Declan liked the alarm at 6:00 a.m. He liked the cafés that woke up even before he did. He liked the ding of the email that meant his newspaper had arrived in his inbox. He liked the swick of his CharlieCard in the turnstile, he liked the jostle and noise of the T as he read the headlines and swiped to the business section. He liked hearing from a new business contact he’d gotten from one of his father’s old contacts. He liked the assembly of jobs and tasks that got ever more complex as trust built.

Declan liked being buried to his neck in art history. He had begun as Pozzi, and Pozzi was a good start. Pozzi was how Madame X had begun, after all, with Sargent asking his friend Dr. Pozzi to introduce him to Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau as a portrait subject. Madame Gautreau! Sargent found her an impossibly beautiful and hopelessly lazy model. He sketched her over and over, painted her over and over, trying to capture on canvas whatever it was that made her famous in social circles. And when he did—when he’d painted that haughty beauty with her strap impudently fallen on her marble shoulder—the scandal nearly ruined him. Some things weren’t meant to be painted out loud. Sargent’s friend, the novelist Henry James, persuaded him to move to Britain to get away from the disgrace, so Sargent started his life from scratch there, not knowing that eventually Madame X was to be the painting he was best known for. Was that what Declan was doing? Here in Boston? Declan didn’t know, but he liked it.

Declan liked the parties. And there were ever so many parties. He had never allowed himself to be so public in DC, so himself, so out and about, but Jordan argued that extroversion was actually safer. It took no effort, she noted, to disappear someone who didn’t really exist, so they should live, they should live loudly. It was impeccable logic and, in any case, what Declan wanted to hear. He liked making his burner phone his real phone, making sure that, yes, it was a good number for him, a permanent number for him, a place to get the man for the job. The first get-together was small: an exhibit opening at a tiny Fenway gallery. Drinks and music, a funky vibe, young collectors, an after-party that spilled into a bar. After that, Declan bumped into his senator’s sister’s daughter on the street in Somerville and got invited to dinner, which turned into drinks, which turned into dancing. All of it turned into more texts and calls and invitations. Jordan was an exceptional and practiced partygoer. He liked how he looked on her arm.