"I don't understand," I murmured, dizzy from the orgasm. .

"I do," he said. "I know why you came tonight."

"Do you?"

I slid my leg between his knees.

To my surprise, he frowned and moved away, sliding to the edge of the bed and hooking his coltish legs over the side. "Did I make a pun? Sorry, I didn't mean to. Yes, let's do go out," he decided, informing me over his shoulder. He wiped his nose. "You must change, though. I won't go anywhere with you dressed like a lumberjack. Do you want new clothes? I could buy you new clothes."

The gash in my arm soon faded to a throbbing, clean incision. We put a Band-Aid on it. He dressed behind a paper screen and we went out.

He insisted on buying me something to wear, but the only places open were the most expensive shops in Union Square. So he bought me a rich velvety long dress of a green-blue that I would have never chosen for myself, and black suede shoes, paying for it with a credit card he handed over with a distracted aplomb. I didn't want to think about how much it cost. Ricari nearly ran out the door without the card, though, and he took a great deal of time signing the receipt, fiddling with the cheap plastic pen as if doubting his ability to write with it.

Ricari then proceeded to take me to dinner at a tiny restaurant where we had to linger at the bar for two hours before we could be seated; and the headwaiter gave Ricari a look of absolute poison when Ricari refused to order anything. He bought me soup, appetizers of delicate calamari, vegetables, fish and rice, tiramisu, and coffee, and enjoyed my swaying determination to get through such a meal after having had three vodka martinis.

After that, he dragged me bodily to a cafe-bar, and ordered me cocktails of evil-tasting cinnamon liqueur. "You eat and drink well," he commented, nearly the first words he'd said since we left the Saskatchewan.

"I guess," I said, my head lolling upon the red vinyl booth cushions. I had great difficulty lighting a cigarette, which I needed intensely.

"You are not like a modern girl at all."

"How so?"

"You are not tall. You are neither grossly fat, nor bony like a peasant. Your face has soft angles."

I leaned back and took off my new shoe, the heel of it already worn down and the suede soaked through with rain and sweat. "You have a lot of money," I said.

"It was all in banks in Hong Kong. I gave almost all of it away. I intend to give the rest away to you." He placed his hand gently over my mouth to stifle my protests. "No, it is settled. You agreed. Now. How shall it be done?"

"How do you want it to be done?"

In the red smoky light of the bar his smooth boyish skin was luminous. He gazed away into space as if contemplating which pair of shoes to wear to the dance. "I don't know. The least painful way would be to sever my head."

"Mmm-mm, Ricari."

"No, really. My body will not be a burden. It will quickly dissociate itself. You could bury me in your backyard. No bones will be found. It is quicker, more humane, than burning me. That, however, would be total, and you would not have to deal with the problem of how to sever my head completely with one blow-if you missed I would not die-"

"No. I don't want to talk about this."

"You must." He frowned at me.

I resisted mutely, swaying my head back and forth. I reached for my cigarette, upsetting my tiny cocktail glass. It appeared between Ricari's finger and thumb-he caught it faster than my eyes could follow. Not noticing that he'd done anything wondrous, he set it back upon the table almost out of my reach, touching the sticky rim with fascination. I licked my lips, wondering if he could feel the traces of my tongue and mouth when I did this. Lost in thought, I stroked my belly and my breast through the fabric of the dress. Ricari watched me. "How would you like to do it?" he asked me.

"I guess I'll burn you," I said distantly.

"That is for the best. I will only hurt for a little while."

"Incinerator at school."

"Yes..." he agreed.

"Did you ever dance the quadrille?"

"Many times," he smiled.

"Orfeo," I said to myself.

He caught up my wrist where the two scars had faded as if years marked them, and pressed it against his mouth. He kissed up my arm until he reached my sleeve, pressed his cheek against the velvet. "You smell of sin. My darling."

"I want you to take me home," I said.

"Are you tired?"

"I'm wasted." I tasted the sticky-sweet dryness of my palate, and laughed. "I love you."

"You cannot." He laughed too, and rose from the red vinyl booth.

I sat there and watched him stand and stretch his lilylike body, arms reaching out under the white satin, satin stretching across his tiny tight belly, and satin dropping to a voluptuous mass at his waist where it tucked into his black trousers. He saw I had not moved, and he slid back into the booth and tugged gently at my shoulder.

The cocktail waitress, who had been watching us all night as she made her rounds, returned to our table. "Your check?" she offered, slipping a black plastic tray onto the table next to my half-full thimble of Goldschlager.

Ricari accepted the ticket, and brought out his card again. As he handed it to her, she caught sight of his hands. "You have really cool hands," she remarked, her icy reserve evaporating in wonder; then she took a good long look at the joints and the claws, stretching out impossibly, more the joints of the wings of a bat than a plump ordinary man's hand, and I saw her face lock into a blank incomprehension. She glanced up at Ricari's eyes in a slight panic.

Ricari rose again and took her by the arms, smiling into her face; she was taller than he by many inches and stiletto heels, and he had to look up to fix her with his eyes. I felt the emanations of his presence radiate outward like heat, until it roared through my head and I could barely see; and I heard him, heard him say to her sotto voce, "Completely ordinary." But his lips never moved. Or perhaps I was drunk and I never caught an after-image of his mouth. I felt sick. I slumped in the red booth and closed my eyes.

The cocktail waitress was at another table, bending down in her tight black satin chamseong, a beautiful serving mannequin again. Ricari was pulling me from the booth. "Come on, sweetheart," he said, "let's go now. Now, please."

