The evening began, as all the best evenings do, with a room full of strangers and a reason to be there. Victoria was the museum curator who had spent three months arranging the exhibit — a collection of architectural photographs that nobody expected to move people the way they did. Sebastian was the architect whose work occupied the east wall, though he'd arrived late and hadn't yet found it.

He found her first. She was standing in front of a photograph of a staircase in São Paulo, and she was explaining to no one in particular why it made her feel something she couldn't name. He stood beside her and said he thought he understood. She turned and looked at him the way people look at someone they've been waiting to meet without knowing it.

They left the exhibit together three hours later. He showed her the east wall on the way out. She said nothing for a long moment, then: "These are remarkable." He said he'd been thinking the same thing — and was not referring to the photographs.