“Oh, that’s easy to say—”
“No, I mean it. As long as you know you’ve done something worthwhile.”
“But what use is that? If nobody else cares. If nobody else sees.”
“I care.” He set his fingertips on the sketchbook like a spider. “I see them.”
He wasn’t looking at the drawings, though. He was looking at her—so earnestly that Iris thought maybe he was looking at the ugly bruise on her cheekbone, or a smear of dirt, or some other mesmerizing flaw. She flexed her fingers around the empty glass. She had something to say, but she didn’t know how to put it into words. There was nothing in the whole English language that could express what she was thinking.
Sasha turned his head away. He lifted her hairbrush and ran his thumb along the bristles, put it down and examined a lampshade—a book—he grunted when he saw the title, The Good Earth—approval or disapproval?—the cheap fountain pen on her desk. When he set the pen down again, it rolled right to the edge, and he caught it just in time, though his head had already turned in the opposite direction, toward the mirror above the dresser. Iris could just see the reflection of the left side of his face, and it startled her. He looked so old! Not like an old man, of course, but a man of experience. Worldly. A dozen years older than she was.
But—he was nervous! He was more nervous than he was in the hospital, when he all but admitted that he was in love with her—yes, she was sure of it, he was in love with her!—all because he was in her bedroom now, not a hospital room, and there was no nurse hovering by the door and no sister in the other room—nobody at all but the two of them.
His eyes met hers in the mirror and looked swiftly away.
A burst of joy rushed all the way to Iris’s fingertips. Joy and—what’s the word?—not so much confidence as sureness, the knowledge that she was absolutely right, that their meeting here in Rome, two American misfits who belonged to nobody else, bore the fingerprint of fate. She could say this to herself—fingerprint of fate—because she was a romantic and so was he.
It wasn’t easy to stand up when you had a broken ankle, and your arm was already sore from propping yourself on crutches all morning and all yesterday afternoon, but Iris figured this was the most important thing she’d ever do in her life. And maybe it was. She made enough noise that Sasha turned around, a little alarmed. The room was small, remember, and it took only a step or two to reach him. She ran her fingertips along the line of that pugnacious, determined brow. She continued along the side of his face and the rim of his ear until her palm settled on the warm skin at the back of his neck. They kissed each other at exactly the same instant.
Iris didn’t tell him she’d never been to bed with a man before, and he didn’t ask. Only afterward, when he lay shuddering on top of her, and she gripped his wet shoulders for dear life, did he whisper—humbly, wonderingly—into her hair, Was I the first?
She nodded.
He lifted himself on his elbows and stared down at her. His skin gleamed, his cheekbones were as bright as raspberries. His eyes were so blue, it was unearthly. Her damp stomach stuck to his damp stomach, how extraordinary. Inside her, he was perfectly still. She wondered vaguely if she would have a baby. Wasn’t that what happened when you went to bed with a man? But the thought didn’t frighten her. Nothing frightened her anymore.
Well? she whispered.
He dipped his head and kissed her lips. You’re very brave, he told her.
Brave how? she wondered. Brave for not telling him she was a virgin? Or brave for going to bed with him at all, in the middle of the day, in the middle of Rome, when she was an innocent and they’d only just met?
She slid her hands southward until she reached the curve of his bottom, which felt to her as if it had spent its whole life just waiting for her palms.
Well, I’m glad, she said.
After a few more drowsy moments, Sasha lifted himself away, opened the shutters, and walked to the bathroom. He returned a moment later with a damp cloth, which he handed diffidently to Iris, and picked up his clothes from the floor. She rolled laboriously on her side and watched him. Through the window came a draft of warm spring air, smelling of sunshine and metropolitan grime. She offered to knot his necktie, so he knelt on the floor next to the bed. When she was done, he picked up her clothes, folded them, and put them on the nightstand. Then he kissed her.
“I’d stay all afternoon if I could,” he said.
“No, you’d better go.”
“When will I see you again?”
“Whenever you want. But not here. I don’t want Ruth to know. Not yet. She’ll have kittens.”
He winced. “No, of course not. How do I find you? Telephone?”
“Yes, telephone. I’ll make sure to answer first.”
Iris marveled at herself, so composed and assured, making arrangements with her lover. What a difference from an hour ago! Now she’d seduced a man. There was no question who had seduced whom—she was the one who unbuttoned his shirt—she was the one who drew his hands to the zipper of her dress. Objectively, she knew she was bruised all over, that she had a plaster cast on her left leg plus stitches on her forehead near her hairline. Still she felt utterly beautiful, absolutely irresistible. She idled her hand on his cheek.
“Damn it all,” he said. “I want to see you again. Tonight. And the next night, and the next, and all the nights after that.”
“Then Ruth will know for sure.”
He swore again. “Can’t you get away at all?”
She squinted. “I could tell her I’m going away on a drawing holiday. There’s this class I’ve been taking at the American Institute. I could say we’re going to sketch monasteries in Tuscany or something.”
“That’s it. You could stay at my flat. I can’t take any vacation myself, or they’d know something was up. But I’d come home early every night. I’d take the most lavish care of you. We’d have a week or more.”
“Like paradise. But not until the stitches are out. And the cast.”
“How long is that?”
“Four more weeks for the cast. Is that all right? The first week of May.”
Sasha bent his head to kiss her hand. He’d brushed his hair wet, and the warm light from the courtyard turned his hair a sleek, dark gold. Iris thought how soft his hair felt as it fell on her stomach and breasts and thighs.
“All right,” he said. “The first week of May.”
Ruth
June 1952
New York City
I first discovered Barbara Kingsley in the same way Columbus discovered America—while I was busy looking for something else. There was this party in Greenwich Village, some artist pal, low-down dive kind of crowd, and I was hoping to glimpse a certain on-again, off-again beau of mine and climb on again.
At the time, Barbara was doing some artist work—you know what I mean, sitting there nude on a stool to inspire a bunch of men and their drawing pencils—and she lounged on a sofa between a pair of girls, bearing a glass of gin and a bored expression. The bells went off in my head. I forgot all about Mr. On Again and bustled right up to her.
“Excuse me. Ruth Macallister.” I stuck out my hand. She not so much shook it as curled her fingers briefly around mine. “If you haven’t already signed with a major New York modeling agency, I’d like you to consider mine.”
“You don’t even know my name, Miss Macallister.”
“What is your name?”
“Barbara Kingsley,” she said.
“Well, Barbara Kingsley, I think you’re about the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, and I’d like to set you up with a photographer for some headshots. Our expense, of course.”