When he parted the waters and forced a hand into the circle to introduce himself, Thomas barely smiled but grasped his hand firmly and pulled himself toward Finch as if he’d been thrown a life preserver.
‘How long do I have to stay, do you suppose?’ he asked. He pushed a dark curl away from his face, and Finch gauged that they were of a similar age, while acknowledging this was the only physical quality they shared. Thomas would certainly have been thought of as striking: his thin nose, unsettling gray eyes, and skin with the same pallor as a blank canvas. His shoes were tasseled and uncreased, as if purchased just for this occasion. His clothing looked flawlessly tailored and expensive, and made Finch immediately conscious of the haphazard nature of his own appearance—slightly rumpled verging on disheveled.
He shook his head, not understanding. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Here, I mean. Do I stay until the drink is gone or until the people are? I certainly know what my preference would be.’
Finch smiled, disarmed by the man’s honesty. ‘You’re not the gallery owner.’
‘Afraid not. I’m the one with all the stuff on the walls. Thomas Bayber.’
‘Dennis Finch. Happy to meet you. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I should probably excuse myself.’
‘Ah. Critic, heh?’
‘Afraid so.’
‘Oh, nothing to be afraid of, I’m sure. Everyone seems to think I’m quite brilliant.’ He motioned to a passing waiter for a drink and holding up two fingers, tilted his head toward Finch. ‘I’ll look forward to reading your review. The Times?’
Finch liked him a little less. ‘For a first show, that would be unlikely, Mr. Bayber.’
‘Please. Call me Thomas. No one ever calls me Mr. Bayber, thank God.’ He put an arm around Finch’s shoulder as if they were conspirators. ‘Perhaps at our next meeting we will both be in slightly more elevated positions.’ Thomas pointed in the direction of a group of canvases. ‘As I said, I look forward to your review.’
It was as close as Finch had come to deliberately disliking something before seeing it. Criticism with malice, he thought, as he made his way across the room. Hubris was a quality he found hard to stomach; respectful deference had been drilled into him by both his parents. But standing in front of the work, it was impossible not to see the talent behind it, and not to be shocked. The series of surrealistic portraits was unlike anything Finch had seen, managing to look new at a time when most said the movement was dying down. There was boldness in the way Bayber used color—it made Finch feel as if he were being shouted at—and an intimacy that made him almost ashamed to study the canvas closely. People pressed in all around him, stunned into collective silence. He felt the need for air. He tried taking notes, but quickly scratched out the few words he put to paper, unable to adequately describe what he was seeing. Something pricked at his skin, tightened in his throat. He turned. Bayber was staring at him with a smile.
At the seventh floor Finch paused and wiped his face and the back of his neck with a handkerchief. Four o’clock in the afternoon and he was exhausted. He stood outside Thomas’s apartment and wondered why he hadn’t bothered to inquire as to the purpose of this visit. When he knocked on the door, it opened. The curtains were drawn and what little afternoon light filtered into the room was filled with swirling motes of dust. The ceiling was the same pale ivory as always, but in the year and a half since his last visit the walls had been painted a deep shade of pomegranate. Finch looked more closely and realized the paint had been applied directly onto the wallpaper, already flaked and bubbling in spots. Chairs were everywhere, turning the space into an obstacle course. As his eyes adjusted to the dim, he noticed Thomas sitting in an overstuffed wing chair against the east wall, spiraling remnants of wallpaper cascading down on either side of him. Thomas’s eyes opened and closed slowly, those of a lizard king in a drugstore comic. He was dressed entirely in black except for the scarf around his neck, a plaid of dirty colors, and though Finch was used to his appearance, today it stuck in his craw. Damned annoying affectation. It certainly wasn’t cold in the room; the heat and smells of liquor and sweat washed over him in waves, and he looked for someplace to sit down.
‘Denny! Come in. Make yourself comfortable, why don’t you? Don’t hover in the doorway like some sort of salesman.’ Thomas’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward in his chair as if trying to satisfy himself of something. ‘You don’t look well.’
‘I’m fine. Couldn’t be better. But I can’t stay long, I’m afraid. I’m having dinner with Lydia. Some new bistro she and my son-in-law have discovered.’ Finch despised lying in others as much as in himself, but he offered this up without a pang of remorse. Much easier to lay the groundwork for taking his leave sooner rather than later. He chose one of the small chairs and instantly regretted it, first hearing the squeak of springs and then feeling an uncomfortable pressure against his backside.
‘How is your daughter?’
‘Lydia is fine, thank you, although she fusses over me to no end. It’s almost like having a babysitter.’ He paused, realizing how disloyal he sounded. ‘I’m lucky to have her.’
‘Indeed you are. I question whether anyone really knows their own good fortune before it’s too late.’ Thomas gave Finch a rueful smile. ‘Too late to enjoy it or exploit it, one of the two.’
Thomas appeared at odds with himself. His hands worried the fabric at the ends of the chair arms, and Finch found himself growing nervous. He couldn’t remember the artist ever seeming so distracted, so undone. Thomas muttered something under his breath and looked up at Finch, as though surprised to see him still standing there.
‘Tell me the truth, Denny. You’ve envied me my solitude at times, no doubt. No more than I have envied you the companionship of a daughter. And the bosom of family to rest your weary head upon, eh?’ He gave a barely perceptible wave of his hand, before frowning. ‘Well, what’s to be done about it at this point?’
Had he ever wished for Thomas’s solitary life? Finch tried to imagine his home of so many years void of its past activity, absent its sounds and smells of family, the briefly lingering childhood traumas, their daily interactions that had turned, almost unnoted, into habits. His wife brushing his daughter’s hair in the afternoon at the kitchen table, her hand following flat behind the brush, smoothing any errant hair into place. The three of them, a family of readers, curled into small pieces of furniture on Sunday mornings, faces half-hidden behind a newspaper or a book. Claire tucked up next to him in bed, her body a sweet comma pressed against his. Lydia in his study in the evenings, her cinnamon breath warming his neck as she leaned over his shoulder and asked about the work he was studying. This and so much more had been his life. He could not bring to mind a moment when he had wished any of it away.
‘You know, Denny, the older we get, the better I like you and the less fond I become of myself.’
‘You’re sounding positively maudlin. You must be out of gin.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘In that case you’ve proven what I’ve always surmised. The most successful artists are filled with self-loathing. This revelation on your part must indicate you’re entering a new period of productivity, my friend.’
A thin smile broke across Thomas’s lips and he closed his eyes briefly before responding. ‘We both know I’ll never paint anything again.’ He rose from the chair and walked over to the credenza to pick up a decanter. ‘Join me in a drink?’
