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That evening, Tatyana wanted to try a new Persian restaurant in Brooklyn that served street food. Getting to deepest Bushwick wasn’t an easy subway ride from Lower Manhattan, so Paul called an Uber to pick them up on East Seventh.

The Uber was a worn Toyota Camry that smelled pungently of the Little Trees air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror (Royal Pine scent). The Little Tree was there, Paul assumed, to mask the odor of the driver’s cigarettes, smoked between customers.

Paul and Tatyana exchanged a glance about the smell.

“When I met you, you were smoking,” Paul said to her. “But I haven’t seen you smoke since.”

“Mostly I vape, when I do,” Tatyana replied. “I’m a light smoker anyway. I only smoke when I’m nervous or stressed out.”

Her hair was in a bun this evening, and she was wearing heavily smudged eyeshadow that he knew women called “smoky eye.”

“So how was your day?” he asked her.

“Not stressful. Good.”

“What’d you do?”

“Went out to Brownsville to do some shooting.” She paused, pantomimed clicking photos on a camera. “Two treks to Brooklyn today.”

“Brownsville? Isn’t that kind of a tough neighborhood? Carrying a fancy camera and all?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about me, Pasha.”

“Pasha?”

“That’s the Russian nickname for ‘Paul.’”

“Pasha? I like that. Makes me sound like a high-ranking officer in the Ottoman Empire.” He was pleased, kind of thrilled. She had a term of endearment for him.

“You’ll always be a high-ranking officer in the Ottoman Empire to me,” Tatyana said, leaning over and giving him a kiss.

The Uber drove through a derelict area of old warehouses and pulled up in front of a graffiti-covered building.

Pasha , he thought as they stepped out of the car. I like it . “What’s the nickname for Tatyana?”

“Tanya.”

“I think I like ‘Tatyana’ better. How ’bout you?”

She smiled.

The restaurant was hip and funky, the kind of place people like to post pics of on Instagram. Fortunately, Tatyana didn’t do that. Her Insta feed, which she’d just started, was all art photography. No food.

The place was loud, voices bouncing off the white subway tiles, and Paul found it hard to hear her. They both had saffron martinis.

“You see Grandpa over there?” she said and pointed with her chin.

Paul turned and saw, amid all the hipsters, a very old man at a table with what looked like his family. Maybe he was Iranian.

“Yeah?”

It was so loud, she leaned in close, which was nice. “I’d like to shoot him. He has an interesting face. There’s something uneasy about it, about him. Do you see it?”

Paul shrugged. “So you like ‘the olds’?”

She grinned. “I do, it’s true. But only the ones with interesting faces. They don’t all have interesting faces. But my babushka —my grandmother—now she had a face!”

“So what’d you find today?”

“Oh, a guy covered in tattoos, even his face. A kid on a fire escape.”

“Who are your favorites?”

“Favorites?”

“Photographers, I mean.”

“Oh, boy, so many!”

“Name one.”

“August Sander. From the nineteen twenties and thirties. In terms of photographers working today, Katy Grannan.”

“Sorry, I don’t know her.”

“She’s amazing. And of course, Robert Frank was a god. There’s a reason Bruce Springsteen looks at Robert Frank photographs to get song ideas.”

“How do you know when you make it?”

“Make it?”

“As a photographer, I mean.”

She heaved a sigh, shook her head. Her lip curled. “It’s like a tree falling in the woods.”

“How so?”

“You can be a great photographer, you can do original stuff, but no one notices unless, you know, the New York Times or ARTNews decides you’re good.”

They ordered charcoal-grilled kebabs with tamarind squid ink sauce, crisp octopus tentacles in garlic chili and tahini, and caramelized trumpet mushroom kebabs over coconut-creamed lentils.

“What got you into photography in the first place?” Paul asked.

She thought a long time. “It was after my parents’ divorce. We had moved to America—Papa had, leaving Mama and Babushka and Dedushka behind. When Dedushka died, back in Moscow, I was gutted, I was bereft. But I had these photos of him, and they gave me comfort . . .”

“How old were you when that happened?”

“Six or seven, I think. I discovered a box of family photographs that Mama had packed in with my things. Pictures of her and my grandparents and aunts and uncles, and I just became obsessed with them. Whenever I was sad, I would pull out some of the pictures and look at them, and of course, they just made me sadder. I realized one day that this was all I had of Dedushka. Pictures. And suddenly they were everything, this old roll of photographs of my mama, my dedushka . I think that, on some level, deep down, I realized the perishability of the past. That the only way to preserve the past, really, was photographs. I think that’s when I decided I wanted to take pictures. Papa gave me a camera, a Canon digital SLR, and I started taking pictures all the time. Later, when I was around ten, Papa gave me a book of photographs that had a picture of this little naked girl in Vietnam running from a napalm attack on her village. It brought tears to my eyes. That little girl was around my age, and you can see the pain and the terror in her face. And that was when I realized how photography can move you. Until I saw that terrible picture, I didn’t know it could do that.” There was a long silence. “So how was your day?”

He grinned. “Pretty great, actually.”

“Yeah? How so?”

He gave her a simplified version of what had happened at work, and about Bernie singling him out.

Her face lit up. “That’s so fantastic!”

“It’s boring to you, isn’t it?”

“It’s not boring, not at all—I mean, I don’t know anything about investments or finance. But I’m very happy for you and your good day.” She caught him frowning. “What is it, Pasha?”

“Oh, it’s—I don’t know, I’m just thinking you must date far more interesting people. Artists and such. I’m just a money guy.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s great to be with someone who appreciates photography,” she said. “Oh, this is too hot for me.”

He passed her a small dish of yogurt. “Try some of this.”

She spooned some yogurt. “I’ve never had a boyfriend who really knew anything about my photography. Or even cared. Or bothered to learn. And by the way, my last boyfriend was a painter. A very talented one.”

“Ahh . . . how nice . . .”

“He had interest from David Zwirner, about representation—do you know who that is?”

“Big-shot agent, I’m guessing?”

“Art dealer. Gallery owner. This guy—Sebastian his name was—he was about to blow up. But he was a party boy, too. And between the cocaine and the infidelity and the flakiness, he’d never show up where he was supposed to; he always had some excuse. In the end, he screwed up everything in his life. Including our relationship. I didn’t feel safe or wanted or loved. He broke my heart.”

She scooped up more yogurt and some fava beans with Barbari, the Persian flatbread with sesame and nigella seeds in its crust.

Paul waited, wondering, Why is she telling me this?

She went on, “We’ll always care for each other. But I learned that I need someone sane, someone grounded and kind.”

He felt himself relax. He nodded, put his hand atop hers.

“You know what they say: Never sleep with anyone crazier than you,” Tatyana said. “Of course, you might think that’s a low bar in my case.” A rueful smile. “I usually win in the crazy Olympics, Pasha.”