chapter 19

A woman in white. Matt, waking, was content to lie still and watch as she rearranged the flowers in a vase on the stainless steel table by the wall, humming a pretty tune under her breath. He drifted back to sleep, lulled by the steady movement of her hands while she shaped the rest of the blossoms into a pastel burst, purple and blue heads blossoming like languid fireworks from their long green arcs. Irises, he thought—

When he awoke again, it was to rainbows shimmering around a glowing blue star on the bare white wall. Matt turned his head on the starched pillowcase, finding the window. Framed in silver and hanging by an invisible cord, a glass sun glowed with the warm yellow rays of late afternoon. Blue in the center, its rays, curved like tongues of fire, were made of a prismatic glass that fractured the strong light into multicolored comets on the white wall. Tongues of fire. Where had he seen them before? Matt tried to think but was too tired, just the effort making him drift off to sleep again.

“Well, look who’s awake,” the nurse said as she bustled into the room the next day.

“What happened?” Matt asked, his voice sounding strange to his own ears.

The nurse’s laugh was as melodious as the tune she had been singing when Matt had first seen her. “Well, now, that seems to be the question of the day,” she said, sorting the flowers in the vase again, pulling out the ones that had wilted overnight, their petals crumpled and brown as though scorched by fire. “You remember anything?”

Matt shook his head. The last thing he remembered was telling Charles he would be right back. At the press conference. But how had he ended up here?

“Nothing?”

Matt looked out the window. The sky, an empty blue, glowed like melting ice.

“I’m not surprised. You arrived here seriously concussed,” the nurse said. “And with a dislocated shoulder. They said you fell, when they brought you over from the museum. Nervous exhaustion is what it says on your chart, and I believe it. You were dehydrated something awful, the next best thing to a pillar of salt. This water has got to go,” she decided, holding the vase up to the light. “You’ve been working too hard, I’m willing to bet,” she went on, going over to the sink in the corner. “Not taking care of yourself. Nobody does anymore. They’re always worrying. And about what? Usually about working too hard, that’s what. And look at you, so young. Makes no sense to me. But I have to wonder— What on earth!” she exclaimed. There had been a loud clink as the water had poured out. She put the vase down and searched the basin. “Now if that doesn’t beat all,” she said, holding up a glass rod the size of a breadstick. “Some people have a strange idea of a joke,” she added, laying the rod down on the table next to the basin, and then filling the vase back up with water. “There,” she said, standing back to admire her work, after she had replaced the flowers and arranged them to her liking. “They’ll last another day or so. Now let me take a look at you.”

Matt tilted his head this way and that as the nurse gently felt the bruises on his neck. Esperanza, her name tag said. Her hand felt cool and smooth.

“My, oh my,” Esperanza said. “That must have been some fall. Looks like the floor tried to throttle you, too.”

“I had a dream,” Matt said. Cicadas, a stream, woods; drawings and a brush, loaded with paint, poised over a copper panel. Chardin—in his mind he saw a bowl with oranges. No, they were flowers, and not in a bowl but a majolica jug, a bright yellow and green under a glaze that shone where it caught the light from the window. Irises. Or was that because of the ones he had wakened to, here in the room? No, these were others. Blue, he saw blue—a tiny bit mounded on the end of a knife, so vivid and intense, like instant sky. Just add water. He glanced over at the vase.

“You had a dream, huh? You and everybody else,” Esperanza said with a laugh. “Oh my,” she exclaimed under her breath, as she opened his gown. “These ribs of yours. What’d you fall on, the New York Giants?”

“How long have I been here?” Matt asked.

“A week.”

“A week?” It didn’t seem possible. A week, gone from his life, and he had no memory of it. A complete blank, like the copper panel, primed and ready—primed, he thought. White. He could see it—covered in white lead, smooth and pristine, waiting for the underdrawing. How did he know it was copper? “Did anyone come to see me?” he asked, pulling himself away from his dream.

“Your boss has been in a few times. He calls every day. Such a nice man! And a girl called. All the way from Japan.” Esperanza picked up the pad on the table next to the bed. “Sally Thorpe,” she read aloud. “She left a message. ‘Bill and I are thinking of you, glad to hear you’ll be okay.’ And she’ll see you as soon as she gets back.”

Bill? Matt, still too tired to think, had no idea what it meant, but he was glad to hear that Sally was all right. He turned his head sideways on the pillow. There was a postcard on the table, an old black-and-white photograph, that he could just see. Reaching for it, he gave an involuntary groan.

“Let me,” Esperanza said, and handed him the card. A biplane rose from the sand, white wings against a gray sky.

Matt turned the card over. It was blank.

“That came with the flowers,” Esperanza said. “The man who brought them didn’t leave his name. He said he was an old friend. Is he a musician?”

“No.”

“I thought maybe he was a rock star. He had that long hair. They’re all getting so old. But then, who isn’t?”

“Not you,” Matt replied.

“Aren’t you sweet. He also brought you that,” she added, pointing to the prism hanging in the window.

“May I see it?” Matt asked, conscious again of the faint pull of recognition as she unhooked the ornament and handed it to him. A sun with curved tongues of fire, no bigger than his palm, it was made of leaded glass, like a pane from a stained glass window. The chain was silver, double links finely woven. Tongues of fire, silently burning. He had seen this sun before. The memory of where came to him—it had been in the studiolo, inlaid in the decorative borders of the panels. Federico, as a student in Venice, had joined a fraternity of young men who had taken the flame as their compresa, to represent the way they burned with love. A compresa. Light as it was, the prism grew too heavy for him to hold and he let it fall, still clasped in his hand, onto the white sheets.