Dark Terrors 5: The Gollancz Book of Horror

GREGORY FROST The Girlfriends of Dorian Gray

With his fork, he cut through the layers of crisp philo dough, lifted and placed in his mouth the slice of bisteeya. The flavours of cinnamon, coriander, butter and almonds flooded his senses — a sweet and tender orgasm to which he gave himself completely, eyes closed, fingers curled tenderly around his utensils. When he opened his eyes again, he was staring right at Alison.

She sat across the table. In front of her was a white bread plate and a glass of spring water with a slice of lemon floating in it. The plate contained three saltine crackers. Alison was trying to look disinterested and unaffected by his meal. But just then her stomach gurgled and he had to keep himself from smiling at its betrayal. She could have had the same meal he was eating, or anything else on the menu: he would have been more than willing to order her something, anything. The choice to starve was hers. He could not concern himself with it.

A single rose stood in the small vase between them. It was his particular flourish, that rose. He began his conquests with the rose, knowing that so simple a gesture was an arrow to the heart of the romantic. He promised elegance, thoughtfulness, taste, but above all, romance. After their first date — the first night they’d met after she answered his ad — Alison had confessed that the rose made her toes curl. Tonight, however, it stood as an emblem of distance, a cenotaph of her feelings for him, already buried elsewhere. He knew this would be the last night, knew already exactly how it was going to end. It had ended this way dozens of times before.

He was elegance himself — tall, smoothly groomed, with perfect teeth and long slender hands. He took extra good care of his hands. ‘The hands of an angel,’ one of the women had told him. Wasn’t it Tricia? Yes, that seemed right. Tricia was always alluding to Christian iconography: hands of an angel, face of a saint, heart of the devil. An annoying habit, actually — he never could have married her. But of course he wouldn’t; just as he wouldn’t be marrying Alison.

He’d taken her to only the finest restaurants in the city. A night out with him ran to hundreds of dollars, and he never skimped, never hesitated to order the finest meals. Maitre d’s knew him. Chefs came out of the kitchen to the table and discussed dishes with him. Dining with him was like dining with a celebrity. ‘If we are going to eat, then we should only ever eat the best,’ was his mantra. Never would he have dipped below a four star establishment. He was like someone who had just stepped out of a magazine ad for Rolex watches or Dom Perignon, a real live James Bond without the silly devices and world-dominating villains. A man who’d been bred to know the best and settle for nothing less. And by association, what did that make the woman who accompanied him?

How many dinners had they shared before she noticed the first signs of the change? It was three before he saw, but he was watching. Six or seven for her, by his reckoning. When you’re in love, you overlook and deny so many seemingly insignificant things.

Like the fact that he was a gourmand.

He not only liked the finest cuisine, he liked as much of it as he could possibly consume in any one sitting. Four courses, six courses: pate de fois gras, bisques thick with cream, lobster-stuffed squid-ink ravioli in a tomato-cream sauce, soufflés, quiches, duck à l’orange, prime rib of beef, cherry compôte, tiramisu, bottles of champagne, carafes of wine. Single-handedly he could take out a whole menu.

For all that, his manners were impeccable. It wasn’t that he sat slobbering and gnashing, drawing attention to himself as some deranged Neanderthal with a fork might have done. No, he ate demurely, quietly, chatting with her, truly interested in what she had to say (or at least feigning interest so well that she would never notice the difference). Dinner with him lasted the entire evening. The courses came and went — soups, hors-d’oeuvres, first course, main course, cheese course, desserts and coffee, liqueurs. She would not have noticed right away that he had eaten an extra course, or more than one dessert, or consumed an entire bottle of wine on his own and helped her with half of another. Simply, he ate. And ate. And ate. And ate.

He wondered if any of them would have stayed with him. He supposed it didn’t matter, since he never intended to stay with any of them. But he liked that they always called it quits. Alison was going to call it quits tonight. When they got to the saltines stage, they always called it quits.

He’d been surprised that first night how petite Alison was — the smallest woman he’d had so far, her head barely reached his nipples. And very healthy. She exercised hard, and was proud to show him her abdominals, her perfect, smooth, taut and round rear, and her well-muscled legs. She was certainly the only woman he’d met who claimed she enjoyed stair-climbers and rowing machines. Such strict attention to her physique included diet, and so she hadn’t been prepared for the cream sauces, the nights of sheer ecstatic indulgence in all things edible, the ease with which one got hooked by rich, buttery fattening foods. He supposed it had been something like springing a trap on poor Alison. By the time she’d mentioned to him — a gentle reproof — that she thought he over-indulged when they went out to dinner, he could only laugh. She told him as if he might be unaware of it himself. In all other ways he was the personification of charm and compassion; a wonderful, thoughtful lover. Of course when he’d offered her the ring she had accepted. On the first date he showed it to her. On the second date, he placed it on her finger. His eating habits didn’t dissuade her from accepting his offer of a more significant relationship.

