“Oh—that explains it.” But I felt even worse than before. No wonder he didn’t like me, yammering on and on at him, oblivious.

“You’ll see. He’s really observant—he notices a lot about people. Once, when I couldn’t find Carrie, he could tell I was looking for her and he pretended to put a finger down his throat.”

“Wait, why?”

“Oh, you don’t know yet. Well, you would have found out soon enough anyway. She’s bulimic. She uses that bathroom right next to her office. It’s pretty disgusting.”

“So what has he noticed about you?” I couldn’t help myself. I was so curious about Emily, about what she was doing here. It seemed like my chance to ask more.

“Oh, probably that I’m a sinner, like my parents said when I left. Good as dead as far as they’re concerned.” She was smiling, but some of the mirth left her voice. “What about you? Your parents like your ex?” She gestured to my shattered phone.

“How did you know …”

“Come on. I could tell you were seriously pining when I came up to the desk. Let’s hear it. What’s the deal there?”

“He … well.” I fumbled for the right words. God, how to describe what it had really been like? The recording of Ramona and Matthew in bed. The nude she painted of him, him looking smug, imperial, in an Eames rocking chair, every inch the enfant terrible. The text messages I sent. Matthew, where are you? Matthew, what’s going on?

“He slept with someone else. She’s a painter,” I said. “She was someone I was hoping to represent at the gallery where I worked. Matthew was—is—one of their clients. He’s a sculptor. Quite well known, actually.” Something I had thought about a lot over the past few weeks was how Matthew had never wanted for anything—not attention, not money, not admiration, not fame. How it made sense that he thought he could do what he did and that I might stay. I thought of his mother, a tidy, brisk woman in her sleek, modern house nestled in the woods of New Canaan. The summer place on the cliffs of Newport. The father who flew in from London every few months, who hid his fondness for red meat and gin in bespoke Turnbull & Asser. It had been a part of my initial attraction to Matthew—not necessarily the money, but the self-assurance it gave him. The unassailable confidence touched his every movement, from the way he hailed a cab to the way he peeled an orange.