“Oi. Maybe.”

“You’ve been seeing her for a while now, haven’t you?”

“Few weeks, yeah.”

“Just her?”

I nodded. “She’s a fucking stellar lay, and it’s good because she told me she doesn’t want me sleeping with other women.”

Will gave me the holy shit face. I ignored it.

“But she’s different. There’s something about her . . .” I rubbed my mouth, stared out the window. What the fuck is wrong with me today? “I can’t get her out of my head.”

“Do I know her?”

“Don’t think so.” I thought back, trying to remember if Will had actually met Sara at the fund-raiser. I was with him most of the night after I left her to straighten her dress and freshen up, and I don’t think I ever saw them speak.

“So you won’t tell me who she is.” Will laughed, leaning back in his chair. “Has she captured your soul, young lover?”

“Fuck off.” I grabbed the plastic bag and shoved the mostly empty containers inside. “I just like her. But it’s just sex right now. By mutual agreement.”

“Which is good,” he said, carefully. “She’s not a digger then.”

“Am I a wanker for thinking that’s weird? She doesn’t want more. Even if I did, I think that would just make her run off. She’s terrified of being seen in public with me. Do you think I like her so much because she’s so bloody uninterested in anything but my dick?”

And like I always did when I thought of Sara, I began to make guesses about her endgame.

Will whistled quietly. “She sounds fantastic. But I can’t imagine why she’d be interested in your dick. With that tiny thing you’ll never be half the man your mother is.”

“You just insulted Brigid? You’re an arsehole.”

He shrugged, cracked open a fortune cookie.

“You put the seat down to piss, don’t you?” I asked, grinning.

“Nah. Don’t like getting my dick wet.”

“Will. The only way you could give a woman pleasure is by handing over your credit card, mate.”

And somehow, in the flurry of insults that followed, Will made me forget to act like a pathetic arse about the whole thing and I stopped worrying about whether Sara was fucking with my head.

After lunch, I left the office, hailing a cab almost immediately for a quick jaunt to see a new art installation being set up in Chelsea. I’d helped an old client find and open a gallery, and he was showing a set of rare E. J. Bellocq photos for only a few weeks. All it took was a one-line email from him—They’re here—and the rest of my day was shot. I was mad to see the never-before-shown reconstructed pieces from the damaged negatives of Bellocq’s “Storyville” collection. Although I had come to his work rather late in my education, his had been the art that triggered my fascination with photographs of the body, of its angles, its simplicity, its everyday vulnerability.