Then the tummy had arrived.

Suddenly she didn’t fit comfortably in her electric blue Lycra. Where she had been hard muscle, she began to bulge. The solution, of course, was to increase her workout and decrease the number of times she ate out with him, both of which she did. She promptly gained another dozen pounds. Soon he had to coerce her into going out, and when she did, she ate the lightest fare — a salad, or something high in protein like fish, while avoiding all starches, breads and pastas — while he devoured half the planet with his usual zeal, but always solicitous, always asking if she minded that he ate a regular meal, exhibiting such concern that she could say nothing except ‘of course not’. There were many nights when she begged off dinner and he went out alone. It didn’t matter. Once she’d handled the ring, she didn’t have to be with him.

Now five months had passed and the engagement had run its course. The longest it had ever run was eight months, but Anita had been a much taller woman to begin with. At four months, while expressing continued desire for her company, he ceased to exhibit any for the physical relationship they’d shared. Without saying anything directly, he reproached her for her size. He found her 190-pound physique as repugnant as she did. He didn’t weigh that much. She was only five feet tall. She couldn’t remotely carry this kind of weight around. Just climbing the steps to the restaurant left her labouring for breath. He held her hand and waited for her with the utmost patience and consideration. Never would he give her cause to doubt the sincerity of his concern. Treadmills and rowing machines fell by the wayside. Alison couldn’t bend forward enough to row, and she complained of back aches when she used a stair-climber. At five months, the skin sagged on her arms, flowed around her elbows and knees. Her calves literally hung over her ankles. She was gelatin, marshmallow, not human at all. He found it all terribly disgusting, especially as he sat there indulging himself with a raft of the most glorious foods and never gaining an ounce.

She had tried every diet and gone so far as to experiment with acupuncture and hypnosis. He suspected she had become bulimic. She couldn’t become anorexic. Not quite yet anyway.

Nothing had worked. Nothing was ever going to work.

So while he finished the histeeya, Alison told him that she had to stop seeing him, that her world was out of control and she needed to get away for awhile. She was going to a clinic in upstate New York where they could help people with her kind of disorder. It was — it had to be — hormonal.

He set down his fork and let her see that he was stunned, crestfallen, horrified. ‘I do understand,’ he said. ‘You have to take care of yourself. Why, it must be awful to have to watch me enjoying food when it’s become so miserable for you to eat. That’s so awful, Alison. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to stop enjoying food. I don’t think I could do it. I’ll — I won’t have another thing. I’ll call the waiter right now and cancel the main course. You should not have to sit here like this.’

She agreed with him on that point. But rather than making him end his dinner, she insisted he just allow her to go. ‘It’s better if I don’t see you again, either. I’m afraid — ’ her eyes glistened with her first tears ‘ — I can’t separate you from what’s happened to me. I’m sorry.’ Sobbing, she slid his ring across the table.

She rose to leave the restaurant, but swayed dizzily, and he leapt to his feet and caught hold of her pudgy arm to brace her. He moved as swiftly as someone who had foreseen that she would become lightheaded.

He guided her into her coat, then hailed a cab and helped her struggle into the back of it. She clutched his hand, kissed it, then turned her face away. He gave the driver her address and a twenty dollar bill, wished her well, and sent her off.

Once the cab was out of sight, he returned to his table and proceeded immediately to eat the rest of his meal as if nothing had happened, as if there was not — and could not have been — a care in the world. Some of the other diners glanced at him with disgust. He ignored them. The waiter asked if the lady would be all right, and he answered, ‘Eventually. She’s having digestion problems.’ The waiter eyed him peculiarly, and he took that as his cue to say loudly enough for those nearby to eavesdrop: ‘We’ve just broken up. So, while I’m sorry that she’s feeling ill, I’m not full of tea and sympathy just now. You understand? She’s broken my heart and I’m not going to cave in. I refuse.’ That seemed to satisfy the waiter. At least it lent some justification to his insistence that the dinner proceed. People ate their way out of misery all the time. Didn’t they?

Thus he ate and ate as if Alison were still there, as if she or her phantom were being served a portion of everything, too, as if no amount of food could salve his conscience. As if he had one.

In the morning he called the paper and placed a new ad. He needed a new vessel.

The most difficult part was this limbo in between. He had no vessel and he wanted desperately to binge; but he knew that, if he succumbed to his lust, the repercussions would be his alone to bear. That was how the spell worked. It wasn’t under his governance. It hadn’t really been his idea in the first place.

The whole thing was Rebecca’s fault. She’d irritated him into it. At the time, of course, he’d only half-believed in it, and that half was drunk. Magic was silly — Penn & Teller pulling the audience’s collective pants down. That was magic to him.

