“Are you from New York?” the man asked.

“I am,” Sana said, realizing that if her husband were in the elevator and a woman was asking the questions, he would have launched into a mini-biography of how he’d grown up in Columbus, Ohio, gotten full scholarships to Amherst undergrad and Harvard grad, and then moved up the Met’s hierarchy to run the show in Near Eastern art, all in the time it took to reach the eighth floor.

“Have a nice day,” the man said, as Sana exited onto the corridor’s plush carpet. He didn’t leave the car. As she proceeded toward her room she questioned her paranoia, wondering if she’d been living in New York too long. Had Shawn been in the elevator with a woman, they might have very well ended up on their way to one of the hotel’s many bars for a drink.

Sana came to a halt. Shawn’s easy sociability was suddenly irritating. Why? Why now? Her best guess was because it was a new behavior, and now that her anxiety about her conference was over, she could think about more personal issues. In the past Shawn had always been admirably and sincerely thoughtful about her level of moment-to-moment contentment, especially during their torrid, six-month courtship. Over the last year or so and certainly on this present trip, that hadn’t been the case. When she’d first met Shawn at a New York gallery opening almost four years ago, she was defending her Ph.D. thesis on mitochondrial DNA, and had been bowled over by his affection and attention. She’d also been bowled over by his erudition: He was fluent in more than a half-dozen exotic Near Eastern languages and knew things about art and history that she only wished she knew. The breadth of his knowledge made her seem like the stereotypical narrow-minded scientist by comparison.

Recommencing walking but at a much slower pace, Sana wondered whether her mother had been right. Perhaps the twenty-six-year age difference between them was too great. At the same time, she distinctly remembered the difficulty she’d had dealing with the juvenile nature of men her own age, who wore their baseball caps backward and acted like perfect asses. Unlike most of her girlfriends, she’d never been interested in having children. Early on she recognized herself as an academic and, in that sense, much too selfish. For her, Shawn’s two sets of children, from his first and third marriages, were enough to satisfy what meager maternal instincts she possessed.

As Sana retrieved her key card, she considered their departure, scheduled for early the next morning. Before the trip she’d been disappointed that Shawn had been unwilling to take her to Luxor to see the tombs of the nobles and the Valley of the Kings. Without regard for her feelings, he’d said he’d already seen them and couldn’t take the additional time off. But now that her DNA conference was over, Sana was relieved they hadn’t planned on the detour. She hadn’t been working at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons long enough to feel secure, especially with several key experiments under way.