Oscar alone After Bosie had gone, quiet came back, the air composed itself, a torpor visited, unannounced. He laughed silently, looking as if he snarled or grimaced at some distant thing he recognised at last as quite despicable, as it was beautiful, not caring which it was. Cheap brandy, and a few of Bosie’s cigarettes lasted into sunset, watched from just inside, his chair drawn near to windows on the balcony. At his back the room darkened, shadows like bruises coming out. He wouldn’t speak, all that he felt could only be expressed in that mute laughter, like the view some pitiless, unillusioned god might have watching him in silence from the doorway to another life. He wouldn’t let go of it, this choking suicide: he might mistake the ruins for the house. That laugh, splitting open again, its stained teeth in the dark. Jim Friedman