Until now. Until Baz.
It seems unfair to lean on her for moral strength. But perhaps I must, until I can coax my own conscience back to life again.
“Dorian?” Lloyd’s voice is softly insistent.
“I trust you,” I manage.
“Good boy. Now go and take your mind off the girl for a while. You deserve the indulgence. Remember what I’ve told you so often—resisting what you crave only sickens your mind. When you desire something, yield to that desire fully. You’ll enjoy it in the moment and have the delightful memory to savor afterward. No one ever truly regrets a delicious wickedness.”
At his words, the familiar itch wakes in my mind, the restlessness in my bones. I don’t experience physical withdrawal or craving as a normal man would, but there is a mental element to addiction, a psychological affinity for my favorite drugs, and sometimes it affects me.
“Are you sure I should—” I begin, and Lloyd interrupts.
“Of course you should, my love. After all, if I can’t persuade the girl, you will die very soon. You may as well enjoy the time you have left.”
“She did offer to try putting my soul back into my body,” I tell him.
“Of course she did. Because she wants to possess you, to limityou. She wants you to be hers, to decay like her, to end with her. She is jealous of us, like they all are. Will you let her change you into a weak human and sink into the horror of old age? No, Dorian, you must not go gently. As my friend Dylan Thomas once wrote, ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ Make Basil feel that rage, and she must bend to your superior will.”
“I can’t harm her, Lloyd. I won’t.”
“Then you should hope I can persuade her tomorrow. Or you’ll be left with two options—dying unexpectedly when your painting fails, or taking your ruined soul back into your body. If she can even manage such a thing. And then I will watch you wrinkle and leak and rot on your feet. Your golden hair will turn pallid and fall out. You’ll be liver-spotted, bowlegged, slump-shouldered. Your balls will sag, along with your neck and jowls. You won’t be able to get your dick up for Basil anymore, but she won’t care, because she’ll be dry and papery, too. There will be no grace in your movements, no flush in your lips and cheeks, and the blue of your eyes will cloud over. You will be a limp, grotesque mockery of yourself, Dorian. That is the fate to which this girl would condemn you. Would real love ask this?”
“She can’t love me,” I rasp. “She says she does, but I don’t believe it. I’m not… I never expected her to.”
“Just as well. Go and forget all this, my dear boy. Drink, consume, enter the blissful delirium. Goodbye, Dorian.”
After he ends the call, I sit with the phone propped against my chin, staring at the ocean.
I don’t want to die.
All my life, growing old and dying have been the worst two things I could imagine. But Baz showed me that there might be something else even more dreadful. Imprisoning her is the worst sinI’ve committed. I’m sure there’s a horrible new twist in my painting to reflect that ugliness of soul. Even if she does craft a new painting of me and transfer my soul into it, a fresh start is no guarantee of future goodness. It doesn’t erase what I’ve done.
I’ve killed to protect my secret. I’ve been the cause of death in countless other ways as well—through carelessness, if not intentionality. What if I become all the terrible things she mentioned: a rapist, a serial killer, a cruel oppressor? What if it all begins here, with this choice to confine her wounded, beautiful spirit in that house?
Thick clouds have gathered, borne by a high wind, and they’re piling up on each other, heavy and threatening. It’s going to storm. I need to get off the water.
Baz and my painting will be all right on the island for just one night. I can monitor her through the security system in the house. Tomorrow I’ll go to her with Lloyd, and I’ll crawl, I’ll beg for mercy. God, I’ll do anything.
Anything to make her forgive me.
It’s starting to rain a little by the time I get the boat into the dock. I tuck Baz’s purse into one of the compartments where it will stay dry.
While I’m walking back to the Chandler, the sky opens and pours a heavy shower over the coastline. I lower my head and hunch my shoulders—pointless, because I’m already soaked, rain-slick and chilly. The deluge shatters on the black pavement of the street, pools in the dips of the sidewalk. I can barely see.
The concierge in the lobby of the Chandler eyes me as I walk through. “Good evening, Mr. Gray.”
I nod and duck into the elevator.
There’s no one in the penthouse. Lloyd isn’t back. Vane’sbedroom door is open, but he’s not there. Sibyl’s room is still empty, of course. The text that prompted my phone call to her still resonates in my head:Feels so good not to be your backup dancer. But I hope you’re taking care of yourself.
I don’t know what taking care of myself means anymore.
I change out of my wet clothes, then march into my bathroom and take out the case that holds my stash of various drugs. Heroin is my poison of choice tonight. Never have I needed it more.
The injection triggers a euphoric rush through my heart, lungs, and limbs, and I tilt my head back on the pillows, exhaling as my legs and arms turn warm and heavy, pinning themselves to the bed, while my mind spins into ecstasy.
Usually I’d be perfectly at ease, blessing fate for giving me this luxurious life. But I can’t settle in to enjoy the bliss. Not when I know Baz is unhappy.
