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Technological inventions began to obsess Armand, one after the other First it was kitchen blenders, in which he htful concoctions redients; then e disposers enchanted hiarettes Then it was telephones He called long distance all over the planet, speaking for hours with "ht hi speakers and flickering screens

Anything with blue skies enthralled hirams, priardless of merit, ever taped

At last particular movies struck his fancy Over and over he watched Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, fascinated by Rutger Hauer, the powerfully built actor who, as the leader of the rebel androids, confronts his humana slow and al, the look in Hauer's ice-cold blue eye

"That's your friend, Lestat, there," Armand whispered once to Daniel "Lestat would have thehow do you say?guts?to do that!"

After Blade Runner it was the idiotic and hilarious Time Bandits, a British comedy in which five dwarfs steal a "Map of Creation" so they can travel through the holes in Ti and brawling, along with a little boy companion, until they all wind up in the devil's lair

Then one scene in particular becae in Castelleone singing "Me and My Shadow" for Napoleon really sent Armand out of his mind He lost all supernatural co till the tears rose in his eyes

Daniel had to admit there was a horrible charm to it, the "Me and My Shadow" nu with each other, finally lousing up the whole proceedings, and the dazed eighteenth-centurywhat toNapoleon was stupefied, then delighted! A stroke of coenius, the entire scene But how many times could a mortal watch it? For Armand there seemed no end

Yet within six months he had dropped the movies for video caed Daniel, as he interviewed people on the nightti poetry in Italian or Latin, orwhite presence slipping in and out of focus in eternally diht

Then somewhere, so tape of hi his daytime deathlike sleep Daniel found this i filrowing against the satin as he lay motionless with closed eyes

Next it was co disk after disk with his secret writings He rented additional apartame machines

Finally he turned to planes

Daniel had always been a compulsive traveler, he had fled Armand to cities ide, and certainly he and Ar new in that But noas a concentrated exploration; theyto Boston, then Washington, then to Chicago, then back to New York City, was not unusual Arers, stewardesses; he spoke with the pilots; he lay back in the deep first-class seats listening to the engines roar Double-decker jets particularly enchanted hi adventures: all the way to Port-au-Prince or San Francisco, or Ro as Armand was safely landed by dawn

Armand virtually disappeared at dawn Daniel was never to knohere Armand actually slept But then Daniel was dead on his feet by daybreak anyway Daniel didn't see high noon for five years

Often Armand had been in the room so, the - Vivaldi or honky-tonk piano, as Ar, ready for Daniel to get up

"Coht I want to see Baryshnikov And after that, down to the Village You remember that jazz band I loved last sury, o "