Days passed, and one afternoon a light bulb went out. The old man of Camden Town had done well. It went without a flicker and silent as a memory.
Rebecca turned to look at it—she was sitting on the bed, it was like an imperceptible oscillation of the space. She felt a pang of anguish; it was impossible not to. Jasper Gwyn had explained to her how it would all end, and now she knew what would happen, but not how fast, or how slowly. She had long ago stopped counting days, and she always refused to ask herself how it would be afterward. She was afraid to ask herself.
Jasper Gwyn got up, walked under the bulb that had gone out, and began to observe it, with an interest that one would have called scientific. He didn’t seem worried. He seemed to be wondering why that particular one. Rebecca smiled. She thought that if he wasn’t afraid, she wouldn’t be afraid, either. She sat on the bed and from there saw Jasper Gwyn walk around the studio, his head bent, for the first time interested in those pieces of paper he had pinned to the floor and had never looked at again. He picked up one, then another. He took out the thumbtack, picked up the piece of paper, put it in his pocket, and then put the thumbtack on a windowsill, always the same one. The thing absorbed his attention completely, and Rebecca realized that she could even have left and he wouldn’t have noticed. When the second bulb went out, they both turned to look at it, for a moment. It was like waiting for shooting stars on a summer night. At some point Jasper Gwyn seemed to remember something, and then he went to lower the volume on David Barber’s loop. With his hand on the control knob, he stared at the bulbs, seeking a mathematical symmetry.
That day Rebecca went home and said to the shit boyfriend could he please leave, just for a few days—she said she would like to be alone, for a while. And where should I go? asked the shit boyfriend. Anywhere, she said.
The next day she didn’t even go to work for Tom.
It had occurred to her that something was ending, and she wanted to do it well, she wanted to do only that.
Jasper Gwyn must have had a similar idea, because when she arrived at the studio the next day, she saw the remains of a dinner, in a corner, on the floor, and understood that Jasper Gwyn had not gone home at night—nor would he before it was all finished. She thought how exact that man was.