Chapter 11: The Biggest Tub

Sunday evening, I found Dorian on the back terrace with a script in his hand and nothing on his mind but me.

He had not read a page of it.

"His agent has called nine times since the tabloid ran," Christian had told me at lunch, in the voice of a man reading a weather report.

"What did Dorian say?" I had asked.

"He told the agent to list him as the third."

"Rule one," I said now.

He dropped the script on the stone and stood up so fast the chair tipped over.

"It's me?" he said.

"It's you."

"Say it again."

"Dorian."

He grinned the grin that had sold a hundred million tickets, and he took my hand.

"Come upstairs," he said. "I've been promising you the biggest tub in the house since Friday."

The tub stood in the middle of a room with a wall of glass, and the ocean was going pink beyond it.

He ran the water himself, testing it on his wrist, and he poured something out of a bottle that smelled like cedar.

I stood in the doorway and watched him.

"You asked for one true thing," I said.

He looked up.

"On those inventory nights," I said. "I never went to inventory."

"I know."

"I went to a diner on Seventh Avenue. I ordered pancakes, and I did the crossword by myself, and I didn't know how to go home."

He did not laugh.

He turned off the tap, crossed the room, and kissed my forehead very gently.

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