And the boy, flustered, answered quickly. "I noticed it in the bar when I asked you what you did for a living. It's just a slight sharpness to the consonants, that's all. I never guessed it was French."

"Ah, that's the accent..." the boy said softly. For a moment the vampire stared blankly. "I have an accent?" He began to laugh.

"We were living. in Louisiana then. We'd received a land grant and settled two indigo plantations on the Mississippi very near New Orleans..."

"Does it seem so?" asked the vampire. "No." He shook his head. "It's simply that I've only told this story to one other person. And that was so long ago. No, it's not painful."

"There was a tragedy..." the vampire started. "It was my
younger brother... He died." And then he stopped, so that the
boy cleared his throat and wiped at his face again before stuffing the handkerchief almost impatiently into his pocket.
"It's not painful, is it?" he asked timidly.

"There's a simple answer to that. I don't believe I want to give
simple answers," said the vampire. "I think I want to tell the real
story..."
"Yes," the boy said quickly. He was folding his handkerchief over and over and wiping his lips now with it again.

"You weren't always a vampire, were you?" he began.
"No," answered the vampire. "I was a twenty-five year-old man when I became a vampire, and the year was seventeen ninety-one." The boy was startled by the preciseness of the date and he repeated it before he asked, "How did it come about?"

And he withdrew his hand and sat collected, waiting. It took a moment for the boy to wipe his forehead and his lips with a handkerchief, to stammer that the microphone was in the machine, to press the button, to say that the machine was on.

And then he reached out over the length of the table. The boy recoiled, sweat running down the sides of his face. The vampire clamped a hand on his shoulder and said, "Believe me, I won't hurt you. I want this opportunity. It's more important to me than you can realize now. I want you to begin."

"Now, do you still want the interview?" the vampire asked. The boy's mouth was open before the sound came out. He was nodding. Then he said, "Yes." The vampire sat down slowly opposite him and, leaning forward, said gently, confidentially, "Don't be afraid. Just start the tape."

He stared at the vampire's full black hair, the waves that were combed back over the tips of the ears, the curls that barely touched the edge of the white collar.

His eyes moved slowly over the finely tailored black coat he'd only glimpsed in the bar, the long folds of the cape, the black silk tie knotted at the throat, and the gleam of the white collar that was as white as the vampire's flesh.

But then the vampire smiled almost wistfully, and the smooth white substance of his face moved with the infinitely flexible but minimal lines of a cartoon. "Do you see?" he asked softly. The boy shuddered, lifting his hand as if to shield himself from a powerful light.

"Dear God!" he whispered, and then he gazed, speechless, at the vampire. He was utterly white and smooth, as if he were sculpted from bleached bone, and his face was as seemingly inanimate as a statue, except for two brilliant green eyes that looked down at the boy intently like flames in a skull.

And then he sighed with relief when the vampire moved towards the table and reached for the overhead cord. At once the room was flooded with a harsh yellow light. And the boy, staring up at the vampire, could not repress a gasp. His fingers danced backwards on the table to grasp the edge.

"But then he stopped. The vampire was watching him with his back to the window. The boy could make out nothing of his face now, and something about the still figure there distracted him. He started to say something again but he said nothing.