From the foot of the bed it is possible to look into a wall of mirrors and see the photograph of my brother in the Japanese robe and the display of mannequins across the street mirrored together in such a way that Nicholas appears to be among them.

He does not appear to be one of them. The mannequins across the street do not hold cigarettes at angles to feature their hands, and the mannequins across the street do not wear Japanese robes. The mannequins across the street are grouped around stationary bicycles and chrome masses of exercise equipment. Only a few of the mannequins across the street wear anything that Nicholas would have called a frock. Those that do, those in cashmere or angora, are displayed in the process of taking those clothes off. The mannequins across the street shrug themselves from coat sleeves; they pull belts through loops; they bend down to untie shoes, all of this in order, presumably, to join the other mannequins, the shirtless ones in gym shorts bunched up at the crotch.

The shirtless mannequins across the street in the windows that Nicholas could see from his bed are hanging from chin-up bars, or they are wedged into apparatus to give the impression of straining for all that they are worth.

I look at Nicholas among the mannequins.

Nicholas is posing for all that he is worth.

Nicholas never spoke about his body. Nicholas spoke about his figure. I think that Nicholas’s idea of physical exertion, if he had one, would have been to take a taxi to a gym and smoke a cigarette in the locker room. I wonder if it ever occurred to him, at any time since the photograph was taken, the years that he could look out and see the standards change from season to season in the windows, that the ideal young beauty captured in the pose, even if he could have kept it, had ceased to be ideal. I wonder if it crossed his mind that being captivating had ceased to be the fashion, or sufficient.

I study the angle of the cigarette and the bare feet crossed under the border of the Japanese robe. Even the feet are posed. It must have killed Nicholas that he did not have beautiful feet. Nicholas had, in fact, enormous feet. Nothing else was wrong with them, but they were enormous for the rest of him, and I expect they are the reason for the champagne bottle positioned on the grass. I expect that the bottle is there to hide the feet as much as possible.