“Before or after your hormones took over your life?”

“Before… and a lot more afterwards,” Zoe said. “Anyway, whenever he’d leave the building, I’d follow him.”

“You stalked him.”

“You could say that. But after a week, I realized that every evening about eight he’d leave to have dinner at a little Indonesian rijstafel restaurant over on the Rembrandtsplein. He was like clockwork.”

“So you suddenly developed a yearning for Indonesian food.”

“It’s actually very good,” Zoe said. “The first night, I was sitting there when he walked in. He scowled at me and left. The next night, he pretended not to see me and asked for a table as far away from me as the small restaurant could accommodate.”

“And the third night?”

“Before then… that afternoon, I went down to the Kalverstraat and bought the thinnest, sheerest, lowest-cut white knit top I could find. I bought one size smaller than I usually wear and then put it on without a bra. I put on a blazer for the walk over so I wouldn’t get propositioned, but when he walked into the rijstafel palace, I slipped out of the blazer and gave a little stretch that I had practiced all that afternoon.”

“Let me guess. He sat down at your table.”

“Uh-huh.” Zoe nodded. “Right after he tripped on his tongue.” She giggled. Thalia joined in.

“And then?” Thalia prompted.

“Well, I don’t remember what we ate. I don’t remember anything we talked about. But I remember the fireworks that simply ripped me apart that night.”

“Your first orgasm?”

“The first without a battery.”

This brought a chuckle from Thalia.

“Anyway, I saw him constantly for about a month after that, always rijstafel and sex. But as time went on, we spent more time talking about his art, about critics, about the art restoration business he said provided him with most of his income. The angrier he would get, the more spectacular the sex would be afterwards.

“One morning…” Zoe gazed into the distance for a moment “In July I remember, I got up before Erik and wandered through his studio. I wandered into the room where he did his original work. I remember that there was some wonderful Dutch light coming through a tarspecked skylight that turned the whole room into a sort of glowing Vermeer still life of brushes and paints and cans, containers of solvents, spatulas.

“I crossed the room and through the doorway leading to his restoration studio. Half a dozen paintings lounged on easels, all of them in various stages of cleaning or restoration. I remember a Cézanne sent to him by a German gallery and a Gainsborough from America. The critics may have hated Erik, but even his enemies acknowledged his skills at cleaning and restoration.”

Zoe set her wineglass down on the glass and chrome end table, then stood up and stretched. “I had never been any farther than this room, but that morning I wandered over to a doorway at the far end of the room that had always been padlocked before. But this morning, the padlock hung open on the hasp so I walked through and found myself in a room with even better natural light than Erik’s studio. Like the restoration room, easels abounded, populated with a score of masterpieces I had never seen or heard of. There was a Monet, a van Gogh, a Mondrian—racks and racks of them. When I walked closer, I saw that none of the paintings was signed. The Monet was unfinished, as was the van Gogh. Just as the light went on in my head, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned and saw Erik standing in the doorway, his face playing a mixture of anger, fear, and astonishment. For a fleeting instant, I saw desperation and murder in his eyes, but that passed so quickly I still wonder if I really saw it.”