The Other Man
Like all great stories, it begun at the party of a friend of a friend. Gabriel had been invited by James, a man of no substance, a man of complete surface. But oh, what surface he was made up of! The kind of man whose eyes you might spend an eternity gazing into, and yet become none the wiser. He was absurdly tall, and beautiful, because they always are, decked head to toe in originality. He was aware that his enemies thought him shallow. In fact, he rather agreed with them. To Gabriel, he was the very thing. The sort of man he might have been, if fortune had favoured the ugly. James had invited Gabriel to this party, and so Gabriel had no choice but to come.