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Paulie?”

    “I meant that, whatever it is, can we please talk about it later. I’m here professionally, you know? I’m trying to get some business done here, OK?”

    I said, “Me too, Paulie. So as your social media coordinator, perhaps you should bring me up to speed on the business that you were conducting in the room on the stairs with Ak, so that I can update your Facebook friends and the Twitterverse about it.”

    “Look, it’s nothing, OK?” He was getting flushed, and that meant angry.

    “OK, it’s nothing.” I said, “Look, there’s Ak now.” I waved to him. Her. To ‘Ak,’ but she acted as though she hadn’t seen me and ducked away. I looked back to Paulie and he was barging off in the opposite direction, towards the exit.

    I went down the steps after him, but he shouted back, “I’ll call you tomorrow,” and he was through the door to the street.

    I reached the door and saw Paulie with his collar up, hurrying along the store windows into the rainy New York night. I was debating whether to go after him and on the point of deciding against it. As I was about to turn back into the gallery, a deep growl came from down an alley, just ahead of where Paulie was.

    He jumped back, his face drained and pale. Then he flattened himself against the window. Two big shapes came slowly out of the alley. I couldn’t make them out, but they were huge and they looked like they were covered in thick fur.

    They hunkered in front of him. He was frozen and obviously terrified. A Bentley convertible pulling up sharply to the curb and a big man’s voice called out, “Bruno! Bernardo!” The two shapes hesitated, still sniffing at Paulie, then they both jumped into the back of the car and it swept away into the darkness and the rain.

    I stood rooted to the spot. I didn’t even notice Paulie slink away, but I know he did because when I looked back, he wasn’t there. I had recognized the man’s voice. Orsino Arturo was at the wheel of the Bentley.

    So Paulie was gone, and Orsino was gone. A perfect early end to a perfect evening.

    On my slow, resigned walk home a lot of things bothered me. Orsino Arturo was one of them. Where did I know that name from? I thought that Mr Google ought to know, and I could ask him later. The tremors in my little world were still juddering beneath me, though, and I promptly forgot all about it.

    Paulie chose a corner table in the little bar last night to deliver his little, ‘I think we need some space,’ talk. He mumbled the rambling speech into his beer mug, since eye contact was an exertion that his feeble strength couldn’t manage. After I got the headlines, I didn’t wait around to listen to all the sidebar excuses and justifications.

    When we first met, he was spending his whole life online, blogging, tweeting, chatting and whatever else. His complexion was pale and blotchy, and his contact with actual human beings was scarce. We got together and I helped him to turn his minute and invisible blog about the SoHo and TriBeCa arts scene into something that more established arts journalists would want to plunder for trends and gossip.

    He thought that they were stealing from him. I told him to check his visitor counts. Also, he started to get invitations to private views and to gallery and show openings from then on, and he began to grow a little reputation on the scene. So people were taking notice of him. That was when he started to think that I should be dressing maybe a bit less ‘showy,’ a bit more, ‘in keeping.’

    When we met, he couldn’t peel his eyes out of my cleavage, except when it was to roam around my hips and my thighs, or over my ass. All of a sudden, he doesn’t want to see me like that when we’re out together.

    When or if. Soon after the invitations started to come in from the agents and artists and gallery owners, Paulie started ‘forgetting’ to mention them to me, or he’d say something like, ‘Oh, don’t you have a thing that