“Yes?”

“Good Lord, I see what you’re saying. And then the film Vice Versa. It’s about the soul of a boy and the soul of a man who switch bodies! All hell breaks loose until they are able to switch back. And the film All of Me, it’s about body switching as well. You’re absolutely right. All four stories are about the same thing.”

“Exactly.”

“Christ, David. It’s all coming clear. I don’t know why I didn’t see it. But … ”

“This man is trying to get you to believe that he knows something about this body switching. He’s trying to entice you with the suggestion that such a thing can be done.”

“Good Lord. Of course. That explains it, the way he moves, walks, runs.”

“What?”

I sat there stunned, reenvisioning the little beast before I answered, bringing up to mind every image of him from every conceivable angle which memory would allow. Yes, even in Venice, he’d had that obvious awkwardness about him.

“David, he can do it.”

“Lestat, don’t jump to such a mad conclusion! He may think that he can do it. He may want to try it. He may be living entirely in a world of delusions—”

“No. That’s his proposition, David, the proposition he says that I will want to hear! He can switch bodies with people!”

“Lestat, you can’t believe—”

“David, that’s what’s wrong with him! I’ve been trying to figure it since I saw him on the beach in Miami. That isn’t his body! That’s why he can’t use its musculature or its … its height. That’s why he almost falls when he runs. He can’t control those long powerful legs. Good God, that man is in someone else’s body. And the voice, David, I told you about his voice. It’s not the voice of a young man. Oh, that explains it! And you know what I think? I think he chose that particular body because I’d notice it. And I’ll tell you something else. He’s already tried this switching trick with me and it’s failed.”

I couldn’t continue. I was too dazzled by the possibility.

“How do you mean, tried?”

I described the peculiar sensations—the vibration and the constriction, the sense that I was being forced quite literally out of my physical self.

He didn’t reply to what I’d said, but I could see the effect this had upon him. He sat motionless, his eyes narrow, his right hand half closed and resting idly beside his plate.

“It was an assault upon me, wasn’t it? He tried to get me out of my body! Maybe so that he could get in. And of course he couldn’t do it. But why would he risk mortally offending me with such an attempt?”

“Has he mortally offended you?” David asked.

“No, he’s merely made me all the more curious, powerfully curious!”

“There you have your answer. I think he knows you too well.”

“What?” I heard what he said but I couldn’t reply just now. I drifted into remembering the sensations. “That feeling was so strong. Oh, don’t you see what he’s doing? He’s suggesting that he can switch with me. He’s offering me that handsome young mortal frame.”