“Not me?” I scoff. “You think I’m shallow. That I can’t love anyone.”
The words taste bitter on my tongue, because I know them to be true.
“You’re anything but shallow, Dorian. People who love once or twice are the truly shallow ones. They dabble their feet in the pool, find someone passably appealing, and are too lazy or unimaginative to go any further or try anything else. You are deeper than this girl. You are more than one person could ever comprehend…unless that person is wildly clever and supremely imaginative, like myself.”
There’s a smile in his voice. He’s trying to tease a chuckle or aretort out of me, but I don’t indulge him.
“Do yourself a favor,” Lloyd says more gently. “The feelings you think you have for her? Push them into that portrait of yours so you can stay levelheaded for this task. It’s the only way you’ll make it through this alive.”
He ends the call before I can say anything else. Just as well, because I’m not sure how to reply.
He makes sense. He always does, every time he has to talk me down from some crisis of self-loathing or burgeoning emotion. Usually, by the time he’s done speaking, I can’t remember what my point was or how I felt before the conversation began.
But this time, the anger stays with me. So does the confusion and the sense of disappointment in him for making me doubt Baz’s intentions.
I was feeling good about myself, rejoicing in her happiness, and he ruined it.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe I should push all those negative feelings along the tether, into my portrait. Maybe I should shove my attraction to Baz in there, too—the delight at making her happy, the simple joy of seeing her face, the undeniable lure of her body. Maybe I should forget the compelling power of her personality: intense, shadowed by the past, yet sweet and solid and confident. Like dark chocolate.
Maybe I should let my portrait swallow it all, because if I don’t and she denies me in the end, I’m not sure I can follow through with the other part of the plan Lloyd and I have concocted.
Fuck my existence.
I slam the whiskey glass onto the island so hard it cracks, and amber liquid begins seeping out like blood from a cut.
It was a simple cut and a little blood that first alerted me tothe uncanny powers of my magnificent portrait. The simplest of accidents, really. I was going through my mail and discovered an envelope my valet had failed to slit, so I took a letter opener from the desk and did it myself. The blade slipped, making a shallow cut across the back of my hand. It barely bled, so I went on with my day and forgot the incident.
Later, as I was sipping my tea and admiring my new painting, I saw the cut, a bloodred scratch across the back of the portrait’s hand. When I glanced down at my own hand, it was flawless. Not a mark on it where that scratch should have been.
I checked the backs of both hands just to be sure. And then I fetched the letter opener and jabbed its pointed end into my fingertip. Seconds later, my finger had healed, and the fingertip of the portrait showed a dot of blood.
I didn’t tell Basil—not for months. I knew what his reaction would be, staunch Irish Catholic that he was, superstitious and pious to a fault. He could be a fierce lover, but he suffered from false guilt over his relationship with me. I sensed it in him after every tryst—the onset of that ponderous guilt, his inner monologue of regret. He’d say fervently, “That was the last time. We cannot do this again, Dorian.”
A bit of my heart crumbled away each time he said it.
And I knew, Iknewhe would want me to give up the painting, and that was out of the question. What if in trying to purify or destroy the portrait, I perished? I couldn’t take that chance, not when I finally had the one thing worth possessing—immortality.
But as I fell more deeply in love, I convinced myself that he loved me just as much, that he would never put me at risk or ask me to reject this miracle. I told myself I had to be open and honest with him, so I decided to confess the truth.
Maybe Lloyd is right about complete honesty killingrelationships. In the end, I gave Basil exactly what he wanted—an excuse to leave me, one stronger than his discomfort with his sexuality.
It’s a dreadful irony that I always seem to fall hardest for people with a steadfast moral compass. Basil’s compass was flawed, warped by the teachings of a repressive religion—but in many ways, he was the best man I ever knew. I could set my course by him, be my best self around him.
I tried after he left. Tried to be “good,” as society defined it. I held myself to Basil’s standard, carried him in my heart as a guide, made my choices based on what I thought he’d prefer. Yet when I found him again in France, he had married. He had erased me from his life and created a new one. He was still painting, but he was notorious for refusing all portrait commissions.
Perhaps I could have seduced him away from his wife, away from that life, but I managed to make one unselfish choice—to leave him. The pain of that decision was so great I found myself wishing I could impress heart wounds on the portrait as well as physical wounds. As soon as I formed that thought, that intent, with all the fervency of my being, my pain evanesced, and the cocky expression of the portrait changed to one of wretchedness.
I knew then that I was utterly free of consequence. So I dove headlong into debauchery.
Since then, I’ve had phases where I tried to stop the mayhem, tried to steady myself and learn useful things. But I always circled back to the same point…the incessant mental query: why? Why was I learning a trade, composing music, studying a new language, climbing another mountain? What was the fucking point?
Eventually I learned to manage the cycle. Now I indulge myself during my productive phases, and when they end, I keep myself sohigh, so glutted with pleasure, that I don’t have the mental capacity to think about nihilistic truths.
But between the frenzied phases of devouring knowledge or soaking myself in carnal pleasure falls the shadow. The unutterable weariness of living.
That’s one of the things I appreciate so much about Baz. She makes me feel…not so fucking tired. I want her like I haven’t wanted anyone for a very long time.
I took a picture of her today while we were eating ice cream. I settle onto the couch again and pull the photo up on my phone. Her eyes, half-hooded against the sunlight, sparkling under dark lashes. Her lips milky with vanilla ice cream and her tongue poised in the act of licking her mouth clean. It’s the cutest, sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
