I’ve never met a man like you, she used to say all the time. You know so much, you’ve done so much and seen so much. Gosh, Ian, I wanna be like you … y’know … make money from my art. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to do that, she would say. She felt she had the talent. But she was afraid of the cycle of feast and famine. Her father, a pianist who’d recorded with Gerry Mulligan, had died in obscurity, so she knew the danger of life on the edge.

I’ve never met a man like you. Whenever she said this, he would put his hand on her shoulder, and feel her innocence drawing the anger from his soul. She created beauty so easily, he would remark to himself. Even when she played the piano. Her touch was so light it seemed she barely touched the keys, as if the keyboard were connected to her fingertips by invisible lengths of string and creating the lushest melodies was a simple matter of flexing her knuckles.

Two weeks before she left, he told her over a bottle of wine in his studio that he thought he was falling in love with her. What would it take, he asked, for her to love him in return? Nothing, she said. She was in love with him too, had fallen in love at first sight. It was his eyes, she said. She’d fallen in love with the pain there.

They kissed. It was awkward. Her tongue flapped like a child’s excited hello. No, he said, holding her face. Not like so. Like so. And taught her.

Under his guidance they kissed, they touched, undressed, and … went no further because, she said, trembling as he mounted her, she was saving herself for marriage. Promise me, she said as she dressed herself quickly, that we will never do this again. And don’t mention it ever, she added. Not even to me.

And everything was normal again—until two weeks later, when she was leaving for the States.

They got high together at the going-away party and tried again in the wine cellar. And again, as he tried to penetrate, she began to cry. She was guilty, she said. He tried to reason with her, which made her cry even more, and he became frustrated and stormed away.

Returning to the studio to brood, he caught her boyfriend cotched on a pedestal with a nodding crew cut between his legs, and he went back to find Margaret. The only way to get her for himself, he thought, was to break her heart. He led her to the room feigning innocence and made her open the door. And she ran away screaming.

It took him a while to find her. He drove around looking for her, ashamed of himself and completely in love, wanting to comfort her and beg her to stay with him. He’d never loved like that in his life. Had never loved a woman at all.