Devoted(6)

Only now does he realize that the worst of all miseries to afflict the human heart is loneliness.

Lee Shacket has never been good at relationships. He’s had girlfriends. Hot ones. He’s not a troll. Women like the way he looks. They admire his ambition. He has a sense of humor. He can dance. He has style. He’s good in bed. He listens. But he’s never been able to sustain a love affair. Sooner than later, each woman starts to seem inadequate, inauthentic in one way or another. The relationship begins to feel shallow, lacking worthwhile emotional nourishment, a mere teaspoon of romantic essence; nevertheless, he always eventually feels as if he’s drowning in that teaspoonful, suffocating, and he needs to escape.



He has gone still in the armchair. His stillness alarms him, as if staying alive depends on remaining in motion. He thrusts to his feet and paces the room, increasingly anxious.

Something strange is happening to him.

In the low lamplight, his restless reflection in the mirror is spectral, as if it’s the spirit of some former guest who died here and is wanted neither upstairs nor down, who has nowhere to go.

As he circles the room, he tries to recall when and where his life went wrong, not regarding the events at the labs, but prior to that. When had he last been truly happy? It seems important that he remember. When had his future been most promising?

Although Lee has achieved great success with Dorian Purcell, each promotion comes with such a significant increase in stress that, in spite of making a fortune, he can’t honestly say he has been happier during these years than before.

Even prior to Purcell, Lee hadn’t always been in high spirits, but his prospects for happiness had been greater then. He’d had hope in those days. The options open to him had seemed infinite; whereas now he has few, perhaps only one.

And he is alone. No one to listen. No one to understand. No one to care. No one who must answer to him.

The turning point, the motive force that changed Lee’s life, is Jason Bookman, a friend since college. Initially, Jason’s career soared, while Lee’s labored along. Then Jason brought him into Dorian Purcell’s inner circle.

As he paces, his reflection in the closet-door mirror disturbs him. His face. Something strange is happening to his face; something is wrong with it.



He hurries into the bathroom, where the light is better. His eyes are brown, hair brown, beard gone. Maybe others won’t recognize him, but he knows himself. His mud-brown glower is unimpressive when compared to the piercing tungsten-gray stare with which he had cowed so many junior executives. Otherwise, he looks all right.

But he doesn’t feel all right. His face is as stiff as a mask. He works his facial muscles—yawning, puckering, grimacing. With his fingertips, he massages his chin and cheeks and brow, pinches his nose, pulls on his lips, searching for . . . some wrongness. Finally he decides that the stiffness is merely a consequence of anxiety. His body, too, is tight with apprehension.

Jason Bookman changed Lee’s life, which led to his current disastrous circumstances. However, the worst thing Jason did wasn’t bringing him into Purcell’s orbit. Worse, Jason married Megan.

Gazing at himself in the bathroom mirror, Lee has an epiphany. Jason was so farseeing, so aware of the long-term risks of working for a power-mad narcissist like Dorian Purcell, that he brought Lee into the company to serve as a fall guy, a role that otherwise might have gone to Jason. Why hasn’t this been clear till now? Is he being unfair, paranoid? No, no. What once seemed like an act of friendship is abruptly, belatedly revealed as a Machiavellian maneuver. It wasn’t enough that Jason stole Megan from Lee; he also schemed to set up Lee to take the blame if things went wrong at Refine.

Lee remembers the warmth of Megan’s kiss. Megan Grassley. Now Megan Bookman. Almost fourteen years ago, they dated for two or three months. He’d never gotten more than a kiss from her. He was used to easy girls, and she insisted on commitment before sex. He’d decided to teach her a lesson by taking a break from her and going out with a hottie named Clarissa, so Megan would understand that servicing a man’s needs was the best way to gain his commitment. But after a month, Jason began dating Megan; eventually they married. At the time, Lee hadn’t blamed Jason for poaching. He was magnanimous. He wished the couple well and counseled himself that his friend would regret hooking up with such a frigid bitch.



Evidently, however, Megan had no problem giving it up for Jason. They flourished together, and year by year she looked hotter, much hotter than Clarissa. Okay. No problem. Lee hadn’t wanted her; she wasn’t fast enough for him. She was a Honda, and he needed a Ferrari girl. He had better options than her. The world is full of good-looking women, especially when you’re making seven figures a year and piling up stock options.

But now he is jobless, alone. Soon to be an outlaw on the run.

If he’d been more patient with Megan, she might have given herself to him. They might have married, and everything after that surely would have been far different from the current calamity.

He suddenly knows when he had been happiest, when his future had been most promising: when he was dating Megan.

Meeting his eyes in the mirror, he realizes that nothing is wrong with his face. The problem, if it is a problem, exists behind his face. Something is happening to his mind. There is a fever in his brain. If he purchased a thermometer, his temperature would prove to be normal; he has no doubt that it would be 98.6 precisely. However, there is a fever of excitement in his brain: agitation, fermentation, effervescence. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. He is exhilarated, electrified, galvanized.