Ricari made me consent to fixing a date wherein I would put him into the incinerator and lock the door. It was to be April 23rd, a Saturday night, when there wouldn't be very many people around to see us. We would slip in at about two in the morning, make sure the oven was fired up, then I would open the door, Orfeo would climb in, and I would shut the door and leave; he made me promise I would leave immediately before I heard him scream. Unlike luckier fictional vampires, Ricari assured me that he was not highly flammable and would take as long to burn through as a human being would. "Think of me as you would a log of oak," he imagined. "You have no remorse about throwing a log onto the fire, would you? That's all I am is old firewood, branches from a dead tree."

He made me make this promise in the red-vinyl cafe-bar, the staff so accustomed to us that they no longer made Ricari pay for my drinks. I sat with my back to him and he brushed my hair until all the frazzled brown-red curls lay smooth in his palm. "Orfeo," I said, struggling against the lump of sadness in my throat, "promise me you'll answer all my questions before then."

"I will not promise," he said lightly. "I will try to answer. I don't have answers to everything." He dropped a kiss onto the side of my neck.

"Why won't you let me sleep with you? I mean really sleep?"

He hesitated. "You don't want to know."

"Duh! That's why I'm asking."

"All I will say is it's not very nice."

"Do you turn into a bat?"

He laughed. "No, my dear, just a sleeping version of myself. My dreams are contagious. I don't want you to have to share my nightmares."

I smiled as the waitress brought me another cup of coffee-no alcohol tonight, I wanted to stay awake with him for as long as I could. I had less than two weeks left. "How many of your kind are there in the world?"

"I have no idea. Maybe a lot, maybe only a few."

"Do you know of any others in town?"

"Why? Do you want a new one when I'm gone?"

"That's not funny." I pulled away from him and poured some sugar into my tea.

He caught hold of my hair again, and stroked it back into place. "I'm sorry. I don't know. I'm sure there are-they have never made themselves known to me. We are solitary ultimately."

"What makes you think you'll die when you go into the fire?"

His hands stopped on my head.

"What makes you think you'll cease to be, go to heaven, whatever? How do you know your consciousness won't go on in those ashy little bits?" I continued.

He had resumed his brushing, and neatly rolled the smooth curls into a bun, securing it with a thick comb. "Because I believe in separation of soul and body," he replied coolly. "As do you."

"I believe in nothing. I only have theories."

"My child, you will never go to heaven if you don't believe in anything."

"I won't go to hell either," I said. I turned to face him and smiled. He took my face between his hands and kissed my forehead.

"Lack of belief is a sort of hell," Ricari said.

I put my hand on his chest and gently seized his nipple between my first and second fingers. He watched me, removed my hand, kissing the fingers, put my hand against his head so that I could appreciate the fine texture of his hair, and kissed me on the lips. "I think mystery is better than fact," he continued, "and waiting is better than getting."

"So what you're telling me is that you'd rather die than have sex with me." I kissed his chin.

"Ah, Ariane, you are lovely when you're pigheaded and deliberately stupid."

"I know when I'm beaten, don't rub it in."

"You are not beaten, my dear. You only think you are."

"Mmmrnmmm..." I swayed against him. "Please stop being so superior."

He didn't reply. He sat back against the red vinyl and watched things go by. I wondered what it would be like to need no food, not have the maddening urge to pee, no dull craving for cigarettes or for the distraction of sexual tension. Ricari was a pure being. He needed only blood and God, and to die someday. No wonder he treated me as a psychologist treats a disturbed child.

"Did you pay my rent?" I asked suddenly.

He lifted his eyebrows at me. "Should I not have?"

"I was just wondering... because my landlady was bugging me for a long time... and then she stopped... I barely remember now."

"It was nothing," said Ricari. "I still have money left. I'm trying to get rid of it."

I kissed his hand, licking him, tasting the vampire skin. It tasted of nothing at all-perhaps of my hair conditioner. His flesh was the temperature of the room. I did adore an insect.

Despite this sweetness, we quarreled again as soon as we returned to the Saskatchewan.

"Darling..." I said, sitting on the gold divan and crossing my legs. "Look, I know you were lying when you told me you didn't know where Daniel is. I could see your pupils dilate." Across the room his back tensed. "Why don't you just stop playing games with me, which I don't appreciate, and just let me know what city, what country-"

"I will tell you nothing more of that creature!" Ricari exploded. "Why do you love me if you find me such a liar?"

"I know you have reasons for wanting to keep me away from him. All right, he's dangerous. Perhaps I should find him and kill him."

Ricari paled so when I said this that I shut up immediately.

"You will do no such thing. You would not survive such an attempt."

"Ricari-Orfeo-it's only that I want to have some part of you after you're gone-"

"He is no part of me," Ricari spat. His color was high. "He is the most evil, thoughtless creature I have ever known. He is a demon, hunting for fresh souls. He burns in hell, and he wishes for more innocents to fuel his fire."

I began to laugh helplessly.

Like so many Christians, Ricari could not stand it when people laughed at him. He flung down a crystal candlestick and it shattered against the parquet. "Will you listen to me?" he shouted.