He’d been drinking ouzo, but as Manny had said, ‘What else ya gonna drink in a bar in Canea on Crete, dude?’ In his cups, he’d been complaining to Manny and one of the local men about Rebecca’s vanity, her obsession with her model’s figure, which included denial of most of the foods he loved, and her complaints about his own softening physique. If she was to deny herself these pleasures, then she expected him to do the same. He wasn’t even married to her yet and already she was instituting changes in his life. ‘Come all the way here just to eat Melba toast? My God, it’s hideous!’ he’d exclaimed. Mummy and Dad were footing the bill for this trip — his reward for graduating with honours — and he wasn’t about to spend their money on a diet of figs and yogurt. There was more to it, of course. She’d complained the whole trip about how pathetic and stupid the native population were, these poor little people without even cell phones. The next thing he knew, he and Manny were in the company of two locals on a narrow street with a name like Iepela Odoc or something. Well, the word in Greek that looked like odoc meant ‘street’ but that was as far as he could get with his sloshing vocabulary.

He had the money to buy the spell. He could have bought a dozen. He remembered joking to Manny that there was ‘a special on love potions in aisle five’. He didn’t so much as feel the amount he was paying, although to the woman — the herbalist or witch, or whatever she was — it must have been a jackpot sum. In her corner of the world, that much money was a fortune. ‘Travel broadens the mind, not the girth,’ he’d announced. It was all a lark.

‘You don’t believe, but yet you pay?’ she’d asked. She clearly thought him an idiot. He never got to answer. She asked him to give her something to use to focus the spell upon, and he fumbled in his pockets and pulled out the antique ring he’d bought for Rebecca in Athens — he intended it to be her engagement ring. At least, he had intended that before she started telling him what he could and couldn’t eat.

The next thing he knew, he’d been presented with a small chalice and he was thoughtlessly drinking the contents. Whatever it was, it made him double over in pain. His brain cleared enough for him to experience fear — to think she might have played a trick on him and now he would die in a little shop on a back street in one of the oldest cities of the world, murdered by a woman who looked about as old as the city. He had time to hiss, ‘Manny, you stupid bastard,’ before blackness shot with stars scooped him up and deposited him back in his hotel room. He opened crusted eyes beneath a spinning ceiling fan, on his bed; it was as if the entire adventure, the whole day, had been a wild dream. He was still dressed. He checked his money belt. The cash he remembered giving the woman was in fact gone — but only that much. The other thousand he had was still there, and so was the antique ring. If it hadn’t been for that he might never have believed the journey had happened at all.

He felt no different. He looked no different. Whatever she’d given him, it hadn’t killed him. The whole thing was just a mean, drunken digression. Despite which, he gave Rebecca the ring at his first opportunity, and then watched to see what would happen.

Of course it had worked. He couldn’t believe how well it had worked. Over her shrill protests, he finished his holiday eating whatever he wanted, as much as he wanted. Within a month, Rebecca had developed a double chin. Dear, vain, conceited Rebecca was swelling up like a balloon and could do nothing to stop it. His pudginess, on the other hand, was vanishing. By the time they left for home, he looked positively trim. That was when he knew.

Once they returned home, it continued. Rebecca tried everything from yoga to liposuction. The latter vacuumed fat off here and there, but couldn’t slow down its reappearance. She saw specialists in diet, hormones, metabolism. No one could account for the changes. No one could reverse them. She ate in the zone, adhered to the Atkins diet, and finally, humiliatingly, joined Weight Watchers. The latter thought she lacked the will to lose. She was cheating.

She became reclusive, and within the year was institutionalised. Never for a moment did anyone save Manny have the slightest suspicion what was really happening — and Manny, the instrument of the spell, couldn’t say a thing. It was all too sublime.

Finally, Rebecca’s clogged arteries had given her a stroke. She hadn’t lived long. After the funeral, the family returned his ring to him; it was only proper — he had stuck by her the whole time. At least, when he wasn’t eating.

The moment his fiancée was gone, any overindulging he did came back on him as it would have on anyone. He made himself rein in his appetite. The trouble was, by then he’d discovered he liked to eat that way. His body had grown used to rich sauces and huge quantities of food. It ached for more.

Rebecca had a sister, Midge, who liked him. She had always been waiting in the wings, jealous of her older sister. It was the element of sibling rivalry, stealing the boyfriend away from her dead sister, that made his part easy. Within weeks they were engaged, and he started eating again. He did so warily, with an eye to Rebecca’s replacement, because at that point he wasn’t certain the magic would transfer. But Midge wasted no time in following in her sister’s elephantine footsteps. The difference was that Midge somehow figured out he was responsible. He suspected that Manny told her, and thereafter he and Manny parted company. Midge soon rejected him. Although she never could have understood what was happening, he had learned never to involve people who knew one another.

