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parts.
    His gaze traveled to the far wall, to the portrait of a naked woman standing behind lace curtains at dusk, gazing out the bow window of her brick town home onto lanterned Beacon Street.
    Snow walked toward the portrait, stopped about ten feet away.  He knew instantly that it was of the woman he had seen in the window.  He imagined himself in the painting, behind her, hands on her shoulders, kissing her neck.
    "The artist is Ron Kullaway," she said, walking up beside him.  "He lives up in Maine."
    Her voice combined strength and intelligence with a hint of vulnerability.  "Magnificent," he said, without looking at her.
    "He’s becoming one of America’s greats.  You’ve seen his work before?"
    "I haven’t."
    "I think he makes life seem worthwhile," she said.  "Worth living."
    He felt the back of her hand brush ever so lightly against his.  Or did he?  "How does he do that?" he asked.
    "I think it’s what he leaves out, more than what he paints."
    "The structure," Snow said.  "The boundaries."
    "What limits us.  He either doesn’t see it or chooses to ignore it."
    Snow finally let himself look at her.  When he did, he was even more taken with her.  "You never asked him?  It must have taken him quite a long time to capture you."  He looked back at the canvas.
    She smiled.
    "How much is it?"
    "Two hundred thousand."
    "For a glimpse of life as worth living."
    "Some people never even get that."  She paused.  "If it’s something you can walk away from, you shouldn’t even consider it."
    He stepped back from the painting, turned to her.  "John Snow," he said, extending his hand.
    "Grace Baxter," she said, taking it.
    He noticed she wore a wedding band and a diamond solitaire that had to be five carats.  On her wrist were three diamond tennis bracelets.  All those gems said she belonged to someone, but nothing else made him feel she was taken — not her tone of voice nor the look in her eyes nor the touch of her hand.  "Would you have dinner with me tonight?" he asked, letting go.  "I promise to make a decision on the painting before we leave the restaurant."
    She agreed to meet him at Aujourd’hui, upstairs at the Four Seasons, after his last presentation.  But she arrived early.  He saw her standing at the back of the room listening to his remarks, "Reducing Rotational Energy in Flight."  He noticed men in the room, including his partner Collin Coroway, stealing glances at her.  He wished he could say something more than he was, something expansive about the universe or creativity or love.  But he was confined to the laws of physics.
    She never looked even slightly bored.
    "What do you call the work you do?" she asked him later, as he poured her a glass of wine.
    "I’m an aeronautical engineer.  An inventor."
    "And what kinds of things, exactly, do you invent?"
    "Radar systems.  Missile guidance systems."
    She smiled.
    "Care to share the thought?"
    "It’s not really my place.  I hardly know you."
    Sitting with her, hearing her voice, smelling her perfume, made him want to tell her the absolute truth.  "It doesn’t feel that way," he said.
    "No, it doesn’t."
    He felt something long frozen in him begin to thaw.  "So you can share that thought," he said.
    "Okay..." she said.  "Why do you think you focus so much energy on what can and cannot be seen?  Why are you interested in radar, and how to get around it?"
    "It’s something I have a gift for," he answered.  "It chose me.  I didn’t choose it."
    "But why ?" she asked.  " Why do you have that ‘gift’?"
    He looked confused.
    "Is there something about you, John Snow, that you don’t want people to see?  Or is it that you’re not willing to look at yourself?"
    In that instant, Snow felt something he had never felt before.  He felt as though someone had connected with his truth, a truth even deeper than his genius, a truth of the heart.
    "You have the answer, but you’re not ready to share it," she said.
    "Maybe," Snow