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already, at thirty-seven, was an international sensation and one of the most collected painters in the world. She had heard he resided and worked nearby in a double-width townhouse he had renovated from scratch, and she knew he ran with a crowd akin to Warhol’s Factory—kids coming in and out, posing for him, clubbing with him, snorting with him.
    As the crew was ushered immediately by the chain-smoking host to a huge table nearby, Otto’s dark eyes washed casually over the scene. And then . . . his eyes darted back, in a lightning-fast double take, to the most striking creature he had ever seen. He suddenly stopped still, inhaling his cigarette and staring down at Eden in her booth. While many women would quickly look away, Eden simply gazed back, unfazed. She was used to it. Her green eyes shone in the low light, and her long shiny hair cascaded down her shoulders and back. Though she was still chilled from the air outside, she delicately took both hands to her shoulders and pulled off the crimson cardigan, which revealed her sensuous body under a tight-fitting, lace-trimmed ivory tank top.
    “Hello,” he said, approaching her, fixated.
    “Hello.”
    “I’m—”
    “I know who you are,” she said in a monotone way, not letting on whether she was impressed or not. (She was.) “I’m Eden.”
    “Of course your name is Eden, how fitting. You’re too stunning for the earth as we know it.”
    “Please. Is there also an angel missing in heaven?” she teased, batting her lashes. “Or wait—is my father a thief because he stole the stars right out of the sky and put them in my eyes?”
    Otto was stunned. Here he was, a legend who could bed any skirt in New York, and this young girl mocked his advances? He felt himself getting hard just hearing her verbal slap. “Touché, my dear. I suppose you have heard such words before.”
    “A few times.”
    “Hello,” said Wes, returning to the table. “I’m Wes. You a friend of Eden’s?”
    “I hope to be,” he said slyly.
    “Wes, this is Otto Clyde,” she said, introducing the two men.
    “Oh, wow, I’m a huge fan of your work, sir.” Wes beamed, in awe that he was face-to-face with the world’s most celebrated painter.
    “‘Sir’? Hey, guys, I’m a sir ,” Otto yelled to his table with an amused grin. “Why, how old are you two fresh-faced young ones?”
    “Nineteen,” answered Eden.
    “Well, almost twenty,” added Wes.
    Eden shot him a look. For a young model like Eden, twenty was a dreaded threshold. She had been born January 1, 1970, the first day of a new decade. Wes’s stork flew three months later. And there, in that restaurant, in the final weeks before her twentieth birthday and the dawn of the 1990s, Eden caught her first glimpse of her first real celebrity in New York. Sure, Cameron had his legions of fans, but the German-born artist was known uptown and down, by art lovers old and young, across the country and across the world.
    “Well, then, happy birthday, Eden,” Otto said, leaning down to kiss her hand. “It was truly a pleasure.” And with that, Otto Clyde turned and walked toward the rest of his party’s table, where he sat facing Eden, and Wes’s back.
    Throughout their anniversary dinner, Eden’s eyes locked with Otto’s as he exhaled smoke and narrowed his eyes, as if to Xerox her visage into the labyrinthine cortex of his brain. For spank bank or for inspiration, he didn’t know. But he knew one thing for sure: He was obsessed. He couldn’t get her face, her body, out of his mind. And as an artist whose unique portraiture had a style all its own, there was no way he could easily get over a visual lightning bolt like that; he would have no peace until she flashed in front of him once more. Otto was determined to run into her again.
    After the lovebirds left, Otto asked the restaurant’s owner what the name on the reservation had been, and the next day, he had one in his cadre of assistants find all the nearby Bennetts.