Then it became a problem. As a man unaccustomed to hearing the word no from a woman, he’d become a pest, as far as Pia was concerned. Even if he hadn’t been married, she wouldn’t have been all that interested in any kind of a relationship. She was in Boulder to work and recover from the emotional trauma she’d experienced in New York City. Besides, she didn’t even know if she was capable of a relationship even if he was not the driven, selfish man she thought he was. Over the years, Pia had become quite knowledgeable about her social limitations.

“Is he single?” George continued.

“No, he’s married with two kids,” Pia shouted back without elaboration, hoping the topic would end there. She didn’t want to trouble George with the information that Berman was attracted to her and that his attentions had gotten to the point of being bothersome. Also in the back of her mind was the gnawing discomfort that Berman was due back that very day from an important business trip that had thankfully taken him away for almost two weeks.

“How old is he?” George persisted.

“Late forties, something like that.” Pia clenched her teeth. George could be tedious about such things.

“I think I saw a picture of him,” George said. “It was in People magazine, taken at the last Cannes Film Festival. He has one of those big yachts.”

“Really?” Pia responded vaguely, as if she weren’t interested, and she wasn’t.

“Was he involved when the company, as you said, gave you this car?”

Pia massaged the leather steering wheel. She didn’t like where the conversation was going but didn’t know how to prevent it, short of saying she didn’t want to talk about Zachary Berman, which would have conveyed the message she was trying to avoid. George was behaving exactly as she remembered he did—he was always full of questions that probed her private life. He had fussed around Pia’s apartment for twenty minutes before she could get him to leave, with his litany of questions about whether or not she was looking after herself properly with no appropriate food in her refrigerator, suggesting that perhaps she wasn’t actually living there. Pia knew George was trying to find out if Pia was seeing someone.

“Actually, he was involved. He had found out that I had been cycling to work and wanted me to have one of the company cars. He said it was too dangerous on the mountain roads, especially at night when I have to go in to check on some of my experiments.”

“It looks brand new,” George said, glancing around the interior.

“Guess I got lucky,” Pia responded, looking over at George. George was annoying her, but maybe his showing up like this might actually serve a positive purpose. Perhaps it was a way to discourage Berman from pestering her.

“Pia!” George yelled.

She looked back at the road and something flashed in front of the car. There was a dull thump.