"…after your birthday, of course."

The words slipped through Pavi's ear and out the other. He stared at the blurry wall, feeling like a small goldfish that had been dropped into a pool of syrup on the floor. He could see escape, but couldn't make it there. Everything was heavy, both his limbs and the air. Amber's mouth moved in slow motion, Luigi's pocket knife flipped open, closed, open, like the pattering of butterfly wings…like…his head was thudding and the needles inside it wanted to explode.

"Pavi!"

How did the ceiling get there? When had he fallen? What was that smell? Amber crouched over him, and Pavi swatted her away. He had escaped the syrup. His body felt light, and the air felt different too. Smelt different. He stood shakily.

"Pavi. Pavi, you're sick. Where are you going? Pavi! Luigi, go g…"

He ignored them and continued down the hallway, up the stairs. Inside his bedroom was a closet. Inside that closet was a large wooden chest. In that chest, underneath clothes that no longer fit quite right and wigs that he'd experimented with for a time, half used make-up, was a cardboard box. After a few moments Pavi had dug it out and set it on the bed next to him. It had not been opened for nearly a year.

Pavi Pavi Pavi

He lifted the lid, breathed in dust. An old leather photo album first. A small boy in shorts and knee socks with a stern woman behind him, softly rolling hills. One page only, and then a fat man and sad woman and scowling children, and grey grey grey…

Pavi Pavi Pavi

The angel.

A smaller box inside. Two plane tickets, and a key.

Pavi Pavi Pavi

"Paviche! No. I do not wish to speak," Magdalene said through the door. How dare she, he though. This was his home. She was a guest- no. An indentured servant! She had no right.

"Open this door-a, Magdalene! Open this door-a!"

There was only silence. Paviche hit the door, once, twice. He realized the irony of this in a sudden burst of pain and lowered his fist. Magdalene's perfect, unblemished face; but lower, the purple finger marks on her arm. He closed his eyes in frustration. Paviche was not to blame, no. She overreacted, as she had been like to do lately. Over nothing. They were only women with no place in society, no purpose. He did not even remember their names, or the events that brought them together. Paviche only felt the lingering warmth of conquest in his blood. Of the beauty that he now had only one way to posses.

Except for with Magdalene. She had always been a bird, never something to possess. Until now. Now that he needed to. Now that everytime they made love she seemed to slip farther out of his grasp, fall away like sand. Paviche thought of the eyes she would blankly turn away, the wrist that would lie limp, and he became angry again. With a sudden realization he knew, then. The Zydrate buzzed inside him and seemed to whisper the truth.

She is keeping the beauty for herself.

Paviche, years later, would never know just how he knocked through the door. Perhaps it was the drug-drenched rage. But he made it in, to find the room empty. Magdalene's balcony doors were open and her curtain blew pitifully in the air, like a lonely spirit.

"Magdalene?" he whispered. There was no answer. Paviche slowly walked forward and pushed aside the curtain. Magdalene stood on the balcony's ledge and stared at sky. Her eyes were bright, almost too bright. Fevered and manic.

"Magdalene, come down! Magdalene, please!" Paviche was crying. He tugged at Magdalene's arm, and when she turned her face to him the eyes sparked with recognition. She climbed down, shivering. Paviche wrapped his arms tightly around her body. He expected it to be cold, but she was sweating.

"I'm sick, Paviche," she murmured against his shirt.

He swallowed. The fear from a moment earlier had banished the high, and Paviche felt consumed with gilt for everything he'd done lately. What he'd become.

"We could-a leave," Paviche said suddenly. "We could-a go to Italy." In his mind he'd already bought the tickets. It was very quiet while he waited for an answer. Magdalene hardly seemed to breath. She pulled away from him slowly and, with closed eyes, touched his face. His borrowed face. Paviche remembered the time she'd first discovered his disfigured features and had kissed him, as if there'd been no different. Magdalene's face was contorted in pain now, though. She pulled her hand away and shuddered, like a cornered animal.

"Yes," Magdalene said. "Italy. When?"

"Three-a days," Paviche decided. "Three-a days."

Magdalene nodded, and smiled sadly. "Three days, then. Alright, Paviche. Italy."

The world blurred again, but not from the drugs. Pavi blinked away tears. What had happened after that? It was all so muddled. Three days later Magdalene was gone, though, without him. Rotti had sent her…somewhere. To some clinic so she could recover. And how long was she gone? Pavi could not remember. That time did not seem to really exist to him. It was one long party, one endless shot of Z. Women and their perfect faces. He shook his head to try and clear it.

There had also, after his surgery gone wrong, been Amber- that nightly glass of wine. And odd feeling traveled up Pavi's back. Not quite a shiver. But a thought. A dangerous thought.