HE WATCHED ME as I undressed, as if seeing me naked was a way of seeing me as I really was. But even with my clothes off, even when we were entangled in his bed, I tried to make myself believe I wasn’t really there.

Afterward, I lay with my back to him and felt his fingers running through my hair, down my spine.

“This doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?” he said.

I turned to face him. Suddenly I felt hard and cruel. I had spent too long trapped in my own misery, behaving as if I was the only one who was real and everybody else just a supporting actor in my drama. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But—well, I am in the wrong place. Wrong place, wrong time. Working for Frances was meant to be an interlude. I need to stop it and get back to my own life.”

Johnny raised his hand and ran a finger down my nose, my cheek, the side of my jaw. “I dont know what you’re talking about,” he said. “What’s this if it’s not your life?”

That wasn’t a question I could answer. “I feel I’m filling in for a dead woman and it’s not right.”

“That’s crap.”

“Milena was the one the company was built around, she’s the one everybody talks about. She needs to be replaced, and that’s not something I could do, even if I wanted to.”

Johnny laughed. “You mean you’re not a drama queen. You’re not chronically disorganized. You’re not totally self-centerd. You’re not manipulative. You know she thought she looked like Julie Delpy, the movie actress?”

“I think I’ve seen her in something.”

“She didn’t at all, of course. It was about wanting to be French and Bohemian. You’re not unreliable. You’re not dishonest.”

“Reliable. Organized. Unselfish. Lovely. It sounds like I should get a Girl Guide badge.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

I leaned forward and kissed him, but only on the forehead. “I’ve got to go.” I climbed out of the bed and began to pull on my clothes, with my back to him so I couldn’t see him watching me.

“There was one thing, though,” Johnny said. “She didn’t leave in the middle of the night.”

I looked around sharply. Knowledge coursed through me, bitter and toxic. “You didn’t?” I said, though of course I knew he had—and how had I not understood before? Milena had got into everyone’s lives, and was still there now, as powerful dead as she had been alive. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Milena?”

“Milena.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You mean, tell you about an affair with someone who’s not alive anymore and that happened before you and I knew each other?”