There were two things that Frankie consistently noticed about Jil. He never put a drink on a piece of furniture without using a coaster and he always managed to refer to his daughter. Jil spoke very little about his life prior to the one he had at Sotheby’s. Frankie knew that he came to America at age ten from Budapest and did indeed grow up in Brooklyn. He referred to his high school as “Erasmus Hall,” which to any other Brooklynite is better known as Erasmus, the alma mater of Barbra Streisand and the basketball star Jeremy Fine. Apparently, when Jil was thirty, he briefly married a book editor from Random House. And other than that, Jil revealed very little. Nevertheless, Frankie believed him to be, under the cultivated sophistication, the social gossip and endless opinions about art and décor, a genuinely kind and highly intelligent man.

“Please take the park drive,” Jil asked the taxi driver as they entered a cab on Central Park West.

“You don’t want me to go just crosstown!” the driver irritatedly answered.

“No, I said I wanted you to take the park drive.” When Jil got angry, his elegant Middle European accent was replaced by the abruptness of a man capable of running a major auction house. “Make a left at Tavern on the Green and go around the park all the way to East Seventy-second Street.”

“It’s gonna cost you more.” The taxi driver looked into the mirror.

“I’ve done it many times before, and no, it really shouldn’t cost me more.” Jil ended the conversation.

The driver made a left into Central Park and turned on 1010 WINS, the all-news radio station.

“Attorney General Ashcroft has advised the president to raise the national alert status to orange.” The radio announcer spoke with the incessant beeps of breaking radio news behind him.

“You think they’ll ever find bin Laden?” the driver spoke over the radio. “I mean come on, this is the U.S. Army and they can’t find a guy living in a cave in Afghanistan?”

“Could you turn that off?” Jil asked the driver. “We’d like a little peace.”

“Hey, mister, you can’t keep your head in the sand. That’s what the Jews did in Nazi Germany!”

“Just shut it off! Or we’re getting out.”

“You get out here and you got yourself a red alert, mister,” the driver spoke quickly. “You won’t even make it alive to the East Side.”

“I said shut the radio the hell off right now!” Jil yelled into the front.

The driver complied and the taxi continued to wend its way past the Central Park carousel and Wollman ice-skating rink in silence. The park was covered with a soft dusting of snow and the lights of Central Park South shimmered in the clear winter sky.