Rue des Beaux-Arts

PARIS, France—Arthur and Moore went to find Shaw at the Pavillon de l’Alma. Rodin’s work held no mystery for me that afternoon. I had somewhere else to be.

The Hotel d’Alsace. 13 Rue des Beaux-Arts—a finer address than the hotel merited.

Ossie was in his room on the second floor, thinner than I had prepared myself for, wearing a dressing gown that had once been magnificent.

The wallpaper was, as he had already informed several visitors, “winning”.

He mentioned Ross had brought flowers again, as though more flowers were what was needed.

There were other things in the room. Slim shadows that kept to the corners. Crooked shapes that did not quite resolve into furnishings. Each evil sprite that walks by night.*

The phantoms keeping their tryst.

“Of course you’d see them.” Ossie almost smiled.

“My dear Observer,” he said, and closed his eyes.

I told Ossie about the Exposition. The telescope. Arthur’s extremely hot peppers. A heat, I said, that introduces itself politely, excuses itself, and reminds you again shortly thereafter.

He looked at me for a long time. “You have described to me, my ghostly friend,” he said, “to the letter, my entire reputation.”

*Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)