BY THIS POINT in Marco’s saga, something like a tacit agreement had been established between the two of us that I was going to be, if not its official chronicler, then at least a kind of semiauthorized literary witness. He knew that the subject interested me. On one occasion he’d said he was surprised I hadn’t already written a book about a predicament exactly like his. I’d explained the difficulty: that in a made-up story you’d have to clarify in your mind who was lying, the man or the woman, and that this would inevitably read as a larger statement about the relative truthfulness of men and women in general, which in turn would reduce the story to polemic or propaganda. In a true story, on the other hand (I’d added), the question would remain specific to the individuals concerned and the particularities of their situation, which would make it much more appealing, at least to me. He’d smiled as if to say, “Be my guest.” Between that and various asides of his over the months, along the lines of “I’m sure you’re taking notes on all this—just make sure they’re accurate!,” I got the feeling he accepted the inevitability of my writing about it some day, and that he was okay with it.

Needless to say, this complicated matters between us. He wasn’t so naïve as to think I would take everything he told me as gospel. As he himself had said when he visited me and Caitlin in the spring: “You can’t not have doubts.” He’d reiterated the sentiment many times since, and I took this to mean he understood that although I might be entirely sympathetic in my role as his friend and confidant, I was also going to be entirely dispassionate in my role as the teller of his story. Not a faithful amanuensis, in other words, but an appraiser of the truth.

In all our conversations he was careful to signal this awareness of my—so to speak—judicial independence, and his respect for it. But at the same time I could feel the constant pressure of his desire to keep me in line with his version of the events, and I realized I needed to be vigilant in maintaining my objectivity. I’m sure Marco was aware of this, and adjusted himself accordingly, which of course added yet more layers to the already complex and potentially treacherous transaction being conducted between us.

I was more than usually aware of all this during our conversation about his affair with his tutor at Cambridge. I’d heard rumors of this affair as a teenager, when it formed part of the general legend of conquest and precocious charisma that trailed after Marco even then. I hadn’t known the details though, and what he told me now fleshed out the story in unexpected ways.