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before Michael and I were married. Contemporary paintings and drawings mostly.” Michael took his iPhone from his pocket with his free hand and began scrolling through messages. She felt the vibration of an incoming text message and gave his wrist a gentle squeeze, just as Michael eyed the screen and flipped it over. When he stood, Claire’s fingers slid from his starched, wet cuff to the tablecloth.
    “Michael,” she whispered.
    “I need to handle something,” he said. He buttoned his suit coat and pushed his chair back into place. “I’m sure you two have a lot to chat about. Back in a few,” he mouthed over his shoulder.
    Claire laced her fingers tightly, feeling the patina of the evening start to crackle and fade like an out-of-range radio station.
    “Asian markets on fire?” Andrew asked, filling the silence.
    “There’s always a deal burning somewhere.” She took a sip of wine, washing away the prickly sensation in her chest. “I’m sorry for the disappearing act. These calls tend to take a while.”
    “He lives up to his reputation.”
    Claire’s right eye began to twitch, as it often did when the headaches started. “You know, I’d really prefer to hear more about your interest in art,” she said, clothes-pinning any further discussion of foreign markets and Wall Street reputations. “Talk to me about what’s happening in New York now.”
    Andrew took off his glasses and set them beside Claire’s hand, studying her face. “A much more enjoyable topic.” Effortlessly he launched into details of recent shows at two of her favorite Tribeca galleries, the amusing provenance of a collector friend’s rare Kandinsky, and his own modernist preferences at the MoMA. “I also saw an incredible artist in Montreal awhile back. I was at the ‘Picasso Erotique’ exhibit, and . . .”
    Her eyes refocused. “I saw that exhibition the last time we were there. Amazing, wasn’t it?”
    “It was. But the real find was this guy I’d never heard of. Renato something. He did these pen-and-ink drawings of nudes. The images were unbelievably powerful.”
    “Renato Gaffarena?” Claire began pulling up the images in her mind, stunned. “Maltese artist?”
    “Yeah, I think you may be right. Do you know him?”
    “Years ago we oversaw the auction of a private collection that had about fifteen of his drawings. Right after he committed suicide.”
    “That would explain the darkness.”
    “I thought he was incredible. Those sensual, fluid lines. It was as if they poured from his pen.” For an instant Claire was back in New York seeing the drawings for the first time, the artist’s pathos and lust prompting a visceral response in her. “I desperately wanted one of his pieces at the time, but he was out of my price range. Especially after his death.”
    “Had you met him?”
    “No, but I became a little obsessed with his work. I remember feeling the moods of his models, the frenzy in their worlds each time I looked at one of his pieces. And somehow he made these women seem, I don’t know, almost chaste and erotic at the same time.”
    “Ah, but art is never chaste,” Andrew said in the voice of a man who’d been a stranger to chastity for a good long while.
    “I’m impressed. An entrepreneur who can quote Picasso.” Her headache flitted away like a cocktail umbrella on a warm breeze. She pictured Gaffarena’s nudes, and her thoughts wandered to The Thomas Crown Affair. And to two art lovers passionately tangled on a staircase.
    Andrew slid his chair in closer to hers. “So, what else do you like, Claire?” His voice was plummy and smooth, decidedly more like Pierce Brosnan’s Thomas Crown than Steve McQueen’s.
    She swallowed slowly and placed both of her hands on the table to steady them, but also for a bit of lighthearted emphasis. “The second floor of the MoMA is, hands down, my favorite place to spend an afternoon in Manhattan.” Her rings caught the light from the nearby candles and