“I do.” I can see he’s surprised by the answer. “It took time. It took Lily teaching me how. I know what I did was horrible. I also know I did it because I want what we all want. Eternal love.”
“No one wants eternal love in a literal sense. Some in our own community don’t desire romance or sex at all. This need of yours to put romantic love above all else... It’s delusional. I did love you. Perhaps I still do. But that doesn’t mean I would choose you over my mother and my friends and family. Over being ahuman. What you gave me isn’t eternal love. It’s eternal... loneliness.”
“I know that now.” I let out a sob. “I’m so sorry, Oliver. If I could go back...”
“Do you still have the last page?”
I put my hand on my heart. Inside the chest pocket of myjacket is the only remaining page of Wilde’s original manuscript in my possession. I pull it out. Hand it to him. He seems to contemplate throwing it into the Thames. Drowning any possibility of cursing another poor soul. But he puts it in his own pocket. “It’s safer with me.”
“I agree. You’re certainly less impulsive than I am.” I shake my head sadly. “I’ve spent over a century thinking about what I did. How it happened. Why I did it. How much I regret it. How to forgive myself for it. But—”
“But?”
A pain in my chest. My weary heart aches. “Is it too much to ask to make today about Lily? They’re probably leaving Queen’s Walk right now. Headed to Brixton. Our home. We can trail them together.”
He hesitates. His love for Lily pours through him as he speaks these words reverently: “Today is for Lily.”
I open the tin again. “We walk until the cookies are gone?”
He takes a cookie reluctantly. I do too.
I say: “You look good.”
He laughs. “I look the same. As do you.”
“No, I meant... You look happy.”
He shrugs. “I’m ashamed to say this, but I’ve found a medication that works for me. Those melancholy spells are gone.”
“Oliver, there’s no shame in mental illness.”
He laughs again. “I’m not ashamed of my depression. I’m ashamed because the medicine is manufactured and distributed by Whitman and Whitman.”
My heart sinks at the mention of that company. Jack Whitman. The Jackal. His evil sneer comes back to me. I feel the need to escape again. To move as fast as we can. I take Oliver’s hand. Leadhim across the bridge. Down the steps. Just as we walked that first morning after I burned the page and made him immortal.
On that walk...
One hundred and five years ago...
I confessed.
He raged.
Begged me to reverse it.
I had no idea how.
Still don’t.
His biggest fear was how he would ever explain it to his mother. He never did tell her.
My biggest fear was never seeing him again. Not being able to find him. He wanted to know where I was too. He still loved me. Despite his hatred of me.
We devised a system to let the other know where we were. Classified ads. Paid ads when the classified section got shut down. I would refer to him as a classical musician. He would address me as a great poet. He told me he never wanted to see me again. I said the entire reason I did what I did was to be with him in a better time and place. That’s when he said, and I remember every word...
If you ever find that time and place, I’ll come to you. I promise.
I thought I found that time and place with Lily. Here in London.
