The door to the chapel opened, and a tall man-child stepped out. He looked as if he had been dipped in gold dust. His skin, his eyes, his hair all a dusky auric hue. Slim-fitting turquoise slacks clung to long, skinny legs. A plaid vest, white shirt, and turquoise bow-tie completed the ensemble. Lori pounced.

“Ah. Do you work here?”

“Oui, Madame. My name is Joseph.” He gave a curt bow. “This is my gallery. Would you like to take a look inside?”

“Sure would. Come on, Chaz.” She brushed past the young man, and Chaz followed her reluctantly into the odd little gallery.

It had none of the charm of the other shops that he and his new bride had visited. A haphazard jumble of portraits of differing sizes and mediums were spread out on long folding tables. Painted canvases set in elaborate frames juxtaposed with prints and lithographs in simple, painted, plastic borders with daguerreotypes stuffed in the corners. Smaller photographs both in black and white and in color were spread along the ledge of the fireplace mantel.

Chaz felt as if he had entered a lunatic’s den rather than an art gallery, and Lori looked crestfallen. He strolled among the tables and absently browsed the images, stirring the piles with his fingertips. From the corner of his eye he watched his wife ready a polite excuse for them to make their exit.

Chaz picked up one of the photos. He glanced at it and threw it back on the pile. Oddly, his breathing grew shallow, and a niggling and fizzy sensation spread at the base of his skull as he snatched up the photo again. It was a black and white, obviously taken several decades ago. Yet the woman in it – the curve of her smile – seemed familiar to Chaz. He dropped the picture and picked up another. He stared at it, trying to rationalize the presence of the woman in each of the photos, whose eyes twinkled on the page, calling to mind laughter like a song that deeply provoked nostalgia and longing. Chaz cast one down to pick up another image of the same alluring dark-skinned woman, effigies set in various eras and places. He moved from table to table, becoming more disoriented as his realized that he and Lori had stumbled into a shrine to the woman he had loved and left to marry the girl at his side.

Against the far wall of the gallery, a golden easel cradled a brazen display of a single, over-sized portrait. Chaz faltered toward it and look upon the dark and ferine woman who stood topless. Her hair, wild and bushy and dark as night, tumbled down past bronze-hued shoulders in coarse ringlets. Sable eyes shimmered like pitch dusted with glitter, looked askance at him with a carnivorous gleam. Her full, dark lips parted in a half smile. Chaz saw there an element of a predator half hidden.

He knew this body. He remembered the softness of her skin and the musky scent of it, laced with vanilla and clove. He had been intimate with every curve and every sinew of the long legs and high round ass, now hidden by a white sarong. His fingertips tingled at the memory of fondling her jutting breasts, their peaks had grown taut breasts, their peaks had grown taut at his touch. He had felt her slickness and her heat. He had tasted the sweet saltiness of her.

Enthralled, Chaz licked his lips involuntarily. It was Zen. But not as he knew her. There was an innocence about his Zen. She nurtured. He felt safe with her. Yet that version of her in that shop, on that easel, was alluring – yes – but that version had the look of a predator.