Supper Party with a Lute Player, Oil on Canvas by Justin Muir

In a dimly lit room, the lute player twists the strings at the head of his instrument. Six more people are seated around him at the dinner table. There’s a lull in the conversation when a few folks go for their casks.

The old woman at the end of the table speaks up. “Well, it was a lovely service.”

The lute player bursts into a giggle, just before the rest of the table erupts into groans and laughs. The old woman looks around incredulously, but the lute player has a feeling she’s doing this on purpose.

“We know. We know,” Marcel at the end rubs his face. He’s flushed red.

“Oh dear,” the lute player tightens another string one last time and idly plucks it. “Madam it seems you’re about to be cut off.”

“What? Why?” says the old woman.

“Because,” Marcel playfully snatches the cask of wine from her and pours a hearty swig of it down his trap, “because you’ve told us how lovely of a service it was already.”

“No, I haven’t.”

This gets an uproar from the ladies and men at the table.

“I swear it may be at the top of every hour. It’s frankly impressive. You keep better time than me when you’re piss-drunk than when I’m stark sober.” Marcel belches something terrible and wipes his mouth on his sleeve.

“Which isn’t very often. Competition isn’t very stiff,” adds Gabrielle, a tall aristocratic woman with a fine black hat, from the other end of the table.

“And yet still more often than I’d like to be,” Marcel beams, and hands the cask back to the old woman and looks at her with a warm smile.

Edward, a gaunt man with black caterpillars for eyebrows, nods at the old woman. “But it was a fine service. Nicholas would have really liked it.”

The old woman nods. She purses her lips. “He would’ve, wouldn’t he have?”

The lute player watches every face around the table stare at some distant point in the carpentry, offering solemn nods, but never quite dropping their smiles.

“You know what Nicholas would have hated? Wasted wine.” She leans over the table and reaches across the way. “Are you going to finish that?” she asks the old woman. It causes an uproar.

Marcel joins in the chorus, waving his head around, “I knew there was a reason I liked that Nicholas!”

When the old woman brightens and cradles the cask, Gabrielle pulls back and makes a wave that doubles for “ah drat” or something to that tune before she winks at her.

The lute player thumbs his own goblet. At the bottom of his glass, he’s found a warmth that begins at the base of his stomach and radiates upward and outward, and like the hand of Dionysus himself, reaches across all he can see and in grazing it, brightens it, infuses it with some sense of wonder or whimsy that perhaps, he thinks, was there the whole time. Not to mention the constant urge to smile.

The younger woman next to the lute player, one Ann, taps his glass. Marcel babbles on to some of the others. “You need a refill, sir,” she gives him a playful frown. “Have some of mine.” She slides her own goblet over. “Anymore and I may burst. And you heard them. It’s what Nicholas would’ve wanted.”

The lute player shakes his fist at the sky, whisper-shouting “damn you,” before swooping down and taking a tiny sip.

“So, are you going to actually play that thing? My friend here has been rubbing and flicking those strings for so long and yet right when you think my god, my god we might be there, we might just be there, he eases off and starts the whole process again. My love,” Marcel teeters forward and folds his hands, “I’m begging you. Stop teasing me and just—

Ann’s mouth comes ajar and she giggles. The old woman bats Marcel on the head while Gabrielle overtakes his voice. “Alright. Alright. Although I do think it stands to reason that on the off-chance Nicholas is looking down on us right now, maybe Marcel should continue.”

“And why’s that, dear Gabrielle?” Edward thumbs his eyebrow.

“Because it’s never too late to learn about these things.”

The company shifts and rocks and laughs. The lute player watches the shadows form strange and mysterious creatures and sends them dancing along the back wall. He turns his attention to the group and lets his eyes pass over everyone. Their faces are warm and orange and wavering in the flickering candlelight. He comes to Edward, across from him, and their gazes seem to meet, like two passing boats years from any shore.

By then the conversation is splintered and strewn across the table in almost as many fragments as there are people. Ann reaches her arm around the back of the lute player’s chair.

“Do you write your own songs?”