And so he had come to the personals page, where potential fiancées abounded — a thousand women of all persuasions looking for the right man, for romance and adventure. He looked for the ones who proclaimed their thinness, their great physiques. He tailored his own ad to attract them. It was easy. They were ducks on a pond.

Two days later, when he looked to check that his ad was listed in the personals, he found Cerise. Her ad was across from his on the page. The title caught his eye.

THE WAY TO A MAN’S HEART. WiOF, in the middle of life, slender, attractive, loves good food, trained chef, ISO delicious male, 35–45, who wants to savour the flavour. BOX 2356.

The silly ‘savour the flavour’ rhyme ought to have made him dismiss the ad, but instead it crawled inside his head like some tiny, obnoxious nursery rhyme, helixing in singsong around and around his thoughts. ‘Trained chef’ was a taunt, an invitation, a tantalising dare. He started imagining all sorts of things — of taking her to the best restaurants in the city, watching her pass judgment on the culinary delights as he devoured each one. Letting her pick out the courses one after the others, selecting his sauces, hobnobbing with the various chefs. Choosing the very shape of her own undoing.

What was the ‘O’ for, he wondered. Old, maybe, Oriental. Widowed Oriental? Slender? Well, for the time being, maybe. He would change that.

He replied to her ad immediately, calling the 900 number and leaving his name, his phone number and particulars. He finished by saying, ‘Good food is necessary for all things sensual. How can anyone be a sensualist without appreciating food? You, with your training, can’t help but be sensual. Of that, I’m certain.’ He didn’t know why, but he was sweating by the time he finished — a case of nerves. Having made the call, he found himself worried about losing her to someone else. The ad spoke tohim. He wondered if his own ad had affected the women who answered that way.

He’d never had a problem inducing them to accept the ring, which meant that they came to the date with some illusions, some ridiculous hopes that worked to his advantage. And he always began with the rose, that romantic hook. He remained attentive, cultured, never angry or even irritated; he was, he felt, a good lover, always solicitous, as hard, soft or vocal as they desired. He never looked at another woman, not even when the ballooning began. He was obsessed with watching the changes as he reshaped and distorted her. It was like peering into a funhouse mirror, witnessing a transformation that should have been his own. Behind the rapacious joy of eating and the visceral pleasure of controlling and destroying, he couldn’t imagine what he would have looked like by now without the ring, without the magic.

Responses to his ad trickled in, but he didn’t answer any of them. He waited for the woman to call him.

As the days ran on, he convinced himself that he’d been rejected, he had lost her. Maybe she’d had an answer before his. Her ad might have been in place for ages. He dug out the section and looked at it again, noting the ‘Exp. 2/19’ date at the end. His own ad didn’t expire until the 23rd, so she must have been bombarded with calls well before his own, how could she not have been? Someone had beaten him to her and there was nothing he could do, no way to get her to consider him instead. He thought of calling again, but knew how desperate that would make him sound, and he refused to be desperate. He sank into a depression, and thoughtlessly ate a huge meal to take his mind off her. Of course it did just the opposite, and he gained five pounds on top of everything else. Defeated, he returned to his mailbox and listened to a dozen unappetising answers. What could he do? He needed a vessel. He was starving without one.

After two weeks she called. a husky, lightly accented voice asked to speak with him. Her name, she said, was Cerise, like the colour. ‘I loved your reply. You seem to know me just by imagining my cooking. You made food sound as if it were your one consuming passion.’

‘It is,’ he said. His palms were sweating. ‘You — you’re a chef?’

‘Yes. Oh, not professionally. That is, I don’t work as one. But I have been trained here by the CIA, and also in France awhile ago.’

The CIA — only someone with his fixation would know to render that as a reference to a cooking school and not a collective of spies.

‘What was your specialty?’ He felt like an idiot asking it. What had happened to his refinement, his sensibility? His whole facade had deserted him.

‘Mediterranean dishes.’ Then she added, ‘So, would you like to sample my art?’

He’d intended to ask her to come to Figaro’s with him — that had been his original plan, the one he’d used on all the others. Instead he found himself saying, ‘I would love to,’ and writing down her address and promising to be there that night.

He hung up the phone and then sat still, his mouth dry, his penis as stiff as if she had just performed a striptease before him. There was something truly wonderful about her. Absurd, he thought, but I believe I’m in love.

He considered that he might even regret what had to happen to her.

He arrived at 8:00 p.m. sharp. She had a midtown flat overlooking the park, an address that announced her wealth. The doorman called her and he heard her voice answering to let him in. The doorman touched finger to cap and held the door as he entered.

He’d brought a fine Bordeaux with him from his cellar, one that he never would have brought along on a blind first date. It seemed terribly important to make a good first impression. He had his single rose, and the ring was in his breast pocket. He never knew when he was going to convince his vessel to wear it. What was important was that the magic start — that she handle the old ring sometime during the first meal. By the second or third date, he would propose, give her the ring to wear, and then let the rest happen. He’d done it enough times that the process was scripted, events pre-ordained before the first course had been cleared.

