Watching her now, as the minutes ticked by, he was wearing his habitual disguise. Black clothes, head to foot, black sunglasses despite the fact that this restaurant allegedly favored by Quest was a small, dingy neighborhood place on a Montmartre back street, with lighting rather worse than that of most cellars. On his head, as usual, was a hat—Markov was rarely seen without one, and this, Lindsay thought, was a particularly ridiculous example, wide-brimmed, velvety, a fin-de-siècle hat, an Oscar Wilde hat. From beneath it escaped long, fair, wavy tresses. The final touches were two silver crucifix earrings and a fistful of silver rings. Markov, who hailed from Los Angeles but claimed to have been born on a jumbo jet, had been, since the death of his lover, rootless. He spent his life moving around the world, from shoot to shoot. He could make any woman he photographed look ten times more beautiful than she actually was. Some of his pictures, transcending fashion, haunted Lindsay, who considered him the best fashion photographer in the world—not a view that was widely shared, for Markov’s work was too subversive, too strange for many tastes. In Lindsay’s view, as man and photographer, Markov was a kind of enchanter. Looking at him now, she realized with a sense of surprise that not only was he almost certainly her closest friend, but that she wanted to talk.

“Oh, very well. You’re right,” she said, giving Markov a troubled look. “I like Rowland. Maybe more than like him. The other day—I went to his house. I was just talking to him, and—something happened. You know, Markov. One of those little rebellions of the heart.”

“Sure. I know those. Go on.”

“There is nothing more. I thought I’d cured myself—it’s been years, Markov, years since that happened. I’m not a child. I’m not a fool. I’m almost thirty-nine years old. I have a son who’s seventeen. I have stretch marks, Markov. If I go to bed with someone, I make sure the lights are turned down low.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Lindy…”

“It’s true. I know it’s stupid. I tell myself, it doesn’t matter, there must be someone out there who doesn’t care about all that. Someone who won’t mind about the lines on my face, because he’s not looking at my face, or my bottom, or my breasts, he’s looking at me, at the person inside.”

Lindsay stopped; she could feel distress inches away, and she despised herself for that. She gave an angry gesture. “You don’t want to hear this. I can feel self-pity coming on.”

“I do want to hear it. I understand.”

“Well, I don’t meet them, that’s all. If they exist, these miraculous men, I never get an introduction. The men I meet fall into three categories: they’re already married; they’re liars; or they’re bores. It’s my age, Markov. Only the rejects and the walking wounded are left. At least that’s what I thought. And then I met Rowland McGuire.”

“The dark, tall, and handsome McGuire?” Markov smiled.