“Les roses. Mais bien sûr! Il faut des roses!” His pleasure in speaking French is obvious. He takes out his wallet and lays a handful of francs down on the table. The woman offers him her flowers.

“First, the ladies.” Clive studies the roses for a moment, then dives in and pulls out two of the blooms. He presents me one with a flourish. I marvel at the flower’s tightly whorled petals, its vivid red. You set the rose Clive offers you next to your glass, indifferent to the gesture. Clive selects a third bloom, trims the stem, and tucks it into Thoby’s buttonhole. The woman scoops up the pile of coins and carries her bouquet to the neighboring table.

“That’s what I love about the French! Their sense of enjoyment. Their love of flowers. It’s what I admire about Manet. He’d paint that woman—in all her different angles. There’d be no posing, no falsification. We’d have her as she is—the rip in her dress, the sway of her hips as she moves between the tables, her keen commercial sense coupled with her unabashed joie de vivre!”

I am caught by Clive’s enthusiasm. We order more wine. The waiter clears our dishes and sets plates of grilled fish in front of us, their skins glistening with lemon juice and oil. The smoke from our cigarettes unfurls in great vistas of unexplored terrain.

A nurse in a white uniform pushes open the door. You are standing by the window. As I go into the room you turn round. Your hair tumbles over your face and you look as if you have not changed your clothes for some time. There are stains on your blouse and a large tear in the hem of your skirt. I know better than to comment. I wait for the nurse to close the door on us. You stare at my shoes as I walk toward you. I put the parcels I have brought for you down on the narrow bed and begin to unwrap them.

“Here are the books you asked for in your letter, though Dr. Savage was quite firm when I spoke to him that you should only read for a very short time each day.” I stack the books on the cabinet next to the bed. I sense you watching me. You move to the cabinet and pick up one of the books, hugging it to you like an old friend. It is Walter Raleigh’s edition of Hakluyt.

“Savage would like to wrap me in cotton wool—or whatever the medicinal equivalent is. Does he not see that all this is making me ill?” Your hand gestures vaguely toward a shelf on which there are several half-empty glasses, each marked with a label.