A/N: Pointless vignette and really quite random. Hadn't seen the movie in ages when I wrote this, but I was reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. Read on! And please review.
Mandy, with all of her glitter and smiles and tittering to the contrary, hated Curt Wild.
Oh, not because her husband's infatuation. Such plebeian morality was far beneath her. Had Curt been… interested… in what she could offer, she too would have partaken in his smoky breath and emaciated frame. She'd had the height of the world between her thighs; he would have been the depth.
The height, of course, was Brian, with his crisp hair (colored golden with a dye), his frank blue eyes, and his curved scarlet lips… Just like Dorian Gray. She'd told him so right after she'd met him, lying in those perfect arms.
But she was no Sibyl Vane. He'd not thrown Mandy away; her talents had not faded.
Brian delighted in Oscar Wilde. Brian delighted in all things Bohemian, all things forbidden and cultured, crushed velvet and waxy lipstick. Brian didn't believe in morality in art, nor in art's usefulness. Brian reaffirmed these beliefs every night, naked and in Mandy's own arms. They would read Wilde aloud, velvet words breaking silky silence.
They would read Wilde, that is, until Wild came.
Mandy had asked Brian once, after they'd rescued Curt from his American hell, why Brian felt so drawn to him. Brian had smiled and she had sworn that he was art then, all fire and brilliance.
"Because," he'd said, "I am elect, and he is Beautiful."
That word was always capitalized for Brian and Mandy Slade. And Brian was right; Curt Wild was Beautiful, like a caged lion taught that its master was savior. He'd pace, sinewy energy radiating from every pore, giving off that sheen… Oh, he was Beauty. She had never begrudged Brian his Beauty.
But drop-by-drop, Brian and Mandy Slade were being diluted; subtly, they were moving apart. But she never hated Curt. Not until that night.
A press conference like no other… that was what it was. And it was the end of her belief in Beauty. Because that night, someone stole it from her.
"The world is changed because you are made from ivory and gold," Curt had whispered. "The curves of your lips rewrite history."
The words were from a love letter. Mandy recognized them instantly. A love letter to Dorian Gray. She was filled with such loathing at that moment… Biting scorn flew into her mind, a million things she could have said… In the end, she only swallowed back her hatred and her scorn, pulled it back into her stomach. And still wanted Brian, still loved him. She was much less Sibyl Vane, much more Basil Hallward. Left behind as Dorian was swept up, after putting so much into him…
But that role had been taken already by Cecil. Mandy was left with Sibyl, pouting in chiffon and taffeta, watching Brian be taken away by someone with a better act than her own. Suicide was not her style. She'd waste away first.
Wilde had been theirs. And yet… Brian and Curt were beautiful together, silver and gold with the Victorian touches… A breach of conventional morality like no other. Mandy didn't know if Oscar Wilde would have approved. Curt, after all, wanted to create useful things; Brian, after all, was art.
And, thought the Sibyl Vane of the 1970s, all art is quite useless.