I kissed him one last time, hard on the lips. “Yes. Shower very nice.”

Gabriella, Zoya, and Simone were already eating cinnamon rolls they had heated themselves when I joined them.

Zoya was complaining, her hands flying everywhere as she spoke. “I'm tired of baby-trying,” she said. “Used to sex two times a week. Now sex every night. Zoya don't need baby that bad.”

Gabriella, who had five children, reassured her. “Just get pregnant, and you'll get sex much less often. He'll be afraid to hurt the baby and after baby comes, you'll get sex hardly ever.”

“Really?” Zoya's eyes widened. “Then maybe baby now good thing.”

We laughed, but my neighbors stopped laughing, Simone's eyes like saucers, when da Vinci, wearing only a yellow towel that barely closed, walked through the kitchen, his hair still dripping wet. “Da Vinci!” I yelled, wishing I had a dishcloth big enough to cover his whole body. What part of get dressed and go through the front door did he not understand? I swear. Sometimes he says okay when he has no idea what I'm saying.

“ ¡Dios Santo! “ Gabriella gasped in Spanish. Sweet Lord in Heaven.

“ Pelo amor de Devs! ” Simone whispered in Portugese. Heaven help us.

“ Glückliches weibchen, ” Zoya said in German.

“Zoya!” I scolded. She'd called me a lucky bitch.

“Ladies,” da Vinci said, walking casually over to me where he planted a kiss on my temple. It didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out we both had wet hair and had come out of the bathroom within minutes of each other. And the kiss said more than any explanation could. “Good morning.” He proceeded to pour himself a cup of coffee while we all stared at him. What could I do?

“Good morning, indeed,” said Gabriella.

Simone slit her eyes. “You didn't tell us you'd already had breakfast, Ramona.”

“The shower in the studio is broken,” I told them nonchalantly.

“I'll have Jesús fix it,” Gabriella said, then raised a brow. “Or perhaps not so fast?”

We smiled, the chemistry in the room thick with surprise, our eyes all on da Vinci's back where drops of water glistened on his shoulders.

“ Schlechtes Mädchen, ” Zoya said as she wagged her finger at me. Bad girl.

Being bad had never felt so good.

I'D NEARLY CONVINCED MYSELF the shower scene was an anomaly, an erratic blimp in an otherwise normal platonic relationship, yet for the life of me, I couldn't get it-or him-out of my head.

The cursor blinked on the screen, beckoning me to conjure the words, to fill the white space in the quiet hours meant for my dissertation. My outline clearly demanded I write about the history of love letters, but contrarily I'd spent the morning reading the most romantic love letters the world has ever seen and fantasizing about finishing what da Vinci had started.

I, the lover of words, did not wish to write. I only wished to do. Whether I would actually go through with it if and when the time ever came would be a great surprise, like opening a forbidden sex box. I could daydream for hours about the package itself, let alone what I might find inside.

Doing would not be possible for the foreseeable future. Though not nearly as tragic as the love letters written by authors separated by war, da Vinci and I could not pursue our mutual attraction because he was a student first, a worker second, and a lover third. It had been so long since I'd been kissed or whiled away the morning daydreaming about sex that I didn't even care if I came in third place.

Because the real thing wouldn't be home from work until midnight, I spent the rest of the morning researching love in the Renaissance and what secrets I might find in the original da Vinci's past. Anh had dropped off several da Vinci books from her own collection. I had never paid any attention to the origin of da Vinci's works, or wondered about his subjects, until my da Vinci began calling me his Mona Lisa.

The Renaissance, a time of rebirth between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, was marked by reflection and resurgence, improvement and perfection. Da Vinci's insatiable curiosity about how the world and everything in it worked gave birth not only to brilliant art, but brilliant ideas. Much like my young Leo, old Leo seemed thrilled to be alive, to make new discoveries in the everyday. Could the scholars be right? Did Leonardo invest in his studies the passion usually reserved for a lover? Out of thousands of pages of notes, not one doodle hinted of a personal affection. Even back then, surely you couldn't resist writing your lover's name just once. Or initials with a heart around it. But maybe that's just me.

Maybe Leonardo was in love with life and that was enough for him. Could it be enough for me?

I stared at the picture of a painting of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan and da Vinci's patron for several years, who commissioned da Vinci to paint the Last Supper. Why did I find the fact that da Vinci orchestrated Ludovico and Beatrice's wedding celebration far more interesting than a great work of art? Da Vinci: Renaissance Man, Wedding Planner.

On the next full page, I studied my favorite da Vinci portrait, The Lady and the Ermine. Da Vinci was known for using symbolism in his work, and the ermine-the white, short-tailed weasel known for its hatred of dirt-symbolized purity. With mounting disappointment, I read that the “lady” was no lady at all, but Cecelia Gallerani, the favored mistress of the Duke of Milan, and had in fact given birth to the Duke's first son the same year as his and Beatrice's wedding. Was da Vinci a natural jokester, or was it simply so accepted that every husband keep a mistress on the side that no one caught the irony of the ermine in the mistress' lap? At least the ermine was a weasel, and-also fitting-a carnivore.

Poor Beatrice. Four hundred years between us, and I know how you must've felt. As Ludovico lay in your bed, did you not wonder if he was thinking of her? I know. Sharing his heart was far harder than sharing his body, was it not?

I imagined da Vinci painting a portrait of Monica Blevins wearing a shimmery red gown, her dark hair flowing down onto her full bosom, her eyes full of mischief, a fox resting on her lap. A sly, conniving fox, plain and simple. I didn't care for irony. If Monica was in fact a mistress, no use in being cunning about it.

I slammed the book closed, cursing myself that I'd let my pleasant daydreams turn dark at the thought of Monica. I needed some inspiration, both in the form of a second cup of coffee and a visit to my personal collection of love letters. So Joel couldn't compete with the romantic Robert Browning-I was no Elizabeth Barrett Browning, either.

Joel was not a writer. He was not eloquent so much as straightforward, yet his words, in his own handwriting, as opposed to the e-mails our generation is so accustomed to, brought me comfort.

I hurried to my closet, where inside a plastic teddy bear container that once housed animal crackers (yes, Joel loved them with peanut butter), now resided ten years' worth of cards and notes. Unfortunately, ten years only amounted to a jar half full. Or half empty. Whichever way you choose to look at it. This is what remains of our love:

1. William and Bradley

2. Approximately four hundred photographs, a third of them digital, stored on discs.

I'd meant to get them printed for two years, but I wasn't the scrap-booking type. I'd read an article that you need to print off at least one set because of how quickly technology changes. I made a mental note to do this before his Death Day.

3. One VHS tape, ten mini Hi-8 tapes, and two DVDs of home movies (which I have placed in a fireproof safe).

Rachel had offered to have her production team transfer the old tapes to DVD, too, yet I thought watching us from the early days would be painful. I took out the tapes and set them on the dresser to give to Rachel on Sunday.