He sets his forearms on the table, leaning toward me. “A fewpeople thought I killed Basil. But he actually ran off that same night without telling anyone where he was going. He used to do that occasionally, take random trips to France, Italy, or Germany. A break from the normal pace of his life. I suppose I was only everthatto him—a break, a holiday, a bracing bit of rebellion that enabled him to return to his placid, comfortable life of art and books. His art was all that ever mattered to him in the end.”
Calm as Dorian seems, his long fingers are working, winding, twisting together, thumbnails prying harshly at each other’s edges.
This is a pain he must continually push away, one that keeps oozing freshly from a wound that has never healed. Pity wells in my heart, and I reach across the table, my fingers pressing lightly over his. Dorian lets out a long exhale, and his hands grow still beneath mine.
“When Basil left, I faked my death,” he continues. “Things were getting too hot for me in London. I had several obsessive former lovers who would have tracked me down and followed me anywhere if they thought I was alive. So I died. It was so much easier to fake one’s death back then. No pesky DNA evidence. Just find a body of similar age and proportions and burn it inside a house, and there you are. I roamed Europe for a while under another name, half hoping I’d run into Basil again. By the time I heard a rumor of him, he was married, with a child on the way.”
“And then you came to the States?”
“No, I didn’t venture near America until the 1920s.” His eyes brighten, his tone intensifying with the delight of a beloved memory. “Baz, you should have seen it then! So much hectic, vibrant life! So many dark secrets, an undercurrent of wicked poison beneath the glittering roar.”
A painting begins to form in my mind—flappers in fringeddresses and beads on a thin crust of gold leaf above a pit of toxic sludge. I ache to paint it, and I ache for the wealth of human history and experience tucked away in the vault that is Dorian Gray.
“Two weeks isn’t enough for you to tell me everything I want to know.” Shit, I said that out loud. Hastily, I try to amend it. “It’s just… You’ve seen so much history. I want to hear it all. And I want to know how you manage it—living so long while things change around you.”
“Like anyone does, I suppose. Except unlike other people who live to a hundred and thenend, I must keep going. I don’t have the finality of an expiration date, so I have to stay relevant. I have to study pop culture, learn the slang used by people in their twenties, adopt the mindset of the generation I’m supposed to be so I can fake it when I need to.”
How must it feel to live a life of constant pretense, to keep yourself malleable and susceptible to the ever-changing vagaries of human language, politics, culture, and trends for so long? To not have the privilege of becoming “set in one’s ways,” of reaching an age where people shake their heads and say half-indulgently, “Things were different back in his day.” The sheer mental energy it must require to adapt, to transform, to remember everything… It’s hard to grasp. Yet Dorian is incessantly learning, shifting, adjusting, pretending, playing a slightly different role with each new decade.
“You’re an actor, basically.” My thumb strokes over the top of his, absently tracing the edge of one of his silver rings.
“I suppose. And the Oscar goes to—” His hands slip from mine, and he spreads his arms wide, his triumphant grin tinged with pathos. “I love acting, honestly. Nothing reveals one’s true self more than playing a role. And to live my life is to have played a thousand different roles in a thousand different settings. I wear the costume of the century, the decade, the year—paint my face withthe fashionable attitude of the time, coat my tongue with idioms. I’m quite good at it.”
“And what has been your favorite decade so far?”
“This one,” he says immediately. “Because self-indulgence and narcissism are in.”
I roll my eyes, and he chuckles.
“Not only that,” he says earnestly, “but the once-forbidden delights are now celebrated, and some of the cruelty of the past is being dragged forward, condemned, and repudiated. It’s a painful time to be alive, distressing and confusing, but it’s wonderful, too. Wonderful to watch humanity crawl forward, bloodied and brave, into the next phase of our societal evolution.”
“So Dorian Gray is a philosopher as well as a fire-breather.”
“Sometimes. Cocaine tends to make my brain run faster, makes me erudite and contemplative, brings out old-fashioned turns of phrase. Don’t worry. It’ll pass, and I’ll be back to my vacuous self.”
We fall silent then, staring at the dancing crowd. Lloyd-Henry has moved to the edge of the dance floor, where he’s speaking with a tall black-haired woman. When he sees us watching, he blows Dorian a kiss.
“He called you the ‘love of his life’ yesterday,” I murmur. “Are you two a thing?”
“That’s just how he talks to me sometimes.” Dorian chuckles. “I tried kissing him once. It didn’t feel right. What’s between us isn’t that kind of affection; it’s something else. Familial, maybe. He’s not quite a brother, father, or cousin, but he’s more than a best friend. Not less than a lover, but—different.”
“Oh.” Why does knowing that soothe me so deeply?
Dorian gives himself a little shake. “I’m starving. You?”
“No.” Then I tilt my head, my brows pulling together. “Can youstarve? Do you technically need to eat?”
“Yes, I do need to eat. If I don’t, I eventually lose all my energy and shut down. I stay healthy-looking and gorgeous, but I can’t move much until I get some food.” When I cock an eyebrow at him, he laughs. “What can I say? I got bored. Decided to experiment with deprivation.”
The worddeprivationstrikes me like a stray bullet, pain slicing through my chest. Memories of skipping an after-school snack so there would be something to eat for dinner.
I can’tnotmention it. “Speaking of deprivation—you realize with what you’ve spent today, you could have fed several families for a month?”
“I know.” Dorian pours himself more wine, then looks me straight in the eyes.
“And you don’t care.”
“I’ve worked for decades to amass this wealth. And I work to maintain it. It’s mine. If people want to pay me for being beautiful, that’s their choice.”
