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Elia was going to be posted to Iraq next month to work for Doctors Without Borders and this evening had turned partly into his Goodbye Party Currently he was talking about a murder by ‘defenestration’ – there was the murder and then there was the word His way of telling the story was staled with rehearsal, I suspected it was his latest silence filler and we were not witnessing the debut performance John recalling enough of his lone semester at Institut Francais cut in with, ‘oh of course la fenetre! It makes parfait sense’ while swirling his wine glass – a parody of himself It was hard to believe that I had once had a crush on him A while back he told me that he was ‘so jealous’ of me being ‘SO unencumbered by the history of art’, of my ‘authentic atavism’ in relation to my short videos The more time passed the more grating I found that comment His paintings made me think that he was just another person stuck in competition with Rembrandt, propelled by ego and a love of sepia Under his leadership the conversation moved on to the origin of the word ‘essay’ and the current state of the form Sibs walked in with June He had a moustache and a goatee but his wiry pube-beard was better suited to a close stubble or to being clean-shaven He said that he was ignoring us for the past couple of weeks because he had been on a ‘mental health break’ He was freshly out of rehab where he had been sent after spending three days high and drunk and excited The morass of apparent laziness and irresponsibility that rose to the surface suppressed any real concern that anyone but his long-suffering mother could muster for him Elia and John started playing chess on an ornamental set I was thinking of leaving Earlier in the evening this party and my life had seemed full of possibility Now, neither did I’d felt on the verge of something momentous, a vague invincibility but it was fast dissipating along