The elevator was an old-fashioned cage, and he rode up rigid with apprehension, staring through the bars but seeing nothing beyond his own desire.

Even before he’d reached her door, he could smell spices and sea scents. His stomach fluttered with anticipation at the same time as he realised the wine he’d brought wasn’t going to work. He ought to have asked what she was making. It would be interesting to see if she appreciated the gift; they could always drink it the next time.

He lifted the knocker and rapped quietly. She opened it at once.

The moment he looked at her, he knew what the ‘O’ had stood for.

‘Olive,’ he said aloud.

As though she understood his meaning, she smiled when he said it; and he thought he would go blind with lust. For a moment he actually forgot about food.

Her flesh was a deep, deep olive colour. She was as tall as he, and her bearing could only be described as regal. Her cheekbones were high, and as sharply defined as her jaw, which ought to have been too large, too pronounced on such a face but was unaccountably beautiful. Her eyes were lighter than her complexion, nearly golden. Her hair was jet black, yet where the light in her entryway sparkled in it, the hair seemed highlighted with gold, as if she’d looped thin strands through it. Her eyes looked him up and down as she spoke his name and offered her hand. He, utterly besotted, raised it to his lips and kissed it. She smiled again as he gave her the rose, and looked at him a moment over the petals. There were lines of experience beneath her eyes, but they laughed at him, promised joy.

She ushered him in, took his overcoat while commenting on the cold weather, accepted his proffered bottle. As he’d hoped, she noted its vintage with satisfaction: she knew her wine.

She wore a sort of loose, red, ochre and purple dashiki, belted in gold at her narrow waist, slit along the sides. When she reached to hang up his coat, he glimpsed her breast and realised that she was wearing nothing at all beneath the gown.

She had a bottle decanted already, some cold and golden aperitif, and she poured him a drink, then led him on a tour of her apartment. It was simply decorated in the style of a Mediterranean villa. The walls had been glazed, treated in rough imitation of old plaster. There was a mosaic built into the dining room wall of a fish creature — a kind of seahorse with a bearded human head. It looked like something that might have been uncovered at Pompeii. Whoever had died and left her a widow had provided for her very well.

‘I hope you like paella,’ she said. She placed herself on a divan across from him. Her feet, in sandals, crossed at the ankles. He couldn’t help staring.

‘You made a paella?’

She shrugged as if to say it was nothing. ‘I selected the ingredients this morning myself.’ She sipped her wine. ‘It’s important to have fresh ingredients.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘So, please, tell me about yourself.’

‘Well,’ he said, and launched into a longwinded autobiography, surprising himself as he told her about his first sexual encounter, about growing up with a sense of superiority over the average citizen because he could read a wine list, because he could recognise quality in objects, in places. In people. At least, that was what he found himself saying. He described his trip to Crete with Manny and Manny’s girlfriend and Rebecca, calling it ‘the transforming event of my life’. He very nearly blurted out that he’d purchased a magic charm there — very nearly gave away his secret to a woman who was about to become its next victim — and decided that he’d best go light on the wine.

The dinner became immediately one of the greatest meals he had ever eaten. She had struck the perfect balance among the fish, shellfish and mussels, the herbes de Provence, saffron rice and chorizo. Each mouthful was like an island floating on an orgasmic ocean, so good that his eyes closed half the time. He had to eat slowly. She plied him with more wine, a lovely Sauvignon Blanc, and flat bread, and conversation. She described her life as nomadic. She had, it seemed, lived all over. She told him about cooking classes in Paris with artists whose names he’d never heard; about living in Venice with her late husband; about travelling finally to ‘the New World’ for a change not only of scenery but of lifestyles, of attitudes. Of people. She made it sound as if it had all taken centuries. And who had she found but a man who had himself gone to the old world? To Crete. A lovely place.

She talked and he ate, slowly, steadily, ready to die for another mouthful. He lost count, but she must have fed him three portions. She seemed only more and more delighted as he devoured the food, relishing and groaning and repeating how incredible she was. He would have eaten four or five helpings if his body allowed it, but even with the spell it was still his stomach.

Finally, sated, he sat back, saying, ‘I believe I have never in my life eaten anything at all to compare with this.’

Cerise collected his plate. After a few minutes she emerged from the kitchen with a slender, Turkish-style coffee pot. She set it on the table. It smelled wonderful. His head lolled while he studied the filigree etched into the pot. He fingered the ring in his pocket, drunk with the idea of marrying her tonight. It was absurd, he had to remind himself. He didn’t want a wife, only a receptacle, a fiancée. But, dear God, how could he allow her to slip through his fingers? Whether she swelled up like a human blowfish, where on Earth would he ever taste another meal to equal this one? How could he deprive himself of her culinary art?

