For a while she sat and gazed at the shoes, butterfly-fragile and dreading the possibility that this might be a dream she was about to wake up from. When she felt strong enough to move, she tiptoed across the hall, hugging the box to her chest.

In her shoe room, she slipped the shoes onto her feet. The perfect fit, of course. Admiring them in the long mirror, she finally made sense of the embossed design on the heels and buttons. An intertwined and reversed G and P reflected back to her the right way around.

Now Genevieve allowed herself, gradually, to begin to feel and know that these were more than simply the world’s most beautiful shoes. He wanted her, and he was prepared to accept her terms. He would give up the other women, she knew it. These shoes were a declaration, a love letter. The embodiment of all her deepest hopes and yearnings. And here, alone in front of the mirror, Genevieve began to dance.

Paolo Zachari was woken by the unsettling feeling that someone was watching him. It was not unusual for him to wake in this way—he’d long been paranoid about intruders breaking into his apartment, stealing up on him in the dark. He suspected the fear stemmed from a real incident that had taken place in his childhood—an event only hazily remembered but which had haunted him for many years.

He must have been six or seven—no older, certainly. His father had gone away, which was odd, since he didn’t have the kind of business that took him away from home. Zachari had no idea, looking back, where he’d gone or why, but his father must have been away, because he was sleeping in the big bed with his mother when it happened.

It was a hot night. Paolo lay at the very edge of the bed in his pajamas, curled on his side. His mother was tucked behind him, one arm flopped limp across his body, her sleep-breathing warm and even, tickling the back of his neck. He lay with his eyes open, gazing out through the open window at the big half-moon, center stage in a clear, starlit sky. Odd that the shutters weren’t closed—it must have been because of the heat. His mother must have wanted the breeze.

There was some sort of plant growing all up the back of the house. He couldn’t remember now if it was a kind of vine or ivy, but curling green tendrils hung down outside the window, moving very slightly in the night air. What time was it? Felt like utter dead of night—maybe 3:00 a.m., when all is so still and quiet that you feel time itself has stopped. He thought he could see the plant growing, uncurling. He stared at it, wide-eyed, not the tiniest bit sleepy.