The Finer Things

The Finer Things

Published by:

Hampton Creek Press

P.O. Box 177

New Castle, NH 03854

Worldwide Print, Sales, and Distribution by Simon & Schuster

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental unless noted otherwise.

Copyright © 2025 by Jonathan Dylan Barker

Registration: 1-14315287281

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Hampton Creek Press is a registered Trademark of Hampton Creek Publishing, LLC

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Cover Design by Domanza

Book design and formatting by Domanza

Author photograph by Bill Peterson of Peterson Gallery

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN: 979-8-9907461-6-9 (PAPERBACK)

ISBN: 979-8-9907461-7-6 (EBOOK)

Contents

Also by J.D. Barker

The Last Testament of Fiona Haberstein, née Caldwell

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The Last Testament of Fiona Haberstein, née Caldwell

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The Last Testament of Fiona Haberstein, née Caldwell

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The Last Testament of Fiona Haberstein, née Caldwell

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The Last Testament of Fiona Haberstein, née Caldwell

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The Last Testament of Fiona Haberstein, née Caldwell

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The Last Testament of Fiona Haberstein, née Caldwell

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Also by J.D. Barker

Forsaken

She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be

A Caller’s Game

Behind A Closed Door

Something I Keep Upstairs

4MK THRILLER SERIES

The Fourth Monkey

The Fifth To Die

The Sixth Wicked Child

WITH JAMES PATTERSON

The Coast to Coast Murders

The Noise

Death of the Black Widow

Confessions of the Dead

The Writer

WITH OTHERS

Dracul

Heavy Are The Stones

We Don’t Talk About Emma

The Lies We Tell

To stay on top of J.D. Barker news and releases, sign up for the newsletter at www.masterofsuspense.com

Give order that these bodies

High on a stage be placed to the view;

And let me speak to the yet unknowing world

How these things came about. So shall you hear

Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts;

Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;

Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause;

And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

Fall’n on the inventors’ heads. All this can I

Truly deliver.

–William Shakespeare, Hamlet

The Last Testament of Fiona Haberstein, née Caldwell

Dear Edgar,

If you’re reading this, that means that you are alive, and I am dead, and now that I’m dead, I’d like to tell you a story.

I was the one who found you on the steps of St. Mary’s. It’s my earliest memory, you in a wicker basket, the cold November wind whispering in my ear about the winter to come. You were so quiet, lying there with your eyes closed, not crying, not moving. I brought you inside the orphanage. I thought you might be dead.

Of course, you weren’t dead, were you? Only quiet. In fact, I don’t remember you ever crying, not once. Even when…well, I’ll get to that in a minute.

You were so beautiful, just a beautiful little baby, with a soft face and a sweet disposition, and you were Mother Abigail’s favorite. She used to cradle you in her wicker chair, singing nursery rhymes for so long the words would blend together; at the tip of her tongue, the itsy bitsy spider would climb up London Bridge, where all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put my fair lady together again.

What happened next, I don’t expect you to understand.

Most days, I don’t understand it myself, the serpent that swims inside of me.

It’s such a terrible serpent. Full of spite. Full of jealousy. Full of venom.

And when I was a little girl, it controlled me, turned me into someone else, someone I didn’t like, someone I couldn’t stop, whenever I became envious. I’d leave my body, almost like I was floating. I achieve the same lightness when I’m modeling, up on a pedestal, stripped down to my barest self. Yes, it’s the flood of eyeballs that placates the monster swimming beneath the surface.

But that night, the monster roared, because Mother Abigail had given all her attention, all her affection, all her love to you. So, after everyone went to sleep, I slipped out of the girls’ dormitory and made my way down to the nursery.

My hand wrapped around the handle of the knife in my pocket, the knife I’d stolen from the twins, and Mother Abigail’s voice echoed in my head–Sweet Baby Edgar, Precious Baby Edgar–the sort of thing she’d coo whenever she held you, and I could see her, in my mind’s eye, shooing me away from her embrace. You must understand, Edgar, I used to be the beautiful baby in her arms, the focus of her attention, the receiver of her love and affection, but now I was nothing to her or anyone else, and I was hungry for love.

