Hi, I’m Howard, he said, extending a well-lotioned hand, which I took, and shook, and introduced myself. As I stepped into the house, I could hear light and easy conversation in the next room. Howard was wearing these sort of streamlined grey felt slippers, and told me I was welcome to keep my shoes on, but I removed them anyway, and followed him through the front hall, with its wide-plank hardwood floors, earth tones, and Kabuki theatre masks on the walls. I followed him into the adjoining living room where six others were standing, chatting around a low coffee table as if at a cocktail party. Kyle was one of them. He was holding a glass of Coke with ice cubes in it. Everyone looked up and smiled in our direction, except Kyle who fixed his gaze on some indeterminate point on the ground between us. Howard introduced me, and then I shook everyone’s hand one by one as they introduced themselves. When I reached Kyle, we introduced ourselves in a mumbled and, I suspected, unconvincing little pantomime, but no one seemed to notice.

Along with a somewhat uncomfortable-looking Scandinavian couch, and two matching, scooped armchairs, there were four smooth white kitchen chairs arranged in a loose semicircle on the far side of the coffee table. I took in the rest of the room—the large abstract oil painting with heavy impasto, the hand-carved stone vase on the teak end table, the wine-coloured Moroccan rug; every object felt considered and placed in specific relation to one another by a discerning eye. Even the subtle but pervasive scent of sandalwood felt curated. The vaulted ceiling ascended upward into a large skylight, bathing the room in a soft, late morning glow. Opposite the bay window was a wall lined with tall bookshelves and a sliding wood ladder. The bookcase ladder felt like an affectation, but I was into it.

Howard was a bit of a bookshelf ladder himself—a walking, talking intellectual affectation you couldn’t help but admire and delight in, somehow fusty and charismatic at the same time. He was a retired geophysicist who spoke with a warm, honeyed baritone, like the narrator of a nature program who betrays no emotion as wild game are eviscerated by apex predators. If I was someone who sometimes used my intelligence as a shield, Howard wielded his like a sword, brandishing doozies like ‘When I was doing field research in Mauritius . . . ’ As he talked, I couldn’t help but smile—when I was a girl, I used to tell my friend Jennifer that I had an eccentric millionaire uncle who travelled the world ‘collecting specimens,’ who would one day come back and take me on his expeditions. Howard was eccentric millionaire scientist uncle out of central casting, except perhaps a little more effete than I’d have imagined as a girl; a little more wine decanter than pith helmet.