Percival Skinner reflects on how aging diminishes the senses and their accompanying desires while eating lunch at La Maison. Skinner notes that many older people in Manhattan are forced to live below the standard of living they maintained in their youth. La Maison used to be the dominant lunch spot for wealthy socialites, but it is now inhabited by people past their prime.

At his apartment building, Skinner meets Mr. Sarkis, who asks to speak with Skinner in private. Skinner invites him to his apartment, makes tea, and notes that Sarkis quickly identifies the most expensive item in his living room. Sarkis asks if Skinner is in possession of a Giuseppe DiDomenico fragment, but Skinner sold the fragment years prior. Sarkis offers Skinner 15% commission if he can help Sarkis’s employer track down a DiDomenico fragment.

Skinner’s great-great-grandfather, Ezekiel Skinner, operated paper mills in the mid-1800s, and left his business to his only child, Valentine. Valentine built the business further, and then sold it to collect art. Valentine hung Giuseppe DiDomenico’s “Annunciation” above his dining table. In Christian mythology, the Annunciation is the moment when the Archangel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary that she was pregnant with Jesus. In all Italian Renaissance Annunciation paintings, Gabriel is depicted on one knee, holding a lily, and positioned in front of a pastoral scene, while Mary is sitting, holding a book, and positioned in front of an interior scene.