Page 8

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Researching the pluses and minuses of the various companies that Aquinnah Capital was considering investing in was one of Paul’s strengths and, he admitted to himself, a source of pride. He knew how to dig deep.

So it was second nature for him to google “Tatyana Belkin” the morning after their first date—and it surprised him to come up empty. She didn’t pop up in any web searches; there was a concert pianist in Australia with the same name, but she looked nothing like the lovely woman he’d shared cocktails with the night before.

She’d told him she was a photographer, that was her main thing; the fact that she had no web presence just added to her mystery. His mother had been a painter. In the few memories he had of his mother, she was either lost in a painting or sitting down at the supper table with paint-splotched hands.

The next day was Saturday. In the afternoon, he texted her. Great to meet you, Tatyana. Any chance for dinner Sun. night? Saturday night seemed too soon, too presumptuous. Sunday night was already pretty aggressive. He wasn’t exactly playing it cool.

Three gray dots bubbled for almost a minute, but her reply was brief. Can’t Sunday —family dinner. How’s Monday?

Family dinner? Did that mean her family lived close by? Monday was a work night, but he’d gladly sacrifice a few hours of sleep to see her again. On Tuesday morning, he’d be guzzling coffee and Red Bull, and that was okay.

He answered right away: Monday’s great .

He thought quickly about where they might go. Right away he ruled out the over-the-top, pricey restaurants in the class of Daniel and Per Se and Jean-Georges. She was a (no doubt struggling) photographer, and he worked at a hedge fund, so that would be just showing off his relative wealth to her. He had colleagues who liked to do that, thinking that displaying their wealth made them more attractive. He could tell she wasn’t into that scene, anyway.

She lived in the East Village, so he suggested a place around there, an intimate, unpretentious French bistro.

She replied: Hmmm . . . Let’s go to Axepert.

He replied: Sure .

Then he looked it up. It was a bar in Tribeca where you could throw axes. He was beginning to like her more and more.

*

Axepert was also Viking-themed, an industrial space with skulls and roses on the walls and a neon sign that read, I ’ M A FIGHTER & A LOVER . Their Manhattans were served in skull glasses.

She turned out to be good at the axe throwing—better at it, in fact, than Paul was. She had great form and several times hit the bull’s-eye.

“You’ve done this before,” Paul said.

She shrugged, smiled. “Practice makes perfect.” She wore straight dark jeans and white Golden Goose sneakers—he recognized the big gold star—and a loose-fitting ecru sweatshirt with an Isabel Marant logo on the front. Her blonde hair was down.

She wanted to keep score. It occurred to him only after they arrived that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to combine axe throwing with alcohol consumption, but he kept his opinion to himself.

She won.

Later, while they snacked on flatbread pizzas and a second round of Manhattans, he asked, “How was your family dinner last night?”

Another shrug. “Like always. Every Sunday night we have dinner.”

“Wow, that’s—wow. Every Sunday night. I can’t imagine.”

“You’re not close with your family?”

“I don’t have a family. No brothers or sisters, and my mom’s dead.”

“And your father?”

“He’s crazy.”

“Literally crazy?”

“He rejects modern society. He lives in the woods somewhere.”

“You don’t know where?”

“I haven’t talked to him in like twenty years.”

“And I thought my family was strange.” She laughed. “A great Russian writer once said that all unhappy families are different in their own way.”

“I even read that one. I remember something about railroad tracks.”

“Spoiler alert.”

“So is yours one of those unhappy families?”

She shook her head. “I was kidding. I’d say it’s complicated.” She fell silent, and he couldn’t decide whether to pursue the subject. Instead, he said, “So you’re a photographer?”

She nodded. Gave a little embarrassed smile.

“You don’t have a website.”

“I know .” She moaned. “I need to put one up, like, yesterday .”

“Love to see your work.”

“I’m having a show in a couple months, at the Argold Gallery.”

“Really?” So she was serious, not a dilettante. “What do you take pictures of?”

She looked kind of uncomfortable. “I—I guess you’d call me a street photographer.”

“Like Cartier-Bresson or Robert Frank? Or Weegee?”

“Oh,” she said with a relieved smile. “You know photography?”

“Some. What kind of stuff do you do?”

“You just have to see it. I’m not good at describing it.”

“Try.”

“I’m so not good at that.”

“My mother was an artist. A painter. I know how hard it is to articulate what you’re trying to do in your art. So try me.”

“She was? What kind of art?”

“Now, that’s hard to describe, too. She painted the woods, the trees around our house in Washington State. But not in a photorealist way. In between abstraction and representation. She incorporated real twigs and grasses and flowers into her work. Fairy roses that bled pink. Strokes of bright colors. They were bold and happy paintings. Colorful and joyous, very emotional. Which was weird.”

“Why?”

“Because she led an unhappy life. Oppressed and stressed by my father. A very unhappy woman. Anyway.” Paul realized he was getting too deep too fast, and he changed direction. “Back to your work.”

“Is she still painting, your mother?”

“No, she died when I was a teenager.”

“That’s terrible! What happened?”

Paul shrugged. “Long story. For another occasion. Let’s just say, it was not a happy time. Anyway—”

“You know painting, too!”

“Just my mom’s. But your stuff—what are they pictures of?”

She tossed her head back, smoothed out her hair, then shook her head. A delaying tactic while she thought. “So it’s ordinary people—no, that’s not right, I mean the sort of people you don’t notice on the street. People you don’t look at.”

“Portraits?”

“Sort of. Usually in broad daylight.” She gave a little twist of a shy smile. “I’m a happy person, so I shoot unhappy scenes.”

“Are they unhappy, really?”

“No, not really. I mean, they’re glimpses of people who live hard lives. And I like to think I take their pictures with empathy. I get to know them. So it’s different from a lot of other photographers who sort of condescend to their subjects. I feel like I get them.”

Later that evening, the moment came when they left the bar. They kissed on the street. “I’d invite you over for a nightcap if my place weren’t such a mess,” he said.

“So come to mine,” she said.