French Exit

by Patrick deWitt

Frances eased into the bath without removing her dress. A box cutter lay on the lip of the bathtub and she watched it awhile. She took it up and drew a line with the blade from the left wrist to the crook of her arm. She drew the same line on her right wrist, then submerged both arms in the warm water. There was pain at the start, a very awful, stinging pain, but then there came a numbness, and after that a knowledge of calm, which in turn grew to something like rapture. It was in the room with her; it was behind her; it was at her shoulder. Her heart was sprinting and blood issued from her wrists in pulsations, an image that put Frances in mind of beta fish streaming from her body. An exclamatory brightness saturated the field of her mind and in the moment preceding death she felt heroic. She suspected this a trick of the heart, one final deception before the void announced itself, but she went along with it, wanting to be game. Was there anything worse in the world than a poor sport?

A very specific social deformity.”

“My mother was overfine for this world, Detective Alphonse. That’s what damaged her. She belonged to another time and it was her ugly luck to be born among us.”

He was aware of being in an intermediate period: he hadn’t yet recognized Frances’s death but sensed the recognition’s even approach.

Malcolm made his purchase and exited the florist’s. He was a young man without socks on walking in the golden, late-morning Parisian sun with a bouquet of pink ranunculus in his arms. He looked down at them, admiring them, and wondering who they were for. They were for Susan, he decided. He imagined her face when he passed them over. She would be confused by the gesture, but later, in remembering the moment, wouldn’t she be pleased? Malcolm wanted to be kind to Susan.