Chapter 24: Night Shift

Faye's show opened on Saturday at six, in a gallery on the river with white walls and a single long bench.

There were twenty-two paintings, and the biggest one hung opposite the door.

It was a window with snow behind it and a cot under the sill, and a cat on the cot, and a single lamp on a hot plate.

The card beside it said Upstairs, Kroll's Books.

I stood in front of it for a while.

I had slept in that room for nine months, and I had never once seen it from the outside.

Faye had painted the light exactly as it fell on the floorboards at four in the afternoon.

"You said you wouldn't cry," said Faye, beside me.

"I'm not."

"You are a little."

"It's the track lighting."

Mabel arrived at six-fifteen, with her cast in a sling covered in signatures, and went straight to the painting.

She looked at it with her glasses on, then with her glasses off.

"The cat is too fat," she said.

"He was fat."

"He was robust." She turned to Faye. "It's perfect, and I won't say it twice."

My grandfather stood beside her with his cane and his magnifying glass, checking the brushwork on the corner of the frame.

"Good joinery," he said, and Faye put her hand over her mouth.

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