Two days later Ian and I had dinner at a loud and crowded Italian restaurant in the West Village. When I arrived, I spotted him across the room. I recognized him as the man talking to Fritz at Natalie’s party—early forties, dark brown hair, heavy eyebrows. No one would have called him out for being good-looking or bad-looking. He was wearing a tie, unlike the rest of the men in the restaurant. His hair was extremely short, as if he’d had a haircut earlier that day, and it appeared he’d cut his chin shaving.

Ian seemed surprised by me. Or maybe taken aback by my appearance. I gathered he wasn’t used to dating women who were as pretty as I was.

I started by asking him questions about himself. I always preferred to do the asking. The person asking has more power. The person answering is more vulnerable. Among other things, I learned that he grew up in New Jersey and attended Rice University for his master’s. He spoke of his father, who’d passed away the previous year, and his mother’s subsequent loneliness. I was bored by the subject of other people’s loneliness, but Ian would have had no way of knowing that.

He’d just come from helping his mother clean her apartment, in preparation for trying to sell it, because she had bad arthritis in her hips and it wasn’t easy for her to get around. She was so stingy, he said, she’d photographed the apartment herself, refusing to spend the money on a professional interiors photographer.

Some people consider themselves photographers because they’ve taken a few decent pictures on their iPhones. An infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time could write The Complete Works of Shakespeare. That’s called the infinite monkey theorem, and it applies to cameras and photographs too. I didn’t tell Ian about the infinite monkey theorem.

“The photos can make a big difference,” I said.

“I know.” He shook his head in disgust. “Her lousy photos are probably costing her forty percent of the sale price.”

After a couple of martinis, Ian loosened up a bit. “Delta Dawn. Isn’t that a song?”

I smiled. “Mm-hmm.”

“It’s a beautiful name.”

“I’ve never liked it,” I said.

“That’s too bad.”

“It tells people I don’t belong.”

“Don’t belong … where?”

“Anywhere, actually.” The words fell out of my mouth.

I could see that Ian found the comment troubling.

“I’m kidding!” I laughed.

He smiled awkwardly and ordered another martini.