He mulled it over to no avail. It was a conundrum. Finally, he said, ‘You are divine, Cerise, your meal was just… breathtaking.’

‘I’m happy to have robbed you of breath,’ she said, and laughed lightly. She poured the coffee then. It was sweet and strong, an intoxicant to smother the last of his will. He took the ring out and set it on the table.

‘This will — this will sound mad, but I am mad, I think. I am madly in love with you.’ He couldn’t quite make it more comprehensible than that, but he pushed the ring towards her.

She saw it and her teeth flashed again in delight. It was a beautiful ring. She took it, slipping it on her finger and admiring it as she said, ‘I knew when you answered my ad that you were the one I was looking for. The only one.’ She slid around the table, perching beside him. The smell of her was more heady than the scent of the meal had been.

‘Oh. Oh, my, my…’ He couldn’t find the right word and embraced her instead. His hands slid like snakes inside her clothing.

She made love as she made food. Everything was fresh, full of spice, hot and overwhelming. He thought of the sea god on her wall and he imagined the face as his own. He was drowning in pleasure, letting himself go completely. He was a ship, she was a storm, and he rode the tempest, too lost to look for bearings, just spinning, spinning, rising and falling.

In the morning when he awoke, he was alone in her bed. This room, like the others, had a sense of antiquity about it. A bronze sun with a capricious face looked at him from the wall. The mirror beside it was edged in verdigris and copper, the reflecting surface marbled with imperfections. When he got up and stood before it, he gasped.

Gasped and looked down.

His belly was swollen. He turned sideways, twisted his face, looked at the reflection, then down at his stomach, then back again. He craned his neck and patted the slight jowl under his chin that hadn’t been there the night before.

He looked as if he’d gained ten pounds.

Something was terribly wrong. He couldn’t understand it — he’d given her the ring, hadn’t he? He thought so, but he’d been intoxicated by her food and drink. By Cerise herself. Maybe he’d just imagined giving it to her.

He checked in his clothing, patted the pockets. Then he turned and circled the bedroom until he spied the ring on her dressing table. He snatched it up. So, she hadn’t worn it? But what difference did that make? All the others had had to do was touch it for the spell to take hold, the transformation to unfold. He crumbled under self-doubt: maybe he’d given it to her too late. Could there be a time limit that he just hadn’t encountered before? Damned if it didn’t look like the whole thing had been flipped back on him. As if he’d gained for both of them.

Uncertain, he dressed, assuring himself that, yes, the food was superb, more than superb, but not good enough to warrant this. And maybe that was it — maybe it had to be someone else’s cooking. He would go home, listen to the women who had answered his ad, select one and start over. Give the ring to some other woman as soon as possible.

He walked out of the bedroom, his mind made up, his story already arranged — walked into a cloud of olfactory bliss: Cerise had baked, poached, cooked, and it was ready and waiting for him. As was she.

The sight of the Eggs Benedict smothered in hollandaise made the blood pound in his temples. She’d brewed more coffee, baked some sort of braided bread that glistened with honey, filled bowls with fruit. Around the corner in the kitchen, she looked up from pouring him a mimosa.

She was naked: she’d cooked breakfast in the nude! She offered him that alluring smile once again, and proudly carried the fluted glass to him. Which he accepted. Her hands slid around his neck, into his hair. She kissed him, tasting of strawberry. Her tongue snaked along his own. His will dissolved.

They ate breakfast in almost complete silence. She treated it as if it were a silent sharing. He tried to remember between bites of egg and ham and buttery sauce what he was going to say to her. He began to wonder if he couldn’t continue seeing Cerise. Pick some new Alison or Sandra or Jill or Rebecca to take on this cooking, too! He could have it all — Cerise and a vessel — and why not? They never had to meet, or even know the other existed. His eating picked up speed. He ate now almost as a test, just to make sure the spell hadn’t taken late. So long as that chance remained, he didn’t want to do something rash.

When he had eaten, she served him more coffee, then led him back to her bed. He followed docilely, in something of a daze. His body responded to her touch as before; he grew hard and let her ride him into near exhaustion. It went on longer than he would have thought possible. He couldn’t believe that after half an hour he was still erect, still going, still unreleased. Tension, he told himself. Tension.

Finally, after she had experienced repeated orgasms of her own, he joined her. She sat awhile, then lay beside him. He sprawled, twitching like a galvanised frog’s leg. unable to coordinate his muscles enough to stand up. His whole body smelled of her now. Even the scent of her sex worked on his appetite, making him hungry for more. He dozed, then woke with a start from a dream of having fallen, to find her sleeping beside him with feline contentment upon her features.

