have a lot of respect for you, and so I am going to ask something that I would not ask from just anyone.'
Mr Miazga kept keying in a program. 'OK. Ask.'
'I want you to redo all his work.'
Mr Miazga sniffed. 'He should make backups.'
'He does. I do. But that won't work.' Michael had rehearsed this next part. 'It would be difficult to explain how I know this, but believe me it is true. Every trace of his work will disappear when he dies.'
'A fault in how he programs?'
'Stranger than that. I can promise you that all his paintings and ceramics will disappear as well. That would be a loss. But, consider if his new work in computer art would disappear as well.'
Mr Miazga shrugged. 'I am not a critic'
'No, thank heavens. You are a creative technologist. So, ask yourself this question. Is he not finding out what can really be done artistically with this stuff?'
Mr Miazga went quiet. 'What are you asking?'
'I'm asking you to rekey in any code he makes. I'm asking you to redo every gif. I'm asking you to rescan every graphic. That way the work will survive.'
'Why?' Mr Miazga turned to him, his bafflement shot through with something genuinely enquiring.
In his shoulder bag Michael had volume two of the John Richardson biography. The books are laced with every existing photograph of Picasso, often in his workshop. Michael opened it at the chapters dealing with the early 1920s. Silently, he kept turning each of the pages.
Michael could see the exact moment when Mr Miazga understood. He jumped as if someone had stabbed him with a pin. 'It's him,' he said and turned to Michael wide-eyed.
'The rules are simple. Whenever he goes back to wherever it is he comes from, everything he has done in this world will vanish.'
Mr Miazga rifled through the pages. 'It… really is him.'
He looked at Michael with something like horror. Then he crossed himself. 'Is this some kind of miracle?'
'I don't really know. We could talk about it all afternoon and still not understand it. Can you believe me, Thad?'
Mr Miazga went back to the photographs. He gave a nervous laugh. 'It is remarkable.' His eyes said: is it God or the Devil who has done this?
'If you do this I will tell him what you are doing. If it's a choice between his work surviving or Marta, I imagine your wife will be safe.'
Mr Miazga chortled, ducked and smoothed down his impeccable hair. 'A man might prefer to have his wife back for other reasons.'
'I… imagine she still loves you. I imagine she will be grateful that you are still there to pick up the pieces… And…'
OK, here comes the second impossible thing.
'Can I promise you something, Thad? When he goes, she will have no memory of him. Neither will you. It will be as if he never existed.'
It was all beginning to be a bit too much for Mr Miazga. He expelled air and pulled his hair back even flatter.
'I imagine that you are aware of the value of his work. And that, whatever the personal situation, you can see that there is value in making sure the work survives?' It was a question, left for him to answer.
Mr Miazga covered his face with his hands, and appeared to wash his face with them as though they were flannels.
'OK, I will do it,' he said, snatching his hands away. Then he seemed to crumple. 'Oh, I am a weak man.'
'You are in control of your emotions, Thad. Whatever the situation with your wife, you are still able to see clearly. And you are a normal man who wants his marriage to survive.'
Mr Miazga looked round at him slowly, his face more creased than usual, in folds. 'And you do well, too. You get him back.'
'I don't have him, Thad. And I'm doing this so that I can send him away.'
Mr Miazga looked at him for a few moments and said, 'For you I will do this. Not for him.'
Michael returned to work elated. He boomed hello at Shafiq and Tony, and bounced so effectively at Ebru that she had no time to say anything about his absences. He kissed her on the cheek, talked to her about her trip to Turkey, and asked her to run a report on their data using different variables.
Then he slammed into his in tray and got a fair way through it. He saw from the papers that it was too late to agree to speak at the American conference. Well, OK, you can't do everything. He tore up the correspondence, threw it in the wastebin and e-mailed an apology. At 6.00 pm, he tapped all the remaining, older papers into a neat pile and put them in a folder. He was the last to leave.
Michael wandered in a circuit around Archbishop's Park. It was the day before the clocks went back and it was nearly dark. There was no one else there, though it was still warm and the trees had all their leaves. Michael's feet began to drag, as if he had forgotten to drink any water during the whole of the day.
Michael avoided going home. He finally took the tube and ended up in the Camden bar. The red-faced, bearded men ignored him. He watched other laconic, unfearful souls play darts.
It wasn't enough to have love. You needed to have power. The two were so much alike. Love and power only exist between people. Both come from inner liveliness. Perhaps they were the same thing, since to fail at one seemed in some way to be bound up with failure in the other.
Michael finished a pint of Becks and finally went back to his flat.
'This flat, it is mine,' Michael said. 'I bought it.'
'Hmph,' said Picasso from his computer. He turned and glowered a warning.
'You're welcome to stay. If you still need to. You can sleep in my bed or on my sofa. But please stop bringing women back.'
Picasso smiled. 'You are jealous.'
Michael smiled. 'Not at all. It is inconvenient to come back and find my bed occupied.'
Picasso seemed to swell and darken like clouds. 'Do not threaten me.'
'How have I threatened you? I have asked you to keep strangers out of my bed.'
Picasso said, 'You will make me angry.'
'Why? Because I ask for good behaviour?'
'Yes. It is bourgeois.'
'Oh please. It would be bourgeois to sit by helplessly while you turn me out of my own house. If you want to make a mess and fill a flat with whores, go find one of your own.'
Picasso finished keying in with a musical flourish. 'I will do so.' He turned and challenged Michael, his jaw thrust out.
'Good,' said Michael.
That night Picasso noisily made up a bed downstairs. For the first time in months, Michael slept in his own bed alone. He felt the separation, like scar tissue from his sternum down to the top of his penis. It's over, he realized. It really is over. There was sadness like a story ending, and another sensation that was like fear.
Trepidation we'll call it. Unease. Michael knew that it was a necessary unease. It was the unease you feel when you lose a tooth, or change jobs. It was the unease of learning.
I love you, Michael accepted, and it will have to end. He wept one long slow hot unwilling tear, and that was all.
In the morning Michael went downstairs and Picasso was making coffee. He looked smaller. He turned and smiled and said good morning and pushed an empty cup in Michael's direction.
'You have set me free, haven't you?' Picasso said.
'Yes.'
'You will let me live.'
Michael nodded. Picasso chuckled and gave his head a funny shake. 'You have become tired of me, but you don't threaten me. That is good,' he said. 'It is economical.' He made a fist to emphasize the last word.
Michael allowed himself to be drawn. 'Economical how?'
'Toh!' said Picasso and spread his hands out over the self-evident, empty table. 'One should never give