This made me laugh even harder. I was not really amused-in fact, I was frightened by his vehement description-but I was helpless and hysterical, collapsed on the gold chaise longue.

He picked me up and shook me. "What's your problem?"

"Do I... do I..." I struggled for breath. "Do I have to promise not to crawl into the incinerator with you?"

Idly he stroked away the tears that were running from my eyes. "Yes," he said, all violence gone. "You must go on without me, or there will be no point in anything. Anything, you see."

"I can promise you anything but that," I said.

April 20th came.

I had slept on the chaise at the suite, wrapped in Ricari's silk robe, while he slept in bed. I got up and tiptoed to the bedroom door, intending to look in upon his sleeping naked form, but the door was bolted shut.

Ricari got up, as usual, at about five o'clock in the evening. He let me bathe with him, a nice chaste bath in the big hotel bathtub, with the water painfully hot. His skin under the lights was uniformly silky, the whitish color of unbleached cotton; in contrast, I was golden yellow, mottled with freckles, birthmarks, scars from various accidents and incisions. I carefully shaved his face with a straight razor-he didn't like safety razors at all, he always cut himself with them. "I used to bathe with my sisters," he confessed, washing my hair.

"Was it this sensual?"

"Oh, quite. We didn't know it or think of it at the time, of course. My sister taught me to kiss in the bath. It was completely innocent."

"Was this the redheaded one?"

He smiled at me.

Ricari was attempting to blow as much money as he could, so he bought me a violet linen suit, which he made me wear from the Italian boutique, and took me to dinner at a skyscraper restaurant. I was morose as hell. The more he spent, the lower I got. I spent the whole first course staring out the window, wondering if this or that fall would kill Ricari, what kind of things the same fall would do to me. The appetizer was eventually whisked away untouched.

"What's the matter?" Ricari asked, touching me on the chin. "Are you not hungry?"

"I don't know," I mumbled, peeling the skin off my cuticles, softened by the hot bath.

"Don't be depressed."

"The one thing I love more than anything else in the world is going away soon," I said, "and I'm gonna be the one giving it the ol' heave-ho."

"Please don't think of it that way. Be happy for me."

"It's just gonna hurt so much."

"Please, Ariane."

I was quiet then, and sipped a little of my soup to be polite, but mainly I ignored that too. Ricari, in his blue silk blouse and black jacket, watched me through the whole disappointing meal, his eyes gleaming with pity.

After he paid for the meal that I'd had maybe ten bites of, we went walking around the deserted Financial District, its gray and barren streets filled with warm breeze and streetlight. We walked towards Market Street, the great band of piss-colored light, the spine of San Francisco.

"I can't do it," I said, balling my hands into fists.

"You must," he replied.

"No, I mustn't. I would only be doing it because I love you-and maybe I don't love you enough to throw you onto the pyre."

"You would do anything for me," he scoffed.

I shook my head.

We reached Market, and crossed it at Fifth Street.

I stopped him on the sidewalk, and gazed into his eyes.

"Tell me," I insisted, "where Daniel is. I have to go to him."

Ricari sighed patiently. "You will do no such thing."

"I can't go back to my old life just like that! I've given too much! You think I'm a normal human being now? I may not be one of you, but I've changed, and I don't think I can ever go back. I need you-I need-that sound in my head. Either you give me the location, or no death. Those are my terms."

"You've gone completely insane," Ricari said. He sounded impressed.

"Those are my terms!" I shouted.

He looked around us uncertainly, herding me into a side street. "Will you be quiet?" he hissed.

"Those are my terms. Accept one or the other."

"Who do you think you are?"

"I'm the only one who will help you!"

"I can get anyone to help me, my dear. All I have to do is invade their minds and tell them to cut off my head-"

"But that's suicide. God won't like that much, will he?"

"I could-" Ricari vainly grasped at straws. "I could go into the police department and show myself. They'd make short work of me."

"They'd shoot you. Won't work too well."

"Ariane! Will you shut up!"

"Make me," I replied, a thrill of disobedience running through me. He did not know I had his scalpel, palmed after our fraternal bath, in the pocket of my coat.

He grabbed my shoulders, intending perhaps to pick me up and set me down somewhere else, but I reached up and slashed the backs of his fingers with the blade. He let go, howling with pain. I ran the scalpel handle-deep into his cheek, intending to drink the blood as it poured from his lips. I wanted all the blood I had given him back. I wanted to taste it. For days I had been conjecturing about its flavor-salty? Honeylike? Something altogether different? A dark bubble pursed at his mouth and burst, forced by his startled breath.

I did not reach his lips. He struck my right arm and the scalpel slashed his cheek open as it cut and fell away. With his right palm, he slapped me on the cheekbone, and with his left-hand claws he struck at me, tore open the front of the violet suit, the gray blouse I wore underneath, and the flesh covering my throat and collarbones. I couldn't even cry out. I stood and looked at the shreds, the blood pouring down to my waist. It had been such an efficient move, so graceful, so simple. I felt the cold air on my flesh, on the naked bone, and only then did I sense any pain. Everything split into brilliant stars of amber light.

I dimly heard him crying out my name, but I didn't see the ground rush up to get me. I felt only that I relaxed.

Book Two.

Haemodynamics.

Chapter Six.