At a trendy Chicago restaurant that specializes in exposed brick and suggestive lighting, I play wingman so my friend can coax a job from a conversation with the Chilean Consulate.

We are there because the brother of her Chilean cousin-in-law was unveiling his artwork that night. The large artwork hangs brazenly across all the tall walls, a testament to his career as a painter—the more recent years of which had been affected by his diminishing eyesight due to a degenerative disease.

My friend’s cousin says, “When he tells me on the phone, ‘it is getting darker now, so I’m done painting,’ I didn’t realize it was because he couldn’t see the colors anymore.”

We see the influence of blindness. His early paintings are two-dimensional black-and-white endeavors: a shoelace untied, a bare foot kicking through a wall, and the question: ‘Who are you?’ His later paintings are wordless carousels of color so thick that it can be gripped by fingertips, the rough serrations of a knife dragged through paint to leave a handful of strict parallel lines. Each painting is an unexpected adventure.

I chat with the companion of the Chilean consulate while my friend’s tongue wrestles with the Spanish she knows to communicate how much she’d love a job under him.

When I introduce myself to the companion amidst the symphony of Spanish words, I’m relieved to hear him say, “Hi. I’m Alexander,” and go on to tell me he’s from New Jersey. I can feel my smile widen.

He moved to Chicago last Thursday. “People say ‘excuse me’ and ‘please,’” he says. “I’m not used to that.”

He’s dark-haired, pale skinned, Chilean on his mother’s side. His grandpa was French. His laugh sounds like a stone skipping on water.

He glances over my engagement ring as our stream of conversation flows uninterrupted.

I was that single girl for so long, searching for my next adventure, an addict of first kisses, that comes as a surprise to me that I’m not anymore.

He’s an only child. I bet his mother misses him.

“Yeah, she helped me move in, stayed with me to set up the apartment for a few days.” My mind flashes to a blind date eight years ago with a divorce lawyer, 35 years old, living at home with his mom still folding his laundry. Red flag. Red flag.

But there’s no need for red flags anymore. I will never see Alexander again.

I will think of this night and his laugh when I step onto the black sand beaches in Santiago that he tells me I have to visit someday.

But tonight, I want to dive into his eyes to see myself as irreplaceable and ephemeral in a bright carousel of colors that his eyes have never alighted upon before. I don’t want that vision to dim slowly, inevitably, until I can’t be seen anymore. Until it’s as if I’m not even there. Until there are no more unexpected adventures.