“Rookie assignment.”

“What do you normally write about?”

“There is no ‘normal’ yet,” I told her. “I take what the editor gives me.”

“What would you like to write about?”

No one at the paper had ever bothered to ask me that. “Not sure,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “Then you can begin with me.”

MIMI ARRIVES BACK at the hotel a little after five.

“I lost track of time,” she shouts and dashes into the bathroom. “God, but I have to pee.”

I sit in the chair and practise looking unconcerned and nonchalant.

“Thirty-eight seconds,” she calls out. “Almost a new record.”

I cross one leg over the other, and I lean a little to the right so my head touches the edge of the wingback.

“Why didn’t you join me?”

I hadn’t been expecting a question, and if I had been expecting a question, this wouldn’t have been it.

Mimi frowns. “You’re upset.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are upset.” Mimi continues to frown. “Didn’t you see my note?”

Another question I wasn’t expecting.

“You were sleeping in the chair, and I didn’t want to disturb you, so I left a note.”

“A note?”

“On your lap.” Mimi shakes her head. “You thought I had left you?”

“Never crossed my mind.”

“Really? In Prague?”

I slide my hand between the arm of the chair and the cushion. I try to do this so Mimi doesn’t see me do it. But she does.

“Is it there?”

The note is on a small slip of paper, the perfect size to get lost.

“And what does it say?”

I hold the note out as though I’m examining a clue in a television mystery. “Went to Vltava beach to see swans. Join me.”

Mimi gestures at the end table next to the chair. “I even left the guidebook so you wouldn’t get lost.”

I hold the note a little higher.

“And you jumped to conclusions, didn’t you.”

Eugene and the Other Demons look at each other and shrug.

“I was worried about you,” I say.

Chip winks and gives me a thumbs-up.

“And I’m just fine.” Mimi takes the note, crumples it up, and drops it in the wastebasket. “So, where do you want to eat?”

MIMI LED ME AROUND the gallery, introduced me to the other artists. I took photographs, got several quotations about the importance of art in a materialistic world, and listened to a short talk on the giclée as a way to increase sales and exposure.

After the show, Mimi and I went out for coffee.

“Cherokee.” She had looked me up and down. “Mother? Father?”

“Father.”

“Georgia? North Carolina?”

“Oklahoma.”

“You ever been to Oklahoma?”

“Once.”

“Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“More like a footnote.”

“And Greece?”

“My mother,” I told her. “Her father came from there. He always planned to return, but he never did.”

“What about you?”

“Go to Greece?”