‘Poor little Faya,’ Simone shot back, ‘spends her days lying around daydreaming, asking for this, demanding that. Poor little Faya only thinks with her – ’
‘You’re mean!’ Faya bridled.
‘I’m just teasing,’ said Simone in self-defence, readying to tuck into another piece of toast.
‘Well, I don’t like your teasing. Your teasing is mean. And I know what you’re all about. Rich family. Born in the right place. Fancy education. You think you can look down on me, just like every bourgeois woman, secure in her privilege. Well, Faya’s watching you too. With her wise eyes. Faya doesn’t miss a thing.’
‘Wise,’ Simone said, with sarcasm that did nothing to lighten the mood.
At Moulin Frères, Alban Wouters took his time to pick out wineglasses with a pleasing roundness and reasonable height, and wondered whether there wasn’t something else they needed, before finally settling on paper napkins. Back in his car he had some trouble extricating his vehicle from the iced-over sides of the boulevard, and then tried to avoid a traffic jam by taking an alternate route that proved even more congested. He was more than a little late when he reached the gallery.
Bruno, he was reassured to see, had shown up and was serving wine with that effortless charm he could muster in his sleep. A few visitors were bolting down the canapés the caterer had delivered that afternoon. The gallery owner scanned the room for the artist. He noticed Faya posing, glass in hand, before the drawings of her, moulding her features to enhance the likeness and accepting the compliments of visitors thrilled to converse with such a willing model.
‘Simone’s not here?’ Alban Wouters asked Renée, not without concern.
‘Out back, in the alley,’ answered the employee. ‘Went for a smoke, maybe? We made a sale while you were out. Plus three this afternoon …’
Alban Wouters approved. Closing nights often brought lastminute sales. But the event was mostly an excuse to throw a little party in the artist’s honour, one often less staid than the opening. And now the old familiar faces came trickling in, tugging off hoods and woollen hats and scarves and tracking in clumps of grey snow that it would fall to Bruno to nonchalantly mop up.
In attendance were the splendid Pauline Bogaert, accompanied this evening by the candid Christiane Chorbat, along with the inimitable Kit Polaris, in finery that smacked somehow of the occult, and the lovely Isabeau de Millecieux, dressed as always in black – and in the role of fifth wheel, The Bear, padding around on his great paws, reading each work’s label. Faya recognized the crew and set forth in their direction, dispensing kisses and coy hugs. The decibel level kicked up a notch.
‘Not bad,’ said Isabeau de Millecieux.
‘Look,’ said Pauline Bogaert, showing her a drawing, ‘it’s you.’
‘And me?’ asked Christiane Chorbat. ‘Where am I?’
‘Who wants wine?’ asked The Bear.
‘What about Simone? Where is she?’ Pauline Bogaert inquired.
‘She’ll be back,’ said Faya. ‘And in a real foul mood, I’m warning you.’
‘I’ll grab a couple glasses at the bar,’ said the provident Bear.
‘This place has a weird aura,’ Kit Polaris said, alluding to something on a wavelength inaccessible to most of us.
‘Weird how?’ asked Christian Chorbat.
Kit laboured to explain. ‘It’s everywhere at once, coursing in every direction. The waves are contradictory, that’s for sure – but they don’t cancel each other out.’ Here she closed her eyes and rested a thumb on her temple. ‘Quite the contrary, they are growing stronger. As if they were plotting something together. If it weren’t the middle of winter, I’d say a storm was brewing.’
‘We shall all be struck by thunder!’ exclaimed Christiane Chorbat.’
‘Pshaw,’ said Faya.
At that moment there appeared in the room a tall, upright man, studying the pages of a leather notebook extracted from the pocket of his pelisse. After putting it back in the same pocket, he scrutinized Simone’s drawings, one by one, before his eye came to rest on the one entitled Faya Sitting, 18/20.
‘Thunderstruck indeed,’ said Kit Polaris.
As he waited for the red light to turn green, Pierre-Luc massaged the back of his right wrist. The inflammation had returned the day before and, like every other time, he’d let himself sink deep into the dark slough of despond.
His tenosynovitis had made itself felt on Pierre-Luc’s thirtieth birthday. At that time he and his studio mates were a hyperactive crew with comics projects everywhere. The diagnosis was shattering: talented though he might be, it turned out that Pierre-Luc had no idea how to hold a pencil. His tendons had paid the price; from that point on he would have to give up everything, lest the damage become permanent. And Pierre-Luc would have fallen into the most total despair that year had not some charitable soul offered him a teaching gig at the art school. Such was his metamorphosis from brilliant young illustrator to dutiful teacher. The new job would prove much less harmful to his sinovial sheath, a region that nevertheless continued to air its grievances, as if bitter at so many years of mistreatment and wholly unmoved by Pierre-Luc’s efforts at conciliation, which came too late and amounted to too little.
The light turned green, the rusty station wagon trundled forward. The driver had circumnavigated the block several times without reward, and was in the process of succumbing to the siren song of underground parking. After paying the exorbitant price, he scurried over icy sidewalks toward the gallery.
Simone was finishing off her second smoke when she saw Pierre-Luc at the end of the alley, taking small quick steps and watching his feet. She called out just before he disappeared. He turned around, stupefied at first to hear his name. When he saw who had uttered it, he joined Simone in the alley.
‘What’s wrong with your hand?’ she asked, before he had the time to say something clever.
‘My hand? Oh. My tendinitis,’ he said dolefully. ‘You? Has it started?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I was on my way in. Coming?’
‘I told my students about the event,’ said Pierre-Luc as they went through the gallery’s service entrance. ‘I don’t know if anyone will make it. But there’s Sarah-Jeanne Loubier, the one we talked about the other day. She might come.’
Too late, Pierre-Luc: as always, Simone’s friends swoop in to steal whatever feeble thunder you have managed to drum up.
‘How was it?’ queried the one in a vanilla-coloured jacket with ironic crests.
‘Sell much?’ asked another whose prodigious red mane undulated weightlessly above her.
‘It was fine. Sales are good.’
‘Did you hurt your hand?’ grunted a third voice.
‘Tendinitis,’ Pierre-Luc murmured, embarrassed that his wrist should be the source of such concern.
‘Yeah, it’s unpredictable,’ said The Bear, pointing at his left paw. ‘I had to give up the piano for the same reason. Glass of wine?’
‘Sure, thanks,’ answered Pierre-Luc distractedly. A subtle gyration of his head brought a previously concealed zone into his visual field, through which he saw Simone being led toward a tall Black man in a pelisse who subtly bowed when introduced to the artist. She met this inclination with a sparkle in the very centre of her eye. Why stop there, fumed Pierre-Luc, go on, kiss her hand while you’re at it.
‘Red or white?’ asked The Bear.
‘Red.’
Time passed; Sarah-Jeanne Loubier kept them