I dimly remember a taxi; Ricari bending in and saying something to a driver; my building presenting itself from the mists, walking inside without paying anything to the taxi driver and no hassle. I don't remember taking off the dress and shoes and getting into bed, but I was there, alone, queasy, the room spinning as the gray dawn rose again.

Chapter Four.

"Hi, honey."

"Merry Christmas and all that."

"Thanks."

"How are you? What time's it there?"

"Mmmmmmmm. Um, it's um, eleven-twenty."

"I thought I'd call now-I figured you'd be awake."

"I'm sleeping in today."

"I wish I could." Transatlantic clicking-crystal-clear fiber optics my ass. "I'm at Mum's house. It's snowing. You were right."

"Wearing your boots?"

"Yeah." He laughed, and there was more silence, more clicking. "How are you?"

"I'm kind of unhappy."

"Yeah? Miss me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, a lot."

"I think about you all the time."

"Yeah," I said.

"Doing anything later?"

"I'm just gonna sleep. I've got a pot hangover."

"Now, don't go to the dogs now I'm away, right?"

"I've been to the dogs for years, hon. I do miss you."

"I, er, couldn't think of a present for you, I'm sorry.

Is there anything that you want? I could pop it into the post on Tuesday-"

"No, don't worry about it. I don't need anything. I'm glad to hear from you."

Silence. "I ought to go, it's Mum's phone, and there are relatives calling in all the time. I had to wrestle the phone away from her. I love you, though, darling, don't forget that. I love you and I think about you every single day. I'll be home soon."

"It's all right, John. Take care of yourself."

"You too," he said. "Don't smoke too much dope."

"Okay. Don't drink too much."

I rolled over and turned the ringer off the phone.

The suite in the Saskatchewan glowed with candles. Ricari moved among them, touching his fingertips to the bright ends of the flames. Blisters rose upon the skin and were rapidly reabsorbed into the lines. "Imagine," he said, "having the same fingerprints for two hundred years. You would think they would have worn off by now."

"Come lie down with me," I said impotently.

He ignored me. He had had a haircut, and the clipped strands lay smoothly along his head, tucked behind his wide ears, like those of a young listening rabbit. He had a new shirt too, black, crisp, as if it had never come off its cardboard skeleton.

"How did you become a vampire?" I asked.

"The same as any vampire does," he said.

"Who made you?"

"Women," he said.

"Which women?"

He sighed and looked over his shoulder at me. His flesh was bright and hot and smooth today, though he hadn't tasted any of my blood in a long time. "Two women," he explained. "A noblewoman and her lover. Maria and Georgina. Polish, one of them, the other Swiss... or French... I don't remember. They took me in when I had no money and I was very hungry and just short of selling my body on the streets. I was their pet, their servant. I had no idea what they were at the time. They killed stacks of men-only men for them. They were lesbians, but they enjoyed young men, like myself. At first they had the intention of fattening me up and killing me like a goose for the foie gras, but they liked my poems, and my paintings-Georgina came upon me one day painting a portrait of Maria, which she thought was beautiful, and then I was made a permanent guest in their house."

"Where was this?"

"Paris."

"Two unmarried women together in a house-"

"Not uncommon, not in 1813. It was assumed by those who may have minded that they were spinsters sharing the space-Maria was very rich anyway and no one cared-and almost everyone knew about them. They made no show of hiding it from anyone. Such things were far more ordinary then-women kissing in the parlor, stroking, making love. No one thought twice about it if they were rich-who was hurt by it? And I was their plaything. Little Italian boy from the country. Tres au courant. I fell in love with Georgina, and she was fond of me as a companion."

"You say that so coldly."

"I will never forgive them," he said vehemently.

"Have you never enjoyed yourself for what you are?"

He tightened his lips over his teeth. "Every monster enjoys his brutality now and again," he surmised. "That does not erase the horror of it-and every monster lives an eternity of horror for his crimes. I will not forgive Georgina for her impulsiveness-nor Maria for giving in to her-nor the decadence of the times for thinking it was a witty idea. Together they made me. Together they brought me up as a young monster, sheltered me, taught me their ways."

"Did you know they were going to do it beforehand?"

Here he paused, letting the candle wax drip over the hand that held one of the tapers, not feeling the heat burn its way into him. "I don't remember," he said. "I... think... not." He turned and looked at me sprawled on his chaise longue, drawing sonorous clouds of smoke over my tongue into my lungs. "I don't think I would have stopped them. That was not how I was then. I too thought it was a witty idea-Romantic and strange-I would become what Lord Byron only fantasized of being-a true monster, consumed by darkness, laughing in the face of gods and devils. I did not much change for a long while after that. I just played the coquette to men and ladies and killed them for their blood, rather than sleeping with them or painting their portraits or writing them love sonnets, for the benefit of their coin or a place to sleep and a hot meal."

"You were such a punk."

Ricari smiled sheepishly. "I was a fool," he said, "and a murderer."

"What happened to Maria and Georgina?"

Ricari set down the melted spike of candle and began pulling the wax from his skin. "Maria was old and mad," he replied. "She was not jealous of me, for I was only a man, but another woman came in between them. A mortal woman. Maria killed her in a rage, and Georgina left, she ran away alone, I don't know where, to this day I don't know where. Maria killed all the servants, made me take her blood, and sat in the fireplace where we used to turn lambs on the spit, calm as you please, her skirts bursting up like onionskin. On fire. I couldn't watch. I ran away too, and hid. They boarded up the house where we had lived."

"Is it still there?"

"Oh, God, no, paved over long ago."

"Were they beautiful?" I asked.

"The women?"

"Describe them to me," I said. I pulled out my bag of tobacco, and the box where I kept my grass, and began twisting the strands together on a translucent paper.