But it wasn’t me, I swear. It was the serpent.

The serpent took out the knife.

The serpent brought the knife to your face.

The serpent cut, cut, cut.

The serpent made you ugly.

Drew the blood.

The only thing Fiona did was hide the knife.

Hide the secret.

The only thing Fiona did was cry, cry, cry.

1

After weeks of searching Manhattan, Edgar spotted her walking across Washington Square. The year was 1952.

He stood, put his hands in his pockets, and took a step forward.

She passed a man in a tweed jacket, a doll-waisted coed in a poodle skirt, a bronze statue.

He lost sight of her. His stomach dropped.

He quickened his step, and at the edge of the park, he caught sight of her again, a leather purse swinging in the crook of her arm, her red hair falling just beneath the collar of a black wool coat. She crossed over 4th Street and stepped inside a gray building.

Edgar followed.

The lobby swarmed with students. He didn’t see her in the crowd. Panic halted his breathing. He couldn’t lose her.

Not again.

He peered down the hallways that broke off from the lobby. He yelled her name, those three gorgeous syllables that start on the lips, drop back to the throat, and end with the tongue tapping on the teeth: Fiona. People looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. He ran a hand through his hair and tilted his head up toward the ceiling. That’s when he saw the flash of red. He dashed up the steps and caught a glimpse of her opening a door at the end of a hallway.

He burst breathlessly into the classroom.

The teacher turned. You’re late.

Edgar’s eyes darted around the room, but Fiona was nowhere in sight.

Well, go on now. The teacher gestured toward the standing tables in front of him.

Edgar knew he should leave, but the thought of Fiona kept him there, so he started toward an open table in the back. A dozen silent stares followed him.

He became aware of his appearance: How could he not? His face, all the scars.

This is a mistake, he thought.

He stood in front of the open table. The laminated surface was cluttered with brushes, rulers, nails, screws, string, calipers, a bowl of water, rags, chunks of clay, pliers, a notebook, a pencil, wire, glue. The board behind the teacher said Professor Gino Fallici.

The professor started talking again, and Edgar surveyed the room with the attentiveness of a hunter squinting into a scope. Cement flooring. Tall ceilings. A skeleton in the corner. A mixture of men and women. A wooden platform against the left wall with a folding screen behind it. Another folding screen in the corner. But no Fiona.

Fallici paced with his hands behind his back. For the Ancient Greeks, the human form, in all its nudity, was the purist endeavor a sculptor could undertake…

Edgar’s attention gravitated toward an odd contraption on his table. It had three metal legs and a wooden board on top. Screwed into the board was an adjustable back iron. Edgar spun the board like a vinyl on a gramophone, and the contraption creaked. One of the students looked at him, and Edgar stopped the board with his hand. The student turned away. Edgar followed the student’s eyes to the front of the classroom.

The professor’s voice grew sonorous. "As you begin your work, keep this much in mind: The female departs from the male not only in her anatomy, but in her demeanor, her bearing. The male, at his extreme, is a muscular specimen who holds himself like a warrior, while the female, at her extreme, is a fleshier example of the human form, more fat and less muscle, more curves and less sharp angles, and she is more self-contained in her demeanor, not fixed in the action stance of a warrior, but observant, wise, attentive, elegant, and aware. And yet, I challenge you, as young artists, not to conform to these extremes of the male and the female. Think about the feminine sway of Donatello’s David. Think about the masculine abdominals of the Venus de Milo. Find the middle ground, the blur, those androgynous moments that break the border between man and woman and express something yet more universal to the human condition. Fallici stopped pacing and held out his palms, as if in offering. Fiona, whenever you’re ready…"

Like an image in a dream, Fiona, draped in a blanket, surfaced from behind the folding screen. She walked across the room, mounted the platform, and stepped onto a rotating pedestal.