He rose unsteadily, glanced at the time, found his underwear and socks. Before he dressed, he stepped in front of the old mirror again. If anything, he looked fatter than just a few hours before. That wasn’t possible, was it? It had to be an illusion — his fear working on him. No one got fat this fast… except for his vessels. As if to drive the point home, his pants had to be coerced into meeting. He sucked in his gut and used his belt to keep them together. All right, then, there it was — the spell didn’t work on her. Now there was no question. No tempting fate further; he had to get out of here before she cooked another meal for him.

Cerise made a noise deep in her throat, not a moan exactly, more like a few notes from a song being hummed below his hearing. She didn’t move, but her golden eyes tracked him. ‘You are going, my darling?’

‘Ah, you’re awake. Yes, I have to. That is, I have business that I should have taken care of this morning, and now it’s late afternoon, and if I don’t do it today, I’ll have to wait until Monday.’

‘Oh.’ The sound of disappointment. ‘You’ll come back tonight?’

‘Well, I — ’ He could think of nothing to say by way of an excuse. ‘Of course. Unless there’s a problem. If there is, I’ll call you.’

‘All right.’ She stretched languorously, her black hair reaching all the way to the dimples above her buttocks. Her legs were slightly spread. With her smell clogging his nostrils, all he could think of was how much he wanted to push them wider apart and dive in between.

He made himself turn away. ‘I’ll call,’ he repeated, but she had fallen asleep, and he fled from his returning arousal and the accompanying fear that if he gave in, he would never get away.

Back home, he stripped and showered, scrubbing hard to rid himself of her maddening scent. He put on fresh clothes, leaving the others in a heap beside the laundry hamper. He would have to bag them, take them to a dry cleaner’s and get the smell removed.

Comfortable but exhausted, he sat on his couch and dialled his account box and listened to the list of those who had responded to his ad. There were five, and from that list he culled two who sounded the most promising and self-absorbed. He wanted someone vain and stupid right now; someone he could manipulate without having to work hard at it.

The first woman he called was named Gwen. She giggled when he made the simplest joke, said she had never eaten anything like he described and couldn’t wait to try. He made a date with her, hung up and called La Parisienne. By luck they had a table. The maitre d’ knew him of course and was delighted to hear from him. He sat back, sighed with relief, then curled up on the couch and fell asleep. His descending thought was that he had escaped from something terrible.

The new vessel was perfect. She had artificially dyed red hair, and wore an outfit which she undoubtedly thought appropriate for an evening of fine dining but which was just a few steps shy of a hooker so far as he was concerned. Her jewellery was cheap and gaudy. His ring would be lost within the trappings. Still, it was the easiest thing in the world to ask her what she thought of it, if she liked it. She turned it over, studied the stone — ‘This is a real one, isn’t it?’ — and tried it on. He let her wear it all through the soup course. He listened to his body as he ate the rich mushroom bisque, but sensed nothing. Convinced that the bisque wasn’t touching him — that it was going where it was supposed to go — he relaxed and anticipated the rest of the meal.

Gwen babbled about her job — something clerical in a photo-mounting company where her manager kept finding ways to touch her. It was all accidental, according to him, but she knew better: the man was a sleaze. She was thinking about filing a suit.

He tried to seem interested, nodding, giving her warm smiles of sincere support. His mind, however, refused to focus on her. The main course arrived — he’d ordered a wonderful fillet of beef in a sauce of wine, shallots and Dijon mustard. When he closed his eyes at the first mouthful, he saw the dining room of Cerise’s apartment. It was dark, cold. Leaves were blowing, swirling around the empty room. Startled, he opened his eyes, swallowed. Glanced around himself at the restaurant. The noise of a dozen conversations seemed to echo the hiss of the leaves. Gwen asked, ‘Are you okay?’

He said, ‘Of course,’ and to prove it took another bite. Again, he couldn’t help closing his eyes with pleasure, and again the instant he did, he was whisked away to the empty table. But it wasn’t empty. Cerise was sitting in the chair across from him, motionless, like a corpse, her face hidden in the shadows.

He opened his eyes and found that he’d dropped his knife. A number of people were looking his way, and Gwen said, ‘Honey, I think you need an aspirin or something.’ This opinion seemed to be shared by the maitre d’, who along with the waiter appeared at his side to ask if everything was all right. He laughed lightly and replied that it was nothing — simply, the meal was so good that he’d been transported by it. The maitre d’ bowed slightly at the compliment and retreated. The waiter replaced his knife.

‘It is really good, isn’t it?’ said Gwen.

This time when he ate, he was careful not to close his eyes. This significantly diminished his pleasure in the meal but he had no choice. He ate thereafter a subdued dinner. When Gwen couldn’t finish her Supremes de Volaille Basquaise, he didn’t even attempt to eat it for her, even though the sautéed chicken breast looked and smelled so wonderful. He ordered dessert over her protest that she couldn’t touch another bit; after all, he didn’t care what she ate, but he presumed that her early satiety meant that the magic was working better than ever. So smug was he over this that he forgot himself again at the first taste of the coffee crème caramel. He let his eyes close.

