The visitor who brought no name
On Thursday, Imogen stayed through the afternoon to finish the exhibition labels. A little after three, a bright stripe crossed her page. Reflected light from an upper window opposite had entered the workshop and landed on the wall. As minutes passed, it reached the pale rectangle and spread across the chair’s worn wooden seat.
She called the painter’s son. He arrived with a box of notebooks and immediately moved the chair to face the window. He apologized: he had been the mysterious visitor the previous afternoon, letting himself in with an old key to check whether anything needed repair. He had turned it without thinking, just as his father used to.
Together they searched the notebooks. There were paint mixtures, dimensions, unpaid errands, and sketches of lettering. Near the back of one book was a page of small rectangles with dates beside them. Most were crossed out. One carried a note about a difficult blue that looked right in the morning and wrong by closing time.
The chair was not waiting for a person. That much seemed clear. But Imogen could not yet connect the rectangles to a seat, or understand why its position mattered only after lunch. The son examined the green stain again. This time he turned the chair over and found two shallow grooves beneath the front edge.