“Oh no, they were all told to me by a siren when I was stranded at sea some years ago.”

She smiles, “so are you working on anything new?”

“No. No songs. But I am working on a joke.”

“Ah. I did think you looked the fool when I met you.”

“Gunning for my job, are we?”

She shrugs. “Depends on how good this joke is.”

“Okay. So, there’s this falling star. A meteor on a crash course with earth. A meteor the size of a city. But anyway, in the meantime, there’s a worm and…what is your favourite animal?”

“A dog or perhaps a man. I tend to get them confused sometimes.”

“Very well. There’s a worm and a man going for a walk in the nearby woods. And they’re walking and walking and walking and this goes on for hours. Now eventually after a terribly long distance, the man finally goes ‘You know what I think? We are terribly lost. I’ve seen this very tree at least a couple of dozen times by now. We are certainly lost. You know my parents always used to tell me to worry about the woods. That I would certainly get lost in them just as we are certainly lost in them now. They always said the woods are like a labyrinth.' And then the worm perks up.”

Marcel bangs his fist on the table, much to the delight of the old woman next to him. “What’s your name?”

Ann smirks, “I’m Ann.”

“Who invited Ann? I want to thank the person that invited Ann for inviting Ann. You didn’t know Nicholas?”

“No.”

“But he would’ve liked you. You’re lovely. So, who invited Ann?” His eyes are half-closed.

The old woman nudges him. “You should eat.”

Gabrielle picks up on these words and shifts from whatever she’s talking about to Marcel across the table. “You haven’t even touched your food, Marcel.” Marcel jams a fork into his supper. It sends Gabrielle to her feet. She shakes her head as she chuckles. “Alright, alright.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Marcel points. “Are you going to…” he burps, “you gonna feed me?” He bursts into a hysterical laugh, “You’re gonna feed me?” And he opens his mouth wide, occasionally doubling back over to laugh some more.

The lute player goes on, turning back to Ann, “The worm perks up. ‘Labyrinth? Don’t you mean maze?’ The man goes ‘what?’ Then the worm goes on, ‘labyrinth, means something with one drawn out path that continually draws you toward the centre. We would not be lost in a labyrinth. A maze has multiple paths meant to puzzle you.’”

Ann glances over to the other side of the table and watches the old woman get to her feet, taking one of the candles from the table in the process. Gabrielle cuts off a hunk of chicken from Marcel’s plate. They’re all hooting and hollering.

“The man thinks this is just unacceptable. ‘Well, what about Theseus and the Minotaur? That was a labyrinth, and Theseus sure as hell got lost! You’re gonna tell me that wasn’t a labyrinth? People use the words interchangeably.’ ‘No,’ cries the worm, ‘this is a mistake. Using the words interchangeably does not make it so that one of the words isn’t the wrong word. It’s like the difference between pronunciation and enunciation. Venomous and poisonous.’ This goes on for some more time. Plenty of heated words. But of course, the worm loses that debate.”

“Wait. Why? Wasn’t the worm right?” Ann asks.

“Well, he didn’t have a leg to stand on, you see.”

            Ann pushes off him with a roll of her eyes. She bemoans the joke and briefly turns her attention elsewhere. But across from the smirking lute player, Edward furrows his brow. “Wait,” he says, “what about all that stuff about the meteor crashing down. The city-sized meteor at the start?”

            “Oh, that,” the lute player picks up his glass and pours some more wine into it. “I haven’t figured out what to do with that part,” and in his toothless smile there is a hint of melancholy. Edward, in picking up his own glass, shares in it for but a second. They will not remember this in the morning. “So far this is the only thing that makes sense,” but Edward knows he doesn’t mean the wine.

            Marcel’s mouth is wide open. Gabrielle laughs as she drops a bit of chicken into his mouth, while the old woman admires her work. Ann claps. Nobody really knows why they’re feeding Marcel or why it is just so splendid, but it is. The lute player sees the amber on everyone’s face, as though it is not the candles, but them making their own light.

            The lute player looks back to Edward. He raises his glass and tips it toward him.

            “To Nicholas,” and they drink some more.