The blanket dropped to the floor.

The Last Testament of Fiona Haberstein, née Caldwell

I loved you after that.

I loved you because I made you ugly. Because I broke you.

You were the closest thing I ever had to a brother.

The other kids, they called you The Freak, but I always called you Edgar, didn’t I? And sometimes Eddy.

Do you remember the night we ran away? The way we climbed down that fire escape, the moon hanging in the sky like a curved blade, and dashed into the woods. The dirt hissed beneath our footfalls. The path dissolved into bramble. Your hand held mine.

Oh, those days by the river. Our Eden. Our innocence.

Every morning, I would strip down and dive into the river, and it was only you who got to see me like that, naked and exposed, because unlike the other boys, you always kept your hands to yourself. Drinking me in with your eyes, you would stay on the shore, your fingers working with the clay deposits on the riverbank.

I still have one of the sculptures you did of me. It was by the fire when the search posse found us, the flames drawing out the moisture in the clay, the sculpture becoming leather-hard. I grabbed it as they were dragging you away.

Was it worth it, Edgar, those days by the river? Did the salve of paradise protect against the bite of Mother Abigail’s razor strap?

I know where you were the day Sylvia Haberstein took me away. You were locked inside Mother Abigail’s office, because they thought you had kidnapped me, and I was too much a coward to tell them otherwise. All for the better, I overheard Mother Abigail tell Father Flint. His appearance has a habit of scaring away visitors. Oh, if only your appearance could have scared away Sylvia Haberstein.

She must have been forty-something at the time, wearing baggy pleated pants and no makeup. I remember it well.

She walked into the girls’ dormitory with Mother Abigail, and Mother Abigail called me over.

Fiona, this is Miss Sylvia Haberstein, she said.

The woman looked me over. As if she were studying a painting. After a long time, she said, in a gravelly voice, You’re right, Mother Abigail, she’s beyond beautiful.

I was living out the moment that every foundling dreams of— getting swept away to a mansion like Little Orphan Annie—but when they shoved me in the back of Sylvia Haberstein’s Lincoln, instead of smiling, I was sobbing, because I thought you were gone forever.

And then, like a ghost, you appeared.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

You were standing there, framed by the window in Mother Abigail’s office.

I placed my hand against the backseat window.

You placed your hand against the glass.

The car jerked forward, bit into the gravel, stirred up dust.

I kicked and screamed. Kicked and screamed.

But it was no good. Sylvia was holding me down.

2

Edgar watched in amazement as the professor circled Fiona with a wooden pointer in his hand. Fiona raised her chin to the ceiling as she struck a pose.

Fallici slapped the wooden pointer against his thighs. What we are looking at is a contrapposto pose. The model’s body is asymmetrical. The line of the upper region contradicts that of the lower, and this contradiction, paradoxically, creates a balance. Remember, art is contrast and conflict. Don’t shy away from the conflict. Instead, embrace it, accentuate it. He circled Fiona, gesturing with the pointer. Most of the model’s weight is on her right foot. The engaged leg is straight, almost drawn inward a little. Her left heel is raised, and the knee of her free leg is bent. Moving up the body, we find that her shoulders and arms are angled in a different direction than her pelvis. Her angled head accentuates the sterno muscle in her neck. One hand rests on her hip and the other on her side. Her elbows are bent. Her hair covers her breasts. See everything. The seeing will set you free. The teacher made his way off the platform. All right then, let’s get to work. He walked over to Edgar’s table. Do I know you?

With great effort, Edgar peeled his eyes away from Fiona.

No, he said. Well, maybe.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not as attentive as I should be to my students, but I think I’d remember you. You have a very striking countenance. Did you transfer?

Yes, Edgar lied. I transferred.

I didn’t realize they allowed students to transfer this late in the semester. This is the last class.

They made an exception. On account of my accident.

Edgar pointed to his face.