A fierce wind circled him in the cold dark dining room. The cadaverous Cerise rocked in her chair, as though buffeted. Her hand, crablike, reached for his across the polished surface. Her voice, a rasp, asked, ‘How can you leave me? How can you leave me like this?’ The final sibilance went on hissing. Her hand caught him and he tore himself free of her grip.

He came to, on his feet, moving, the chair already falling back from him, Gwen with her hands up as if to ward him off. There was crème caramel on her forehead, her arm. He couldn’t find his spoon.

The whole restaurant was watching. Silent. He’d only closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, how could so much have happened? He sat down, confused, terrified. When the waiter came this time, he asked for the check, added a generous tip and apologised quietly, explaining that he was on a new medication and was obviously reacting badly to it. This did not remove the worry from the waiter’s eyes, but at least it might serve to protect him so that he might return another night, after a few months. Once he’d seen through this… this whatever it was.

He apologised to Gwen, who suggested that maybe they should call it a night. She handed him back the ring. He knew she would have nothing farther to do with him. He’d thrown food at her, like some sophomoric fraternity twit.

Not far from the restaurant was a small cafe where he could get a drink. That, he decided, was exactly what he needed. He sat at the bar and ordered a double of Glenmorangie, his favourite Scotch. He huddled over the glass, inhaling it, trying to calm down. The smell was, as always, intoxicating. His guard came down for only a moment, but that was all it took to transport him again.

Her bony hand gripped his. ‘You are mine,’ she said. ‘Only for me. You swore. You chose.’ She leaned towards him and the light from outside fell upon her face — the face of the gorgon. Her golden eyes seared him.

He screamed, lunging back from the bar, pouring Scotch over himself. He slid from the stool and fell heavily. The back of his head struck the floor, bounced and hit it again.

The next thing he knew, someone was helping him to his feet, and a voice asked, ‘What bit you, there, fella?’ He heard other voices saying, ‘Seizure’ and ‘drunk’.

‘I’m all right,’ he insisted. ‘All right.’ Although his head ached and he felt nauseous. ‘Sorry, sorry. Medication. Bad reaction.’ He slapped a twenty on the bar and fled. Four doors away, he doubled over and threw up his dinner. So much, he thought, wheezing, for needing a vessel.

After that he walked without destination, without purpose, lost in a fog of pain and fear, stinking of Scotch, the smell of which reactivated his gag reflex twice more until all he could vomit was air.

Finally he stumbled inside. There was nothing for it but to sleep off the whole experience.

Head hanging, he rode the elevator up and was halfway down the hall before he smelled the food. His stomach rumbled, and he stopped dead and looked around himself. This wasn’t his building. His hallway.

It was hers.

He knew where the smell of cooking came from. Somehow he had slipped right past the doorman without noticing, been let in — no, been brought in. He turned and lunged back into the elevator, slamming the cage door closed; then he stood inside, his hands on the bars, the odour of cumin and cloves, coriander and cardamom spinning around his head the way the wind had spun about the table in his vision of her. The smells — how could he ignore the rich — the divine — smells?

He had only to relinquish control and his body took over. His body, now divested of all extrinsic food, wanted desperately to fill itself again. It led him step by step to her door.

He raised the knocker, and the force of it dropping was enough to push the door open further; it had been ajar, waiting for him. He walked in. She was standing in the kitchen, wearing nothing but an apron and her golden sandals, her body the colour of wheat toast, and he went to her, his arm outstretched, the ring between his thumb and forefinger. She turned as if on cue, her own hand raised to let him slide the ring into place. Once she had it on, his arm dropped and he stood, transfixed, unable to move or think, bound to her utterly.

‘You love your food too much to do without me, don’t you? Even on the telephone, I knew you were the one. You’re so like Odysseus’s men. They loved their food and drink to excess, and so were halfway to being swine before they even set foot on my island.’ She turned the ring with her thumb, admiring it. ‘Complementary magics. Of course, mine is the stronger for being the older of the two, so I can use yours as you have done. Of course, you are my vessel and my pleasure, my piggy. For so long as you last. Now, go sit down and I’ll serve you.’ She said it all without malice or cruelty, but gently, with affection.

She turned back to her cooking, to the huge clay pot she’d removed from the oven.

He shuffled past her and into the dining room. Took his seat. A bouquet of roses stood in the centre of the table. There were dry, dead leaves on the tabletop. Circe brushed them aside as she set his plate before him — a mountainous biryani sprinkled with varak. ‘There, my darling, now eat to your heart’s content.’

Staring at the rice and meats, inhaling it, his terror drowned beneath the ocean of his appetite. He looked into her eyes as his own flooded with tears. It was all going to be his.