Page 20 of Exit Party

I would like to dive off a cliff into the sea in a warm country. I’d like to swim to shore, climb up on the rocks—I used to scrape my knees in this manoeuvre, which necessitated long cocktail dresses later on in the evening—and then lie in the sunlight until my thoughts dissolve like salt in water, before travelling inland in an open-top car. I would like to meet my lover in a café with a terrace, maybe with a view of hills receding blue into the distance and beyond that the sea. I think we’re talking about Italy here, or actually a conflation of Italy, Greece, and France. Actually I haven’t been talking at all, I’ve been drinking scotch in my apartment in the 7th arrondissement and staring at a painting of a person diving into the sea while the young man who’s come to see me drones on about Post-Collapse Formalism. He seems harmless enough, but perhaps we could all agree that there is a difference between being in love with paintings and being in love with talking about paintings, or more to the point being in love with being lectured to about paintings by a person about a third my age, which seems to be the situation here.

My guest’s name is Sebastian. I think he’s in his early twenties, a reasonably good-looking individual with glasses and a nervous manner. He’s ostensibly a student of art history who’d like to write about a painting in my collection for his dissertation, but I’ve been aware for some time that he’s a liar. This is our first meeting. I gaze intently at him, but turn down the volume on his words, which is a trick I learned by necessity some years ago, in an era when my late wife and I were spending too much time at dinner parties. I visualize a still pool and let his ripples play across the surface. I observe, and then it comes to me. I set my glass down so abruptly that he stops talking.

“You know what would be interesting,” I say.

“What?” He looks a little alarmed.

“It would be interesting if this whole dissertation story were just a cover and in actuality you turned out to be an art thief.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says, but a furtive tone has crept into his voice.

Oh, dear boy, I almost say, but I pull back at the last minute. A decade ago—in my late fifties—I was in the habit of referring to young men as boys, but it’s never too late to rid oneself of bad habits. “Sebastian,” I tell him, “please don’t be offended, it’s just that I’ve met several of you, over the years.”

He’s looking around for his umbrella.

“Please don’t leave,” I say. “You’re the most interesting visitor I’ve had in some time.”

“Well, thank you,” he says, trying his best to sound offended, “but I’m not a thief, Ms. Soriano.”

“Okay,” I say, in my brightest tone. “I’m sorry, I interrupted you. Please, go on.”

“What was I saying?”

“Something about Post-Collapse Formalism.”

“Oh. Right.” He’s playing with his glass, rotating it on the table. “I had a health scare, a couple years ago. Have you ever had an MRI?”

“Several. It’s like lying in a coffin, isn’t it?”

“Exactly.” He looks up. “Something about the distance from your body to the walls of the tube, right? Those dimensions are very coffinlike. Anyway, I found it awful, but in a manageable way. I stayed calm. After a while I got used to it, and I’d asked for classical music, so as time passed it became peaceful. I just listened to the music, and to the voices of technicians, and the clicking noises that the machine made. And then afterward, I stepped out of the clinic, and stopped just outside the door. I found myself completely mesmerized by the trees across the street.”

“Was there something unusual about them?” This section of the apartment has expansive skylights, installed illegally and at great expense by the apartment’s previous owner, and I’ve been aware for some time of the sky darkening. It’s beginning to rain, a soft percussion over our heads.

“I had a feeling of sensory overload.” He sips his drink. “After the tube, which was extremely featureless, the ordinary details of the world were overwhelming to me. I was caught up by the details of branches, colours, the way the leaves moved in the wind. It was almost too much. I just stood there for a while, staring. I think of Post-Collapse Formalism as that, but in reverse.”

“In reverse.”

“Yes.”

“Tortured analogy,” I say after a moment.

“I’m saying that if a person had too much in the way of sensory overload, you might want to retreat to the equivalent of the MRI tube.” He’s a little flushed.

“Okay.”

“I was born in the thirties,” he says, “so obviously I don’t really remember the collapse years. But there was this prolonged period of unrest, to hear my mother speak of it, and then afterward, this longing for order and stillness. Does that sound right?”

“Yeah,” I say, “I’d agree with that.” But I’m watching him very closely now, because prolonged period of unrest is a quote from the Post-Collapse Formalism Wikipedia page.

There’s movement on the periphery of the room: Pilar, my housekeeper/assistant/French tutor/manager-of-my-entire-life, coming in to switch on the lamps. She’s lived in this apartment with me for twelve or so years, in a little suite off the library, and she keeps the whole operation going. There are no overhead lights in this part of the apartment, but there are lamps everywhere, on all the surfaces. It’s raining harder now, and light slides down the skylight glass. Pilar switches on the lamp at the table by my side, and the painting I was looking at earlier—Swan Dive, by Lucas Alkaitis, a wash of deep blue with feet disappearing into the waves—is altered. Warm light works strangely on the blue, turns it into a dark sea filled with menace. When I observe the painting by lamplight, I fear for the diver.

“Pilar,” I say, “might we have some espresso?”

“I think if I drink espresso at this hour, I’ll be up all night,” Sebastian ventures.

“I don’t like to sleep.” I lean forward, confidingly. “Can we play a game? Just a kind of thought experiment.”

“Okay.”