At the end of the summer Maya would give me a series of three paintings that she’d painted in quick succession. A triptych. She knew that I was a big fan of the fourteenth-century Italian painter Giotto and specifically the frescoes he’d done in the Arena Chapel in Padua, and so she’d modeled these paintings after those of Giotto, perfectly catching the deep blues of Giotto’s skies, the complex yet simply rendered religious themes. - P28
"One’s twenties are for figuring out what you want to do, I think. But one’s thirties are when you do your best work." - P29
I had my books, and I had my music, and I’d recently started writing letters to old friends, people I’d known in college but never saw anymore. - P33
I put down my glass and stared at her, and already there was that sense that she had left. Something in her eyes. It was maybe the only time in my life when I have felt that way in the presence of another person—that I was looking at someone who was already gone. - P37
It had been happening all summer, this gradual pulling away, but I hadn’t felt it physically until that moment. There was a different energy in the room now, a different mood. Maya was looking forward, and I was somewhere in the background, on a distant train platform, watching. - P37
Later that night, as we were sitting in our apartment, talking about the logistics of when we would move out, what we’d tell Lionel, and so on, Maya disappeared for a minute and then came back with a small painting in her hands, an oil painting that she lay down before me on the table. The painting was of a still life from our apartment that summer, a glass of wine, the tiny black radio we kept above the kitchen sink, a pack of cigarettes, and a few of the succulents from the pot we kept on the windowsill. She didn’t say anything about the painting or why she was giving it to me. She just set it down on the table and then walked out of the room. - P39
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