Final Reckoning: The Fate of Bester by J. Gregory Keyes Page A

Louise asked.
    “You look like a ghost” Bester settled wearily into his chair.
    “Maybe I am,” he said, bleakly.
    “Well, if you want to talk about something…”
    “How was the opera?” he cut in.
    “It must have been a long one. I never heard you come in.”
    Her face darkened.
    “You were here, eh? I thought you had something to do last night. I thought that’s why you couldn’t come with me.”
    “I lied. I hate opera.”
    “You’re still lying. I’ve heard you playing it in your room.”
    “Louise…”
    Her face softened.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, with an odd abruptness.
    “It’s none of my business, and I’m sorry. Just as it’s none of your business that I came in late, yes?”
    “Yes,” Bester replied, nodding, feeling somehow relieved. She stood for a long moment, unspeaking. It should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t.
    “Will you come with me? I want to show you something.”
    “Of course.”
    He stood, his legs feeling a little light. His medication was a day late, but it couldn’t be that-he still had a week before he would become symptomatic. He wasn’t worried about that. Maybe just old age.
    He followed Louise from the cafe and up a flight of stairs, all the way to the upper loft of the building. Bester had asked about it once, about why she never rented that space out, but she had tersely changed the subject.
    She unlocked the door with one of the old-fashioned keys on her ring, revealing a spacious room with high ceilings and tall panels of windows. Lavish afternoon sunlight draped golden on the polished wooden floors. Other than that, the room was empty, except for an easel with a canvas on it, a wooden paint box and pallet, and a chair.
    “This is where I lived with my husband,” she explained.
    “After he left, I couldn’t stand to even come up here. I hadn’t opened that door in five years. This morning I did.”
    “You’re taking up painting again?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, I’m glad.”
    “Are you? Good. Then you shall agree to model for me.”
    “What? No, I couldn’t do that.”
    “And why not? You’ve used up the free rent you earned helping me clean and paint. Here’s your chance to make a bit more.”
    “No”
    She dropped her bantering mood and laid her fingers on his arm.
    “Please! I want a chance to capture what that street-scribbler did. I want a chance to paint something difficult, hidden, and true. I think, once, I could have done that. I want to see if I still can.”
    The sincerity in her voice got to him.
    “Very well,” he said.
    “I suppose it can’t hurt. But you won’t get me out of my clothes, young lady.”
    “No? Then you will wear the outfit I picked for you, yes?”
    He shrugged.
    “Why not?”
    They stood there for a moment, until she said,
    “Well?”
    “Well, what?”
    “Go change.”
    “Don’t fidget. There, like that.”
    “Can I breathe?”
    “Breathe, talk, whatever you want, just hold that position, more or less.”
    “I’ll try,” he said, dryly.
    In his peripheral vision, he saw her regard him, then the canvas, then tentatively lift her brush.
    “I’ve never painted portraits before, you know?” she said, after a few moments.
    “It was considered passe when I was in school. Minbari dialectic perspective was all the rage.”
    “Minbari what? You’re making that up.”
    “No, sorry to say, I’m not. It was a key philosophy in the nouveau post-ante-postmodern tradition.”
    “You’re making that up, too.”
    She laughed, a musical trill, the first such laugh he had ever heard from her. A child’s laugh.
    “Somebody made it up. It wasn’t me. I’ve read your literary columns, you know. Don’t play the epistemological innocent with me.”
    “You read my column?”
    “Yes, now and then. You have a most apt way with insults.”
    “Is that a compliment?”
    She chuckled again, this time in her more accustomed, more cynical voice.
    “What good is a compliment? No one ever gained anything