The Nowhere Man

17 Beautiful Monster

René despised the mirror. It used to be his friend. In his youth he could spend hours preening, admiring the line of his jaw, the strokes of his collarbones, the way his ass arced firmly into leg. He’d never been exactly handsome, but he could strike the right poses in the right lighting to make himself into something worth looking at.

His family never shared his interest in himself.

He turned now in the soft light of the master bathroom, regarding the two-inch deviation of his spinal column.

The slightest lateral curve. And yet it had changed everything.

No matter how hard he worked, no matter what sort of discipline he exhibited, that thumb-size bend meant he would never be acceptable in the eyes of his family. The Cassaroy name carried with it certain obligations, expectations handed down from generation to generation, gathering moss and heft. His great-great-grandfather had fought in the Civil War. And the Cassaroy males made regular appearances in the historical record after that, inevitably linked to combat. Here a first lieutenant in the Spanish-American War, there an artilleryman in the trenches of Château-Thierry. The Cassaroys were represented in the lesser wars as well, wars no one had ever heard of, wars no one would ever remember were it not for the framed battlefield portraits that lined the dark hallways of his childhood manor. The Sheepeater Indian War, the Second Sumatran Expedition, the Red River War. If two forces spit at each other, there you’d find a Cassaroy, brandishing a rifle and a razor-straight spine, the first to show up, like an overeager party guest. His father had stormed Omaha, a muck-and blood-drenched affair he never hesitated to relive in the flickering light of the hearth, waving around a glass of century-old Grande Champagne cognac for punctuation.

Countless times René had heard that old chestnut about veterans never speaking of their wartime experiences. Would that it were true for the Cassaroys, who trotted out every scrape and scare like campfire tales made better by the retelling.

Were he not the sole Cassaroy heir and the biological end of the line, the pressure might have been less. And the disappointment. Born prematurely, René suffered from asthma and sundry illnesses in his childhood. He wasn’t classic Cassaroy stock, but he had a passable build and was willing to give it the college try. None of his ailments mattered until he tried to enlist. His scoliosis was so minor it was missed by his pediatrician, and yet the eagle-eyed army recruiter had picked it up in an instant. As had the navy man. The marines. Even the air force. Despite Papa Cassaroy’s considerable connections, René’s application to the CIA didn’t make it past the first round.

No one wanted him.

René was in his mid-twenties when Father threw a clot and cracked his head open on the claw-foot bathtub. Mother, a long-suffering waif out of a Tennessee Williams play, had succumbed to some vaguely defined ailment a few years prior. Father hadn’t seemed to mind — she’d given him only one son of inferior make — and René certainly felt no loss of love when she passed. Yet when Father had gone, he felt not just the lifting of an age-old weight from his shoulders but also an intense loneliness. All the old man’s badgering and bullying had at least been a form of attention, an acknowledgment that René Peter Cassaroy did in fact exist.

His existence was called into further question at the reading of the will, an awful three-hour affair in the solemn offices of the family attorney, René squirming in an itchy tweed suit, the lawyer stroking his fulsome mustache. Father parceled out the family estate to countless veteran causes, leaving René with a measly couple hundred grand. He would no longer be able to live in the fashion he was accustomed to.

For six months he withdrew entirely from the world, holed up in a summer home that had yet to fall under the auctioneer’s gavel. He knew he was a failure in the eyes of his family and the world, but hearing this fact confirmed so starkly by the walrus-mustachioed attorney was almost too much to bear. René had been deemed not worthy of sharing in a Cassaroy fortune that dated back to the 1600s. A two-inch curve of the spine had been enough to bring four centuries of prestige and affluence to a halt.

His father had unwritten him from history.

Perhaps the only benefit of being made nonexistent was that he was able to write a new story for himself. Play by new rules, ones that favored his strengths.

Using nothing more than a lifetime’s education in pitilessness, he had assembled a fortune of his own. He now lived in a manner befitting a Cassaroy, but rather than being bound by convention or tradition, he did exactly what he fucking wanted.

He could control everything. Even — quite possibly — nature and time.

He had received only one noteworthy inheritance from his long, proud lineage of hale forebears, and yet it would prove more valuable than all the family jewels and dusty paintings put together: an AB blood type, present in a mere 4-percent sliver of the population. In this, René was exceptional. No — perhaps not exceptional yet. But it would make him so.

It would precipitate his transformation into something worth looking at again.

Standing before the mirror, droplets from the shower clinging dewlike to the hairs that furred his sloped shoulders, he saw his deficiencies on display. The sea-lion bulge of his pale belly. The half-moons of skin sagging beneath his eyes. The fineness of his hair such that the overhead light shone straight through to the dome of his skull.

Now was the hard part. Bracing himself, he thumbed the light switch to high.

There he was in all his starkness, every flaw captured in the unforgiving glare.

He began his evening restorative process.

Cover-up for his crow’s-feet. A little concealer applied with a cotton disk to take the dark off the bags beneath his eyes. Color corrector for the sun spot staining his left cheek in front of his ear. He’d tattooed on a hint of eyeliner to make his chocolate brown irises pop, but it had been a few years, the ink fading. He made a note to have it redone.

Bottles lined the counter, diligent sentinels guarding against the ravages of aging. He filled his water glass to the brim. Down went three fish-oil pills, translucent and gold. Zinc for his skin, calcium for his nails, vitamin E for his follicles. Lipitor for cholesterol, Prinivil for blood pressure, Singulair for asthma. Concerta for focus, Klonopin to take the edge off, a second dose of Lexapro to ward off depression. Acidophilus for the gut. He washed down three green-tea capsules in hopes of speeding the fat-burning process and then heard David rustling around in the bedroom behind him and popped a Cialis.

With a dropper he applied Rogaine to the thinning area at the back of his head. It didn’t work for the recession at his part, but he sprayed hair filler along the line of exposed scalp, the fibers clinging to his own strands, making them more robust. Propecia would take care of the rest. He wished he could reattain the rich umber shade of his youth, but no matter how often he dyed his hair, it held a fake copper sheen.

It took more and more work and more and more pills, morning and night, to resurrect himself, pull his body into alignment, reassemble his façade. He stared at himself through his father’s eyes, through the eyes of generations of Cassaroys, and saw what they saw: someone pathetic and human and frail.

He felt the Need rise in him, clawing its way up his throat, crying out from his cells. His habits, so expensive, had to be supplied with blood.

There was a reason he kept Dr. Franklin on premises. It was expensive, retaining a physician of his caliber. The medical equipment was expensive. Everything was expensive. René’s life was an extravagant machine that required more upkeep every year. A beautiful monster that needed to be fed.

Dropping the towel from around his waist, René entered the bedroom. David lay nude and languorous, draped across the plush pillows. He cast a glance over a muscled shoulder, and René braced himself for the inevitable flash of disgust that flickered through his eyes before submerging beneath the drugged surface.

It cut him to the quick, that flicker. And yet he couldn’t blame David one bit.

David threw an arm wide, welcoming him to the bed. How handsome he was, with his rosebud lips, soulful eyes, and flushed cheeks. Like something from a Pre-Raphaelite painting.

René approached. “You’re going into town later tonight? For some fun?”

“That’s right.”

The Need clamored inside René’s chest, a trapped bird. “Bring me a fix,” he said.

David tilted his chin down, a lazy approximation of a nod. “Male or female?”

“A few of each,” he said. “Do you think you can manage?”

Of course David could. With his looks and the promise of the chalet, anything was possible.

David rolled over, baring himself. “I can manage anything,” he said.