Well, I’m afraid you’ve missed a lot, Fallici said. All of the basics. The foundation. It would be impossible for you to catch up. What we’re working on today is quite advanced.

Edgar looked at the tools on the table. I understand, but I’d like to give it a try.

Fallici stroked his beard. All right, but I’m not going to review what we’ve already been over.

I wouldn’t expect you to, Edgar said.

Fallici clasped his hands behind his back. Do you need an apron?

Why would I need an apron?

So you don’t stain your clothes. He walked across the room and came back moments later with an apron. Here you go. This is mine. He handed Edgar the apron. By the way, what’s your name?

Edgar Maguire.

Edgar Maguire, I’m Gino Fallici. It’s nice to meet you. Let me know if you need anything else.

Moments later, Fallici was angling around the room with his hands clasped behind his back.

Edgar took off his peacoat and put the apron on over his black turtleneck. He looked around the room. The students were studying a list of numbers on the blackboard. The numbers, Edgar realized, were Fiona’s measurements.

Remember, Gino said, we’re aiming for one third proportion, so divide everything by three.

The students started bending the square aluminum wire in front of them.

As if in a trance, Edgar picked up the wire on his desk and, using a pair of pliers, bent the wire until he had a nice hourglass figure. He attached arms to the figure with galvanized wire. The thinnest wire he used for the fingers. Then he took a step back and held the armature up so that the figure overlay Fiona’s body. He stepped to the side. He made adjustments. He looked up at the other students. He didn’t understand why they were drawing in their sketchbooks when the model was right in front of them. Nor did he understand why they were bothering with the measurements. Everything they needed was right in front of them.

Edgar glanced at Fallici, who was still pacing around the room. On his feet were a pair of espadrilles, which made him walk with a curious scuttling gait. The man reached inside his apron pocket and took out what looked to be an oversize green matchbook. He lifted the top fold and pressed on something inside, bringing a white tablet to his mouth. He put the matchbook back in his pocket, took out a pipe, lit the pipe, and continued his promenade around the perimeter of the classroom. The beauty of contrapposto, he said, "is that the pose creates the illusion of both past and future movement. We sense that the figure is in media res. The sculptor is therefore able to capture what Keats called slow time."

One of the students was attaching his armature to the back iron on the wooden board. Edgar did the same with some galvanized wire. Now, with the armature set, it was time to apply the clay. Edgar moistened a chunk with the bowl of water on his table.

Remember what we read about the box and the egg, Fallici said. The egg is the rib cage. The box is the pelvis. This is the base, the foundation of your model.

Edgar’s eyes darted back and forth between the platform and the armature. He made adjustments to his presumptions about Fiona’s body, updating the images he had in his mind. She was somehow more beautiful than he’d imagined. Every inch of her was a living, breathing masterpiece. He pressed his thumb into the clay. He picked up a wooden tool. It was S-shaped, like Fiona’s pose. He used the tool to smooth out a chunk of clay on the armature’s pelvis. He kept working. An hour passed. Fiona kept her head crooked away from Edgar, her eyes fixed on some distant dot on the ceiling. Not once did she look at Edgar. Even when she broke her pose and walked around the platform, stretching out her legs, she never glanced at the pit of artists beneath her. It was as if she lived in a world apart, on the other side of one of those one-way mirrors in an interrogation room.

Fallici said, Imagine the sculptor as a dancer. His movements are recorded in time and space.

Edgar picked up a knife and sharpened a wooden tool so that he could sculpt the curve of Fiona’s right ankle with more precision. He glanced at the other students. They kept using plummets and calipers to judge the balance and proportion of their models, but Edgar didn’t understand why. Couldn’t they just look at Fiona and translate her figure to the clay?

Fallici said, Note the way the ponderation of the body shifts at the waist.

