Leis was every color, standing over me. Fury, desolation, relief. I covered my face with my hands and turned around to rock myself, because rocking is good for the nerves. I kept to the corner while they argued, unable to understand them, body pulsing with their shouting, their screaming. The platinum blond had gone completely abuzz, hysterical, so I knew I had picked a good one even if the words were beyond me, and I could not help but laugh at that, though the slap had wounded me deeply, and I clawed at my face to stop the pain of it, unaware of my screaming until it had gone all silent in the room. 

Leis came, and he was speaking French, and trying to pull me up from the floor, speaking to the blond behind him. "He does not want you to come to his house, Quinny," he said to me, in English, "I don't know what to do. What do I do?"

I wanted to tell him not to touch me, but instead struggled, trying to get loose from his grip.

"I am sorry, darling. I'm sorry for hitting you. I could not find the words. I'm sorry, there isn't time to apologize well. I'm sorry. Please come." 

When I looked at the blond, he was trying to speak, but it was plain we did not share a language, and he spoke to Leis instead. Leis helped me up from the floor and brought a paper parcel, which he sat on the bed, gesturing for me to sit as well. Inside were nice clothes, and he gestured for me to dress.

"What did he say?" 

"He says that you are mortal enemies now, and that since you are young you will be easy to kill."

"That's nice. Tell him if he lays a hand on you instead for retaliation, it will be me spitting on his grave."

Leis shook his head, leaning over me to button my collar. "No, I can't."

"Excuse me, darling?" I asked.

"I can't. I don't understand to translate. So, I can't." 

"What part?" 

"You use many idioms. I don't know."

Sometimes he has these dumbfounding moments of not knowing my language. He still does that, even now. It makes me wonder what he has been doing with me for so long. 

"I will let it go then," I told him, amused even for the tension in the room. "There is not much punch in it if he has to wait for an English lesson."

"Still I do not understand. There are many idioms when you are unhappy."

"Well tell him I don't want to go to his house either."

"That is too bad. You are going," he said. "This one is Laurent. That is not his name you say before, but it is the right name, but it is not a good one for us. Not good."

"Lots of fake names," I said, teasing him so that he might smile. 

"Darkling, please don't say wrong names. It will be badly for me. Here, I like for you very much to wear this hat, and I will put them together, your cufflinks."

The blond was pacing the room like a caged animal, pretending to ignore us, but I could hear his mind running like a steam engine, a fury and a fear too large for his petite frame. I continued to whisper back and forth with Leis, because his nerves were driving his heartrate through the roof, and I could not lie down with him. It is murmuring with him I remember best, for though I am bitter about it, I love him.

"Come here and quiet down," I said, tipping up my chin and taking his hands.

"What is it, 'quiet down'?" he asked, murmuring, breathing shallowly. "What is it? What is it?"

"Be quiet and calm down a little, please," I said, remaining still until he kissed me, very briefly, so that he could continue to fret. "I have known you nearly one hundred years. I have said that thousands of times."

"I did not care to ask. I did not care to ask," he hissed, going mad with anxiety, too frustrated to fasten the other cufflink. "Do it yourself."

"Come here, beauty," I whispered, catching him by a button, before he could go away and have a tantrum. "Please let's not be so dramatic, and kiss me a little. It will all end in tears."

The blond snapped something, and Leis said, "He is saying maybe you are too stupid to live."

"Why is that?" I asked, waiting to be kissed.

"Because he says you cannot see that I am a filthy low-class flea. Oh, my heart is hurting. Why does he say it to me?" 

"He's not wrong," I whispered, "but I like you for it."

"You might say so," he said, shaking his head, and would not clarify it further.

I kissed him for having recited Keats to me like a good schoolboy while he thought me asleep, and I wiped his lips of my kiss gently with my thumb. "Don't cry, beauty. Chin up."

"He says 'chin up'. I will be dead come evening, for the stress," and I have never known him to complain much, so I knew that he was serious, and kept to myself on the long walk in the dark, and I still remember it fairly well. 

In that time, Paris did not yet have street lights, thought it would soon, which Laurent would never quite get over. But in the dark he was in his element, plainly bleeding on the inside but too proud to show it. I knew him for a sensitive creature, which he hated. He was very easily made emotional but rarely reacted to it in my presence. I kept close to Leis's warm body, though he shivered in the damp of early morning. 

I was upset before, when I spoke with you. I am sorry for that. He told you that I do not know what I am saying when I am upset. That is not completely the case. However, there is frankness and then there is abuse. At times, I am taken with abuse, for in my anger I feel it justified. But it is never, is it? I will also agree with you that a fierce objectivity, when it comes to the secret facts of a person's life, may create so clear a picture as to picture only a lie. For what is one's life without the halo of context? I know that. 

You know about me that I was never any kind of schoolboy. I never had formal schooling of any kind, but I have educated myself little enough to understand propriety, and how to properly apologize, and to be humble before you. And I would quite like to be more sorry about that first night, when I spoke roughly to Laurent, and shook him so deeply that he began to unravel, but you see that I am not. No, I am not. I am calm, Leis, prithee quieten. I am still angry after all of these years, because I still remember what it was to find his bite upon your upper arm, and the bite upon your neck the morning after you installed me in a room in his house and would not let me out of it, and the bite the next day at your inner thigh, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day. I am not upset, let me loose. I am only telling my side. I am perfectly calm. 

