who seemed made entirely of scarves. She already knew Richard and Serge, kissed their cheeks warmly. She had a digital recorder, but otherwise you’d have thought this was a purely social engagement.
“We’ll speak English,” Richard said to her. “Partly for Fiona, and, ah, Jacob here, but mostly—you know, if I’m going to be quoted, I want to sound smart. I’m still sharper in my native tongue.” He winked at Fiona.
Corinne laughed and said, “Yes, but what then, when I translate you back to French? You’re at my mercy!”
“There are worse things, are there not, than to be at the mercy of a beautiful lady?”
“You see how he does!” Serge said. “He flirts himself to a good interview!”
As they gathered at the table, as Serge carried out a basket of rolls, Richard explained that Corinne’s husband was a major art critic, and that her piece for Libération was openly personal as well as reportorial.
Corinne said, “Only because I love you so much!”
Jake, thank God, was quiet. Fiona would have felt personally responsible if he’d made a fool of himself. He was still nursing his cocktail, she was relieved to note.
Fiona had snuck the phone with her, tucked it under her leg again. It was nearly eight o’clock now. Across the room, the balcony door was cracked open. It had warmed up late in the day, and now a pleasant breeze swept through.
Corinne asked Richard about his most recent work, the large-scale images that would apparently comprise half the show. A photograph of a mouth, Fiona gathered, would consume an entire wall. Fiona was surprised; she’d assumed this was a retrospective.
Serge’s Moroccan stew had lamb and apricots, and its spiciness didn’t hit you till after you’d swallowed.
Jake, who’d brought a notebook but left it on the couch, piped up to ask questions—smart ones—about Richard’s age, though not in so many words. How his work had changed, physical limitations, the scope of his career. “It’s funny,” Richard said, “when I was your age, I assumed it would all be downhill after fifty. Well. Ageism is the only self-correcting prejudice, isn’t it?”
Under the table, Fiona flicked open her email. A message from Damian, asking if there’d been any news in the past four hours. An update from the dogsitter.
Jake went quiet again, listening to Richard talk about his preparations, listening reverentially to Richard and Corinne reminiscing. Jake was the one person in the room to whom this was Richard Campo, the man from the documentary, the talent behind that iconic photo of the little girl atop the Berlin Wall, the scandalous presence behind the Defiling Reagan series. It was so different when you’d known the person first.
Fiona wondered what Damian would say if he saw her sitting here relaxing—if he’d wonder why she wasn’t out searching, or if he’d be glad she was taking care of herself, letting the detective do his job. Progress was being made this very moment, even if she wasn’t the one making it.
She tuned in to Richard joking with Jake. “You want to be my assistant? I’m constantly looking for new assistants.”
“Because he’s impossible to work for,” Corinne said.
“And I promise you the pay is terrible. Even worse than journalism!”
Serge explained to Fiona that Corinne would give a party for Richard tomorrow night—or rather, her husband would, at their home in Vincennes.
“You’ll come,” Richard said to Fiona. Fiona nodded, but she didn’t mean it.
“Can you tell me,” Corinne said to Richard, “about the video installations? I do want to write about those. The world doesn’t know you well for video.”
“This is the fault of the world,” Serge put in.
“Well,” Richard said, and he looked straight at Fiona, as if she were the one who’d asked. “The irony is, the raw material’s quite old. These are videos I recorded on VHS through the 1980s. In Chicago. You know, VHS was a nightmare to work with.”
Fiona caught his meaning, finally, and tilted her head. The eighties in Chicago. Video.
To Corinne he said, “They’re optimistic, I believe. They’re full of life. I’ve edited them with a contemporary eye, but the subject is twenty-five, thirty years ago. The—” He faltered, and Fiona was reminded, uncannily, of Christopher Plummer in The Sound of Music, choking up onstage in front of those Nazis, trying to sing about his homeland. He said, “You should interview Fiona while she’s here. You can interview me anytime. But her brother and those other boys, they’re—” and he stopped, blinked rapidly, waved a hand in front of his face. He