“Joy, right?”

“Wow,” she said. “Is your research on women’s scents?”

Now I was sorry I’d said it, because it demanded an explanation, and I didn’t feel like saying that an ex had worn it, a woman I thought I’d loved who’d left me because she wanted to settle down and have babies and how I had let her go because no way I was giving up my fast-lane art career for some bourgeois white picket fence and kids. Though now, when my career had veered into the slow lane and I was dependent on my full-time teaching job, I had to wonder who had the more bourgeois life.

“I never wore perfume before,” she said. “A friend gave it to me for my birthday, just a few weeks ago.”

I wished her a happy birthday and asked which one.

“Twenty-nine,” she said. “And you?”

“Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight in two months.”

“Ever married?”

When I told her no, she narrowed her gaze. “You’re not one of those toxic bachelors, are you?”

“No,” I said, thinking of Kathy and Amanda and Terri. It was not the first time I’d had the phrase leveled at me. “I’ve had relationships.” I tried not to sound defensive. “Just haven’t met the right person—yet.”

She gave me one of her evaluating looks but smiled. I asked for her number and handed her my cell phone to punch it in. She ignored it, wrote her number on a cocktail napkin, held it back, and dangled it like a matador. “I’ll let you have it if you tell me how you knew my perfume.”

“I’m an expert, world-renowned for my nose,” I said and displayed my profile.

She laughed, then said, “A girlfriend wore it, am I right?”

“Guilty,” I said, then quickly asked her a question—if she’d ever been married—and was surprised when she said yes.

“It’s a sad, sad story—a starter marriage. It only lasted a year. I knew it was a mistake at the altar.”

“Why’d you go through with it?”

“I was…running away,” she said dramatically, as if making a joke, though I sensed something real underneath it. She forced a laugh, then asked how long I was staying in Florence. I told I wasn’t sure, that I was on intersession.

“That means you could be here for what, a month?”

“Maybe. I don’t know yet.”

“You like playing the man of mystery, don’t you?”

“Me? I’m an open book.”

“In Braille!”

“Give me a break, Alexandra.”

“Call me Alex,” she said.

“Ah, so you do like me.”

“Let’s just say I don’t dislike you.”

When the check came, she made a move. I grabbed it though I couldn’t really afford it. She offered to leave the tip, but I said I’d settle for her number, and she dangled the napkin for a second time. I reached for it and got hold of her hand, and we stared at each other. Then I leaned in for a kiss. She let go of the napkin and my hand, sat back, and started to put on her coat as if she had to get away fast. I said I was sorry, but she waved a hand. A minute later, she was gone, the smell of Joy perfume loitering like a cloud of confusion.