The sculpture of Fiona flowed from Edgar’s fingertips, consuming his focus. The other students would take breaks, but not Edgar. His eyes remained locked on the work in front of him. In fact, he became so lost in the work, so focused on the details of the sculpture, that he didn’t hear Fallici say that class was over. Neither did he see Fiona step off the platform, disappear behind the folding screen in the corner, surface minutes later, and walk out of the classroom.

Clang.

The noise knocked him out of his trance.

He looked up and saw a student lifting a back iron off the floor. Scanning the rest of the room, he realized that Fiona was gone.

He took off his apron and dashed out of the room, leaving behind his coat and sculpture.

He rushed down the hallway, pounded down the steps, and burst through the lobby doors.

Night had fallen. The sidewalk was slick with rain. He ran toward a flash of red hair at the end of the street. The clapping of his shoes against the pavement sounded like applause.

The Last Testament of Fiona Haberstein, née Caldwell

When I arrived at Haberstein House, Sylvia led me to my room, where she made me put on a hideous black dress. Then she cut my hair short like a boy, and by the time she was finished, I didn’t recognize the girl in the mirror.

I appeared fit for a funeral.

We’ll start our lessons tomorrow, she said.

And then she left.

Distraught, I dug inside my suitcase and took out your sculpture of me. It was the one artifact I had left of you, and I fell asleep gripping the hardened clay.

The next morning, I discovered that Sylvia’s lessons were nothing like the lessons at St. Mary’s. They were more…philosophical, I guess…consisting of long jaunts around Haberstein House, during which she would lecture me about history, art, culture, literature, politics, and men. She often spoke in French, which was fine by me, because it was easier to tune her out in another language.

Those first couple of years, I cried a lot. I was bored, lonely, isolated. Sylvia wouldn’t let me do anything fun. She forbade me to wear any jewelry or makeup. She wouldn’t let me go to the movies because she said the movies were rubbish. All of my tutors came to the house, and I never got to leave the grounds. It was like I was living in a gilded prison. I never saw anyone my age.

And then something miraculous happened: she opened an art gallery in Manhattan called The Finer Things, and in the blink of an eye, my world expanded, because Sylvia became so preoccupied with the gallery that she began to pay less and less attention to me, until, at some point, I became invisible, forgotten. I loved it, because I could live without sanction, grow out my hair, and wear colorful dresses and high heels and makeup and jewelry.

On top of that, I fell in love with the art world. So many interesting characters frequented The Finer Things—Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, just to name a few—and the art was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Instead of landscapes and still lives and nude figures, these artists painted abstract geometric forms, some of which were called cubist, and their sculptures weren’t made of marble or bronze or clay. In fact, one of Marcel Duchamp’s sculptures was—get this—a urinal! I know, it was strange, but this was the style of art Sylvia liked, and it’s what she showed at The Finer Things.

Opening night was such a thrill. Everyone was dressed to the nines. The exhibition was called Red on White, and it featured the work of a painter named Seymour Buckland. I loved it! All of the paintings were splatters of red paint because a crime scene photograph depicting a blood-splattered wall had inspired Mr. Buckland. Creepy, I know. Makes my skin shiver just thinking about it. But that was Sylvia. She wanted to exhibit art that was shocking, dangerous, provocative.

And boy, did she succeed. The next few years were a phantasmagoria of groundbreaking exhibitions—everything from Mark Rothko’s color field paintings to Jackson Pollock’s splatter paintings to David Smith’s abstract steel sculptures. It was an exciting time. The war was over. America had won. And there was a sense that something important was happening, something that would change the world forever, and Manhattan was the epicenter of the explosion.

I thought about you a lot during those years, because I knew you’d love The Finer Things. I tried sending you letters, but between Sylvia and Mother Abigail, I don’t think they ever reached you. I begged Sylvia to adopt you, but she said she had enough on her hands with me, so I gave up on having any contact with you.

I’m sorry I didn’t try harder, Edgar, but Sylvia said it was for the best. She said if I wanted to be a modern woman, I should never fall in love with a man, because love can lead to weakness, and the self-made woman must never be weak. Also, she said I should never marry,