“You see what I mean?”
“Aw, lay off him, Ruth,” Harry said from the floor. “Everybody was a Communist in college. You grow out of it, that’s all.”
“But has he grown out of it? That’s the question.”
“You’re deliberately misrepresenting me,” said Sasha. “All I said was that capitalism has its problems, that’s obvious, and at least the Soviet system shows a way forward.”
“Yes, a shining way forward, all us good little workers marching in lockstep, dressed alike and thinking alike. If you ask me, communism and fascism aren’t all that far apart.”
“You’re wrong. They couldn’t be further apart.”
“They’re coming at tyranny from different angles, that’s all. But you both end up in the same place.”
Iris looked at Sasha’s pink, angry face. He opened his mouth, glanced at Harry, and stuffed a cigarette between his lips instead.
“I think communism sounds very noble,” Iris said. “I don’t think it’s wrong to have ideals.”
“Of course not. You can make a beautiful argument for communism, right until you put it into practice and end up with bolshevism.” Ruth crossed her ankles—she’d toed off her shoes long ago—and admired her long, elegant feet. “How many heretics has Stalin purged this year, Sasha?”
Sasha stood up and stalked to the kitchen.
“You shouldn’t,” Iris said.
“Oh, he’s all right. He’s just the type of fellow who doesn’t like having his opinions challenged.”
“Where’d you hear that about Stalin?” asked Harry. “Purges, I mean.”
“Because you get a lot of Communists in my line of work. Artist types and all that. And a lot of them know a lot of Russians who disappeared, the last few years.” Ruth snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”
“But there must be some explanation,” Iris exclaimed. “Maybe they went to work on a farm or something.”
“Oh, honey.” Ruth looked at Iris the way you might look at a kitten.
Harry sat up. “The reason I ask is because we’ve heard a lot of rumors, too. So if any of your friends might have information—”
“I’m not a snitch, Harry Macallister, and neither are my friends.”
“I don’t mean snitching. I mean it’s something we need to know about.”
“A snitch is a snitch, that’s all. The lowest of the low.” Ruth rose gracefully to her feet and bent to stub out her cigarette in the ashtray next to Iris. When she straightened, she caught sight of Sasha, who stood in the kitchen doorway holding a glass of either water or gin, just watching the three of them. Iris couldn’t tell the color of his face, and whether he was still mad. She wished she could jump up and run to him and put her arms around him.
“I guess I ought to be going,” he said.
“No, don’t. I’m sorry. I’m a troublemaker, that’s all.” Ruth held out her hand. “Friends?”
He took her hand and shook it briefly. “Friends, sure.”
“Aw, don’t let her bust your chops, Digby. Nobody thinks you’re some kind of goddamn Red.”
“’Sall right.” Sasha swallowed back the rest of whatever was in his glass, and Iris decided it was probably gin, after all. He turned to her and smiled. His eyes were awfully blue and not that steady. He made an extravagant bow before her and lifted her hand from her lap. “Pleasure to see you out of the sick bay and looking so smashing, Miss Macallister.”
“I do not look smashing. I look smashed.”
Sasha kissed the back of her hand. “When the soul is as beautiful as yours, madam, the face needs no adornment.”
“Digby! You dog. Stay away from my sister with that kind of malarkey.”
“Oh, be quiet, Harry,” said Ruth. “Can’t you see he’s being sincere?”
Iris stared at the rumpled gold hair and the loose collar—the blue eyes beneath the slight overhang of his brows. His lips were wet with gin. He still hadn’t let go of her hand.
“He’s just teasing,” she said softly.
Sasha winked and straightened. “What do you say, Macallister? Are you maybe headed to the Gallo d’Oro?”
“I’m game if you are. Ruth?”
Ruth leaned her elbows on the back of Iris’s armchair, pure dynamite in her red dress, barefoot and long limbed and just shapely enough. Her red lipstick had long since faded to pink, but on Ruth it looked natural instead of cheap. Smashing—that was Ruth, not Iris. Not exactly beautiful, but striking in a way that was better than beauty and—more importantly—photographed extremely well. The tendons rippled in her throat as she finished her drink. “You two go without me. I can’t leave poor Iris alone on her first night home, and anyway, I’ve got to clean up after you swine.”
“Oh, don’t stay on my account!” Iris exclaimed.
Ruth sent Sasha a funny look and tapped out another cigarette from the pack next to the ashtray. “Believe me,” she said, “I’m not.”
Of course, the telephone did eventually ring and some friend or another persuaded Ruth to go out after all. Iris fell asleep at eleven o’clock to an empty apartment and woke up after ten hours of monumental slumber, rich with dreams. She checked the other bedroom, where Ruth lay on the bed atop the covers, facedown, wearing nothing but her satin slip.
Iris hobbled into the kitchen on her crutches and made coffee. While the percolator got going, she found an overlooked glass or two, and a piece of discarded cheese crawling with ants. She cleaned them up. On her way past the front door, she spied a small white note on the floorboard. It was addressed to her and went like this:
Dolce Iris, is it too much trouble to meet a fellow for coffee in some scurvy dive where we won’t be interrupted by motorcycles or siblings? I propose the Vespri Siciliani on Via del Plebiscito at 11. It’s only a short walk from your place but if you’d rather not, no hard feelings. I’ll wait until noon. Yours ever, S.
Ruth
June 1952
New York City
Nine mornings out of ten, I’m the first person to report for duty at the Herbert Hudson Modeling Agency, and the day after Sumner Fox’s visit I believe I set some kind of record, charging through the glassy lobby at twelve minutes to seven—this in a business where people regularly stagger to their desks at eleven o’clock, still drunk from the night before.
I flip on the lights and make coffee, and when the coffee’s good and hot I sit at my desk, light a cigarette, and flip through the morning papers, because nothing distracts you from your woes like the woes of other people.
But my luck is out, I guess. First off, my eye catches some headline to do with those missing English diplomats. one year later, maclean wife and children carry on, it laments. I suck down some coffee and turn the page, but you know how it is when a particular item of news fascinates you. You can turn the page, all right; you can force your attention on all kinds of worthy stories about corruption at City Hall and the plight of refugees in some war-stricken country you’ve never heard of. But your brain wants what it wants, does it not?
Eventually I give in. I flip back to the column on Maclean’s family—a blurred photograph of the Maclean children ducking through the school gates, one of his wife, Melinda (who happens to be American, it seems), gazing haughtily from the doorway of their house in the English suburbs. I learn that Mrs. Maclean, who delivered their third child only three weeks after her husband’s disappearance, gives short shrift to any insinuations that Maclean has defected to the Soviet Union. “I will not admit that my husband, the father of my children, is a traitor to his country,” she insists.