It was sad and awful. It was the last time my brother was awake.”
“Can I ask what happened to him? To Julian?”
“What the fuck do you think happened?”
“Fiona, you’re—”
“He was an actor with no family and no health insurance, and he could’ve gotten some decent support at least if he’d stayed in Chicago, if he’d stuck around till the drugs came out, but instead he took off and died alone and I don’t even know where.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“What?”
“Your hand.”
She looked down. The empty champagne flute, which she’d been holding tightly, was cracked. A droplet of blood ran down her right wrist and another ran down the outside of the glass. When she peeled her hand back, the whole glass fell apart, shattering onto the floor.
The room went gray at the edges, and voices closed in. Corinne was there, holding a towel under her hand, guiding her to a wallpapered little bathroom with golden faucets, sitting her on the closed toilet.
Now Corinne’s husband was kneeling in front of Fiona with a pair of tweezers, slowly picking out the shards embedded all over her palm.
“I’m so embarrassed,” she said when everything was back in focus, when Corinne had left to clean up the mess.
“This is not allowed.” His voice was phlegmy and deep. There was something regal about the top of his bent head, his gel-combed white hair. Fernand, she reminded herself. Fernand the important critic. Nothing here was recognizable as her own life. This man, this room, this blood.
He massaged the meat of her palm gently, peered at her hand through his glasses.
“Thank you,” she said. “Have you done this before?”
“I’m just finding the bits of light.”
Fiona imagined her palm littered with a thousand slivers of reflective glass, ones she could carry with her forever. Her whole body ought to be like that. Her skin ought to cut the people who touched it.
She wanted to say nice things to him, but didn’t want to sit here endlessly repeating her thanks. “Do you paint, too? Besides the critic stuff? Your hands are so steady.”
“I studied painting.” He looked up and smiled, and she felt she could stay in the bathroom forever, being taken care of. “Terrible idea. Critics shouldn’t know how to paint.”
Jake appeared in the doorway. She didn’t have the energy to send him away.
Fernand daubed more antiseptic on her skin with a flat circle of cotton. He said, “I attended the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Very, ah, old-fashioned.”
Fiona perked up. “Are you still there? Do you teach?”
“No.” He laughed. “Not for me.”
“I just—” she stopped while he dug into the base of her middle finger with the tweezer point “—my family’s always been trying to track down this one artist who was there. He was my great-aunt’s boyfriend, and he died young.”
“What year?”
“Oh, way before your time! I didn’t mean you’d know him, I just—I don’t even know why I’m asking. I’m a little woozy. He won the Prix de Rome, but then he died right after World War I.”
“Ha, yes, that’s before my time!”
“His name was Ranko Novak. We were just always curious.”
“You’re trying to find what, records? A picture?” He turned to where Jake still hovered. “Do you have a light on your phone?”
Jake turned on his phone’s flashlight and, grimacing, held it above Fiona’s palm.
“I tell you what,” Fernand said. “I have a friend there. You write the name down before you leave tonight, I’ll ask him.”
“That’s so kind!”
“Well, you nearly severed your fingers at our house. This is so you won’t sue!”
* * *
—
Fiona held a glass of ice water in her gauzed hand because it felt good, even if the condensation made the gauze wet. She’d found Richard in the dining room, holding court over platters of smoked fish.
She could barely follow the conversation, and only thanks to Richard’s occasional translation. (“Marie is his wife.” “This was the Gehry retrospective last year.” “She’s talking about her daughter’s work.”) Fiona wanted codeine. She wanted to find a pharmacy. And then what? Maybe walk around the Marais till morning.
Richard said to her, “Paul here was asking how fame changed me. I’m explaining that I’ve only been famous a quarter of my life! Such a short time!” And then he spoke French again to this Paul, who had a giraffe neck and tiny teeth. Back to Fiona: “I was saying that my very first patron was a collector named Esmé Sharp, do you remember her? And she just emailed last week asking for a first look at some stuff before