“My new favorites are Godeleva, who protects against sore throats. Or Homobonus, patron of tailors.”

“Come on, Saint Hugh, let’s eat.”

“Don’t forget—Saint Bonaventure of Potenza.”

“I’m praying already.”

He touched my sleeve and moved away with his wife. We continued to our places at the tables. By coincidence, Hugh and I were seated at the same one, although there were people between us.

Unfortunately, my neighbor took a shine to me and all through the first two courses asked personal questions I didn’t want to answer. Sometimes I looked over and saw Hugh Oakley talking with a well-known SoHo gallery owner. They seemed to be having a great time. I wished I were in their conversation and not mine.

Because I wasn’t paying attention to what the guy on my right was saying, it didn’t register when he began to touch me as he spoke. Nothing bad, just a hand on the arm, then a few sentences later fingers on my elbow to emphasize a point, but I didn’t want it. Once when his hand stayed too long on mine, I stared at the hands until he slowly pulled his away.

“Oops. Sorry ‘bout that.”

“That’s okay. I’m hungry. Can we eat?”

The silence that followed was welcome. The food was good and my hunger had returned. I dug into the chicken-whatever and was content to eat and let the talk flow in and out of my mind. If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have heard what Hugh said.

“James Stillman would have been one of the best! It was a tragedy he died.”

“Come on, Hugh, the guy was uncontrollable. Don’t forget the Adcock disaster.”

Hugh’s voice was angry and loud. “That wasn’t his fault, Dennis. Adcock’s husband had us all fooled.”

“Yeah, your friend Stillman most of all.”

I leaned so far forward I felt my chest touching the table. “Did you know James Stillman?”

They looked at me. Hugh nodded. The other man snorted dismissively. “Sure, who didn’t? Half New York knew him after the Adcock thing.”

“What was that?”

“Tell her, Hugh. You’re his big defender.”

“Damned right I am!” He glared, but when he spoke to me his voice dropped back to normal range. “Do you know of the painter Lolly Adcock?”

“Sure.”

“Right. Well, a few years ago her husband said he had ten of her paintings no one had ever seen. He wanted to sell them and contacted Bartholomew’s—”

“The auction house?”

“Yes. Adcock wanted them to handle the auction. James worked for Bartholomew’s. They thought very highly of him, so they sent him to Kansas City to verify if the paintings were real.”

The other man shook his head. “And in his great enthusiasm, Mr. Stillman cut a deal with the wily Mr. Adcock, only it turned out the paintings were fakes.”

“It was an honest mistake!”

“It was a stupid mistake and you know it, Hugh. You never would have done it that way. Stillman was famous for going off half-cocked. Half-cocked Ad-cocked. I never thought of that. Very fitting.”

“Then explain how he found the Messerschmidt head that had been lost for a hundred years.”

“Beginner’s luck. I need another drink.” The man signaled a waiter. While he was giving his order I grabbed my chance.

“Did you know him well?”

“James? Yes, very well.”

“Can we—Um, excuse me, would you mind if we switched seats? I’d really like to ask Hugh some questions.”

The gallery owner picked up his plate. As we were changing, he asked, “Were you also a Stillman fan?”

“He was my boyfriend in high school.”

“Really? I didn’t know he had a past.”

I felt the hair on the back of my neck go up. “He was a good man.”

“I wouldn’t know. I never cared to spend time with him.”

When I sat down I was so angry I couldn’t speak. Hugh patted me on the knee. “Don’t mind Dennis. He needs Saint Ubald.”

“Who’s that?”

“Patron saint against rabies. Tell me about you and James.”

We talked through the rest of dinner and dessert. I didn’t eat a thing.

Hugh Oakley was an art expert. He traveled the world telling people what they owned, or should buy. Listening to him talk, I quickly understood why he looked so young. His enthusiasm for what he did was infectious. His stories about unearthing rare or marvelous things were the tales of a boy with a treasure map and a heart full of hope. He loved his work. I loved hearing him talk about it.

Years before, he had given several lectures at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, and that’s where he met James. Hugh described James as a young man who was lost but convinced there was something significant waiting for him. Something that would arrive one day out of the blue and lead him home.

“After my last lecture he came up, looking so bewildered that I was concerned. I asked if he was all right. The only thing he could say was, ‘I want to know about this. I have to know more about this.’ I’d felt that same excitement at Columbia when I heard Federico Zeri speak. Do you know his book Behind the Image? You must read it. Let me write the title down.” He slipped a hand into his pocket and brought out a Connolly leather notebook and a silver mechanical pencil. He wrote down the title and author’s name in distinctive block lettering. It was not till later that I learned it was the typeface known as Bremen. Another of Hugh Oakley’s many hobbies was meticulously copying in various faces poems and stories he liked and then, like a monk from the Middle Ages, illuminating them in paints he made from scratch.

I was so absorbed in what he was saying that it took a while to realize I was hogging him from the rest of the party. I worried what his wife would think. Looking around, I was relieved to see her deep in conversation with Dagmar Breece.

Somehow we’d gotten off the subject of James. I needed to know as much as Hugh was willing to tell.

“What exactly did happen to James?”

“The idiot heart.”

“What do you mean?”

“ ‘Hope gleams in the idiot heart.’ It’s a line from a Mayakovski poem. His girlfriend had those words—the idiot heart—tattooed on the inside of her wrist like a bracelet. Can you imagine? But it’s the age of tattoos, isn’t it?

“Her name was Kiera Stewart. She was a graduate student at Temple. Beautiful Scottish girl from Aberdeen. James was nuts over her, but you only had to meet her once to see she was an ocean of bad news. Women like that give you wonderful for the first few months, but then start taking it back bit by bit as the relationship goes on. After a while you’re wondering if that great stuff ever really existed at all. But you’re so hooked on them by then and the tidbits of delicious they parse out, it’s like being addicted to drugs.

“The tragedy was, James was just coming into his own around the time they met. He’d found what he wanted to do with his life. And he was so good at it that the right people were already watching to see what he’d do next.

“The good is always the enemy of the great. From the beginning, he had the rare ability to discern between them. The trouble was, in our business insight often comes slowly and through meticulous detective work. James constantly wanted to achieve right now, this second.” Hugh shook his head. “He once said he had a lot to prove but didn’t know to whom.

“So everything happened at once. Not many people can handle that. His star was rising, he’d met a wild woman who sent him spinning, and then his bosses sent him to look at the Adcock paintings. James thought he was invincible. For a while it looked like he was.

“Then it all crashed. He made a big mistake. Adcock’s husband turned out to be a clever crook, but not clever enough. The deal blew up in James’s face. That was bad enough, but then Kiera got wind of what happened. Over the phone she told him their relationship was finished. Over the phone. Classy, huh? A platinum bitch. He got in his car in the middle of the night, drove down to Philadelphia to see her but never made it. That’s the story, Miranda. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more. He was a great favorite of mine.”