
  Ah, but then he saw me in the kitchen doorway-a shadowy young man in gray velvet, 
glasses pushed up over his forehead. I was gazing at him in his own expressionless 
fashion. Did he see these iridescent eyes, this skin like polished ivory, hair like a 
soundless explosion of white light? Or was I merely an obstacle between him and his 
sinister goal, all beauty wasted?
  
  In a second, he bolted. He was down the steps as the old woman screamed and rushed 
forward to slam the wooden door.
  
  I was after him, not bothering to touch terra firma, letting him see me poised for an 
instant under the street lamp as he turned the corner. We went for half a block before I 
drifted towards him, a blur to the mortals, who didn't bother to notice. Then I froze 
beside him, and heard his groan as he broke into a run.
  
  For blocks we played this game. He ran, he stopped, he saw me behind him. The sweat 
poured down his body. Indeed the thin synthetic fabric of the shirt was soon translucent 
with it, and clinging to the smooth hairless flesh of his chest.
  
  At last he came to his seedy flophouse hotel and pounded up the stairs. I was in the 
small top-floor room when he reached it. Before he could cry out, I had him in my arms. 
The stench of his dirty hair rose in my nostrils, mingled with a thin acidic smell from 
the chemical fibers of the shirt. But it didn't matter now. He was powerful and warm in 
my arms, a juicy capon, chest heaving against me, the smell of his blood flooding my 
brain. I heard it pulsing through ventricles and valves and painfully constricted 
vessels. I licked at it in the tender red flesh beneath his eyes.
  
  His heart was laboring and nearly bursting-careful, careful, don't crush him, I let my 
teeth clamp down on the wet leathery skin of his neck. Hmmm. My brother, my poor 
befuddled brother. But this was rich, this was good.
  
  The fountain opened; his life was a sewer. All those old women, those old men. They 
were cadavers floating in the current; they tumbled against each other without meaning, 
as he went limp in my arms. No sport. Too easy. No cunning. No malice. Crude as a lizard 
he had been, swallowing fly after fly. Lord God, to know this is to know the time when 
the giant reptiles ruled the earth, and for a million years, only their yellow eyes 
beheld the falling rain, or the rising sun.
  
  Never mind. I let him go, tumbling soundlessly out of my grip. I was swimming with his 
mammalian blood. Good enough. I closed my eyes, letting this hot coil penetrate my 
intestines, or whatever was down there now in this hard powerful white body. In a daze, I 
saw him stumbling on his knees across the floor. So exquisitely clumsy. So easy to pick 
him up from the mess of twisted and tearing newspapers, the overturned cup pouring its 
cold coffee into the dust-colored rug.