DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER


Diamonds are forever

They are all I need to please me
They can stimulate and tease me
They won't leave in the night
I've no fear that they might desert me


Chapter One. Sympathy for the Devil

.

He finds her by accident. It's fucking ironic. After all this time, after everything he's done, finding her like this. He's been to Paris a thousand times. He should have known to look here. She always said it made her feel alive. He can't remember what alive feels like. It's been seven years. It's been seven long fucking years. Seven years without her, without Serena or Nate or hum-drum Humphrey. They took her side. And why wouldn't they? He doesn't blame them. He's a monster. And without her, there's no fucking point in hiding it.

Zippo, cold click, flame burns a hole in the night.

He lights up, cigarette number seventeen. It's a bad habit, but it feels good, and does he give a shit if it's killing him? He's going to die, anyway. He's already dead. He drags and exhales, nice and slow, and the smoke wafts upwards. He leans back into the velvet, watching it unfurl. It's a woman, with the softest curves, like the openingto some Bond movie, made of oil or diamonds. Things too beautiful for real life. He swipes the smoke, and she's gone. Another ghost.

He's needs to call fucking Ghostbusters. She's a ghost, and she's haunting him. In the dark, she whispers and her fingers almost touch him. He can't find her.

There's music seeping through the smoke. Rolling Stones: Sympathy For The Devil.

It's Christmas and Paris is grey. The damp cold gets into his knee and every step hurts. It seemed like a good idea at the time; cocoon yourself in the physical pain, let it eclipse you, neutralise the rest. He's since learned that real life has a bad habit of laughing in the face ofthe best laid plans. He locked the door and threw away the key before he realised the bad guys were in there with him. Now every step is a reminder of what she's reduced him to. Now every step makes him hate her more. She's an old wound, refusing to heal, weeping blood and puss and hate. She's his scar, his cross, his life. His new game; his old obsession. He will find her if it kills him. And maybe, when he does, he'll kill her himself. Strangle her, tear out her heart with his bare hands. The bible says an eye for an eye. A heart for a heart. He'll string hers off a necklace, and it will be the most precious diamond of all.

He'll wear it to Christmas dinner.

[please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste]

Sympathy for the Devil? Only he doesn't want fucking sympathy. He wants her.

He douses his cigarette in his absent companion's champagne. Lights up again.

Down here below the world, everyone smokes. The air is black with smoke and the lights are faraway and dead, stars through mist, and everything is closer, more private. Dirtier. The smoke keeps the secrets in and the world out. Normally he wouldn't mix business with pleasure, but he makes an exception for Paris, because Paris is the exception. In Paris, anything goes. The people here put away their masks. Here, they become the monsters they are under all the skin and silk and Chanel no. 5.

[pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name, but what's confusing you is just the nature of my game]

She says something in French, this pretty little girl with blonde curls and too-blue eyes.

He raises his head. Slow. Exhales in her face. She breathes it in, rolling her head, like it's fucking diamonds he's throwing at her. She squats, reaching over the table, sliding on it, plucks the cigarette from his lips and takes the longest drag. When she hands him back his cigarette, the filter is sticky with lipstick. His lip curls. She climbs up and over and in. Smells like musk and caramel and smoke. He kills the butt in a solid gold ashtray. Opulent, ostentatious, fucking ridiculous – but it works because this is burlesque and you can do whatever the fuck you want.

[as heads is tails, just call me Lucifer, 'cause I'm in need of some restraint]

But he does that anyway.

[so if you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste ]

He dips his lips to her throat, his hand on her thigh. She's warm, her skin powdery soft. He catches her by the chin and his grip is tight. He nods, just a little, touching a finger to his lip. Her pink tongue flickers out, licking her lips, searching for lipstick that isn't there. Her eyes are too blue. They hurt.

"Tout partie?"

All gone?

He shakes his head, smirks. Beckons her in close. She's straddling him when the Prince returns, tie askew, drink in hand. "I see you got my present."

He nods, slow, intense. He doesn't say anything because he's got nothing to say. Did he get the present? It's only fucking eating his neck.

The Prince is some exiled Algerian aristocrat, with diamond mines but without soldiers to protect the miners from insurgents. He can supply the soldiers, as many as necessary; he can also supply the rebels. More rebels with more guns means more soldiers, and more soldiers means more money. Nothing is as profitable as war.

But the fuck is it worth? No amount of money is going to make the ache go away. It's like something is eating him from the inside, something small and black and just as nasty as he is. One day it's going to come bursting out, he knows, like fucking Alien – and they'll find him in the gutter with a hole in his chest. That and the pins in his knees holding him together – actual, physical, concrete evidence that he is, in fact, fucking falling apart.

His drink is served with diamonds in the glass. It still tastes the same. She's crawling onto his lap, kissing his collar bone, running her gloved fingers through his hair. He talks to the Prince over her shoulder. All closeted away from the world, they can talk about business and black, dirty things that belong in the dark.

He's vaguely aware the lights have dimmed and the music is anticipating.

[young girl, they call them the diamond dogs]

"I want to 'aff product on ze market by zis time next year," the Prince says. He has black eyes. "Either way."

He replies, in his hoarse voice, "And do you want to supply Tiffanys, mon ami?" He takes time with the French. He always felt that French should not be rushed. "Or Cartier?"

The Prince grins with yellow, diamond-studded teeth. "When my associate told me of ze young American, I must say, I woz uncertain. But you 'aff indeed proved worth ze risk." He puts something on the table. Clink. Heaviness on polished wood. It's a little velvet drawstring purse, black. The Prince pushes it halfway.

