He nodded. ‘It’s pretty interesting, actually. Quaint. In an old converted train station, right downtown. Open till two and everything, unlike the other spots, which are pretty much just extensions of restaurants, so it’s kind of the catchall for people in this area.’

I made a mental note. ‘Do you guys go there a lot?’

Vera laughed, but for a second, it sounded almost bitter, and her eyes caught John’s.

‘We used to,’ he said cautiously. ‘But, you know, we’re getting older. Not as tapped into the scene.’

I laughed. ‘You guys aren’t old.’

Vera bit her lip. ‘I’m thirty-nine.’

‘And I just turned forty,’ John added.

‘Oh, come on, that’s not old,’ I said.

Vera nudged her husband. ‘Says the girl in her mid-twenties!’

‘I’m twenty-eight,’ I said, feeling myself blush. Perhaps Vera saw it in the haze of the lights.

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Don’t misunderstand me. You don’t seem overly young or naive or anything, just, I don’t know … lovely.’ She shrugged. ‘I know we’re not that old, but it can feel that way sometimes. Anyway, the main reason we don’t go out so much anymore is because we’re trying to watch our finances. John hasn’t Van Gogh’d yet, so his paintings only bring us so much. And we recently had to lay off our gallery assistant and cut our hours.’

‘“Van Gogh’d”?’

John grinned rakishly, turning to Vera. ‘I thought we agreed to stop sharing our plans for my impending demise with our dinner guests. My god, she’s only just met us.’ He arched an eyebrow. ‘So here’s the thing: After my inclusion in the Whitney Biennial didn’t pan out exactly as I’d hoped, we started joking about how I could disappear, you know, wander off somewhere and get on the map.’

I leaned slightly forward. I knew a thing or two about wanting to disappear. To seep into nothingness, where Davis could never find me. To leave behind not even so much as a record of my presence. No failed relationship. No loss of my parents. Nothing for anyone to pity.

‘I read a book about it once,’ John went on, leaning back, shoulders relaxing as he took another sip of wine. ‘This Swedish artist faked his death to give his work more value. And, believe it or not, it worked – for like a decade or something. We started calling it Van Gogh-ing. He wasn’t popular in life, but after his death – you get the idea. Though I have no interest in cutting my ear off.’

‘Well, it would certainly make my life a lot easier,’ Vera said, beaming. ‘I’d have a star in my portfolio.’

John squeezed her knee. ‘That Porsche isn’t going to buy itself, right, V?’

She turned to me with a devilish smirk. ‘We love art, but we love money more.’