But in the void left by Claire, he found himself morphing into someone less agreeable. It was apparent to him that while they’d been together, he’d viewed people through his wife’s far more generous lens. The neighbors she’d always insisted were thoughtful, he now found prying and meddlesome, cocking their heads with an expression of concern whenever he passed, clucking noises of pity escaping from their mouths. The woman across the street, for whom Claire had cooked unsettled, custardy things, seemed helpless and completely incapable of the smallest task, calling on Finch whenever she needed a lightbulb changed or her stoop swept. As if he were a houseman. The general rudeness, the lack of civility, the poor manners—all of humanity appeared to be crashing in on itself, exhibiting nothing but bad behavior.
Reaching the sixth floor, he realized it was easy enough to shift all the blame to Thomas. The man made himself an obvious target. But with each step, he recalled some slight, some other way he himself had no doubt hurt his wife over the years. The gallery openings and the parties, any occasion where Thomas held court, his arm snug around the waist of a lovely young thing. The girl would be draped in fabric that clung to her sylphlike frame; hair polished and floating about her shoulders, buoyant with light; lips stained dark and in a perpetual pout, close to Thomas’s ear. These were the girls who looked off to a point just beyond Finch’s shoulder, never at his face, never interested enough to pretend to commit anything about him to memory. In spite of these offhanded dismissals, how many times had he casually unlaced his fingers from Claire’s or let his arm slide, almost unbidden, from her waist to his side? How many times had he taken a half step in front of her? Created a meaningful wedge of distance by gently grasping her elbow and turning her in the direction of the bar or the nearest waiter? As if she wasn’t quite enough, not in this situation, not with these people. His head throbbed and a slow burn flickered and ignited somewhere near the base of his spine as he forced himself up the final flight of stairs. She had been more real than anything else in those carefully ornamented rooms, the chill so prevalent he could almost see his own breath.
There was something more he alone bore responsibility for, the thing he knew must have cut her to the quick. It was the way he’d inferred that Thomas’s talent was beyond her understanding, that to be in the presence of such a rare thing was reason enough to allow oneself to be subjugated, to play the lesser role. He’d struggled against using the very words you just don’t understand on more than one occasion. But she’d understood well enough. She knew this was as close as he was ever going to get to adulation and success on a grand scale and he’d done more than just succumb to the temptation. He dove in, headfirst, with a great splash, causing a swell that threatened to upend everything, and everyone, in his life.
Forty years ago, Finch was teaching art history and struggling to support his young family on what the college considered generous recompense for someone of his age and limited experience. A colleague suggested he pad his meager funds by writing reviews for exhibition catalogs, which in turn led to his writing newspaper articles on various gallery shows. He was fair and open-minded in his appreciations, a stance that engendered neither an ardent following nor vocal detractors, but kept the work coming his way. He was temperate with his praise, anxious to encourage interest in an artist he felt deserved it, but never overly enthusiastic, staying well back from the precipitous edge of fawning. Then, a simple request from a friend in the English Department. A young man, quite gifted she’d heard, had a small showing at a gallery uptown. Would he stop by? The father was wealthy and well-connected, had contributed generously to the college. Could he just take a look? Finch mumbled under his breath before reluctantly agreeing. Days later, halfway home before he remembered his promise, he turned around in a disagreeable state and made his way to the gallery.
At first he’d thought Thomas was the gallery owner. He was too well-dressed for a young artist, not nearly as nervous as Finch would have expected for someone giving his first solo show. He stood in a corner, towering a head above the tight circle of women surrounding him. Occasionally one would sacrifice her spot to fetch another glass of wine or a plate of cheese, returning only to find her place taken. Finch noted with humor the jostling for position. These women were all purposeful elbows and withering glances. 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