He murmurs into the girl's neck and she fetches it for him. He breathes in her skin. She curls up in his lap, like some small fuzzy creature, and they open the bag. "Oooh," she whispers with too-blue eyes. "Oooh."

Diamonds.

He loves diamonds. He picks one up, something tiny and white, and holds it to the light. It sparkles because that's what diamonds do. Beautiful, hard, cold, classy. Near fucking indestructible and, like gold, always hold their market value. Diamonds are forever.

She whispers in his ear, throaty and French, "Diamonds are a girl's best friend."

He looks at her, eyebrow raised. His gaze is easy: you want one? Huh? You want a diamond, you little whore? He holds up the stone. It's one of about fifty tiny rocks in his cupped hands.

"Diamonds," she sings.

He hovers, choosing, and picks a big one. Her eyes go black with lust. She reaches. He shakes his head. He smiles. "Ah, ah, ah…" He shakes his head.

She squirms to the floor, poised and ready, but he just shakes his head again. She's confused. He takes the diamond, tosses it up, and it sparkles. Catches it, puts it in the champagne glass, hands it to her.

"On the house," he says. "Drink up."

And she does, she drinks it all and her eyes tear up. She drinks because he tells her to, and when he tells, people do as they're told. His voice is soft, slow, but it's there in his eyes. Something feral, lurking.

The Prince looks on approvingly. "You like burlesque?" He asks. "I zink you do like. You 'aff a club of your own, in New York."

Victrola. The root of all evil. He fell in love with her that night. She stripped back her layers and revealed something new and perfect. Then she striped back his layers and saw only darkness.

He loved burlesque. Debauchery, excess, pretence, happy endings. But he knows now, the longer one avoids reality, the harder it finally bites.

"Sold it," he muttered.

"Porquoi?" The Prince has to yell through the noise and smoke. "Why? Zis ees real life. You can touch eet."

"Je ne sais pas."

His forearm splays the table, and he leans forward. His knee fucking hurts and he grits his teeth, grinding. There are pills, but he won't take them. This pain reminds him he's real.

The Prince talks but says nothing, and he just nods while the girl works. He holds up his hand for another drink, leans back, smokes with his eyes closed. Sometimes it's agony just to keep them open. Every brunette looking the other way is her.

He knows what he did was wrong, but she wronged him, too. She fucking lied. She promised to stay with him, no matter what, and then she left, just like everyone else. People always leave.

She took the Erickson Beamon with her, and his heart. She took away his heart and now something black grows in the hole, a fungus, a disease. Sometimes his nose bleeds for no reason and it's the blackness, knocking on the walls, saying don't you fucking forget about me. I'm here. I'm staying. I'm fucking staying.

The noise in the pit dies, trumpets flare; the dancers are departing, leaving the stage to raucous applause and shouts, leaving the tables and the laps. Leaving behind the smell of cheap escape. The noise in the pit swells and the night crackles. The air is so tight. A single droplet of sweat runs down the side of his face. The girl licks it up.

The Prince opens his mouth. "I must ask, my friend– "

But whatever he has to ask is gone. Meaningless. When he finds her, he doesn't see her. He smells her. He is a shark and she's blood in the water. He's the hunter and she's the prey, and he's been waiting for so very, very long. His mouth is dry.

[diamonds are forever, they are all I need to please me]

He stands, staggering, the pain explodes and runs down his leg, sticky and wet and hot. He pushes through, smoke and bodies. Clutching the edge of the balcony, breathing.

[they won't leave in the night, I've no fear that they might desert me]

She's singing, on the stage, just her and faceless men in tuxedos. They have little plastic guns because they're little plastic men.

[diamonds never lie to me, for when love's gone, they'll luster on]

She's wearing a black hat and veil, a widowed bride. Long black gloves, black stocking and a garter belt. And diamonds. They all yell in the blue glow, wanting to be the brightest light, and he holds up a hand to shield his eyes. He tells himself it's the diamonds that blind him.

[I can see every part, nothing hides in the heart to hurt me]

She wanted a white knight. Something dark and intoxicating, but fundamentally good. A hero in a badass trenchcoat, or an Armani overcoat. She wanted a Rhett. An arrogant fucking asshole, yeah sure, but he came through in the end. He carried her. He was no Rhett, he knew that, and she knew that, but she refused to see it. She convinced herself that he was, just because she loved him, who she wanted him to be. She erased out the black bits, she put on rose-tinted glass. Because she loved him, he had to be a good guy. He had to be a diamond in the rough.

He is a diamond. Polished and hard and cold and indestructible. He is a cockroach. And he isn't going anywhere. Because diamonds are forever.

[unlike men, the diamonds linger, men are mere mortals who are not worth going to your grave for]

The Prince appeared at his shoulder, drinking her with hungry eyes. "Trés belle, non? American. Came to me, oh, je ne sais pas, six years ago. They call 'er Fantine, after ze character from Les Miserables. 'Er lover, 'e left 'er, stupid bastard, and now she waits."

[diamonds are forever]

"I know her," he breathes. Tastes her on the air.

The Prince claps him over the back and his knee screams. "Oui, Monsieur. You see 'er in your dreams!"

She slides off the gloves. All she's wearing is the Erickson Beamon.

The pain reminds him it's all real. That's there no escape. Not for her. Not this time.

[diamonds are forever, forever, forever and ever]