I still remember what it was like to stand outside his heavy door, and listen to you beg him to bite you, and use you, and keep you. At first I could not understand it, but I have learned since, and have felt very stupid, and very hurt. Your Dasius, my David, stayed with me in the sitting room and held my hand. How he hated you and would not say anything. I hated you, too. He would not let me hurt myself. He nursed me. A week after we arrived, he took me into his study, and through it, and into a back room where there was a metal table with many little holes in it. You did not know about it, Leis, because you were entangled with your lover.

"What are the holes for?" I asked him.

"Draining the blood," he said, and his English was perfect, though a little blunt around the harder consonants.

"I would like it if you cut me," I said.

He made a little French, "Hn." He asked me to undress.

"Everything?" 

"Everything."

"Help me with the corset, if you can. I have never worn these sorts of things." Do you remember the short corset, Mini? I am happy to be free of them. 

I lay myself on his cold table, and it smelled like blood indeed. When I turned my head to look at him, he had opened a large velvet-lined box, and had set about cleaning the metal implements inside with a white cloth. 

"Come and let me look at you a bit," I asked him. I held out my hand. He took it gently, and came to sit up beside me on the table.

He was the same then as he is now, seeming tired, dark grey eyes half-lidded with fatigue, long eyelashes. He had pulled his hair back in a chignon, and his neck was long, and collarbones defined. It is the case that when you look at him, he seems older than he is, but when he is relaxed completely, or heavily distressed he is a boy again. His lips are berry-kissed, and he is gently hawk-faced, which when he is surprised, makes him resemble an owl. When he wears his hair down, he is a different creature entirely, but I rarely have seen him so caught off guard. He is a man completely in control of himself, unless his mind is scattered and he is too busy thinking of other matters to control his body. And he did forget his body a little, while I thought of his face, and he began to stroke my arm idly. I felt sorry that he seemed a clever and affectionate man, but terribly lonesome, so I let him stroke my arm. He has been stroking my arm for over a hundred years when I see him. He touches my hand with his fingertips while we pretend to sip tea. He is a good and faithful friend who has made many terrible mistakes. As we all have. 

"So and now you have seen me," he said, "and so I will have a look at you? Or would you like to have a look again?"

"I think that I will let you look at me."

"All right, so I will look, and it will not hurt. If it does hurt, you may do to me what you want." 

"Never. Nothing," I said.

"A little prick then," he said, "if you do not mind the pain." He took my hand gently, and pricked my finger with a little needle, and squeezed until a drop of blood came. "Do not tell," and he pressed the little drop to his lips to taste it, which made me close my eyes. "If you have questions," he said, "you should ask them. I will answer. I think that he has told you nothing, or given you bad information and that must be fixed. It is not his fault, bad information. He is different. Sit up now a moment."

I did sit up, and he pressed his head against my back, listening, and then against my chest, listening, and I put my hand upon his head.

"Please do not do that," he said, politely, and I heard in his head that it made his loneliness into a feeling like death, and let go of him. "How much do you know?" he asked me, pressing his fingers against my neck and laying me down again.

"It is not that I want to know anything," I said. "I would really like to be rid of it."

"Of course." 

"To be honest it varies. I am not used to talking about it. At times I know so much that I go mad, and it is always terribly noisy, and I have a feeling like vibration in my body, in my bones, and I feel that I will shake apart. It hurts in my joints all of the time. I feel it like a fist inside of my head. It is like locusts. You have raised your eyebrows, yes, have you heard it?'

"No. I have not heard it, but I know what it is to feel an insect inside of you that you cannot explain."

"All right. I think that it's different, but sometimes it is so loud that I cannot hear anything else, and sometimes I see many things I don't understand, and sometimes there are words so strong that I feel I must say them, especially if I am afraid or angry or off guard."

"Like what you said to me?" he asked, quietly.

"Like that. I am sorry about that. I do not even know what I said."

"You said something Laurent has said to me many times, and which is a black mark upon my soul," he said, frankly, pressing his hand painlessly under my ribs and pushing upwards. 

"I'm sorry."

"All right."

"He seems mean to me."

"He is not so bad unless he has reason," Dasius said, palpating my stomach.

"If you say so."

"I do say so, but I do not exhort you to feel sympathy you do not feel."

I lay quietly as he poked the arches of my feet with a pin.

"So it is only that you are receiving these things?" he asked.

"I cannot say that I understand it enough to say so," I said, "but I cannot say it is not the case. I do not try to get them."

"Stop breathing," he said. "I will get you something for your pain."

I never breathed ever again unless to speak, and though it is not in my nature, I wept bitterly at the ignorance Leis had left me in, at the painful labor to breathe I had been doing for a hundred years unnecessarily. And when Dasius approached me to hold me in my misery, I saw how disappointed he was in his own life, and it overwhelmed me so that I wept a long time.