WE WALK BACK TO Orlovsky’s atelier in the hot sunshine. There’s a whiff of sewage in the air, and my dress sticks to my back. As we stroll down the sidewalk, flashes of memory return to me—things I haven’t remembered in years. The tobacco shop on the corner, where Orlovsky once stopped to buy cigarettes, and the tobacconist mistook me for his daughter. The florist where he used to buy me flowers, and the mysterious palazzo a street away from the atelier that always intrigued me, because it was so austere on the outside, like a medieval fortress, and not even Orlovsky knew whom it belonged to. As we turn the corner and stop on the curb to allow a taxi to race by, I catch a glimpse of a slim man ducking into the shelter of a doorway, holding a newspaper under his arm.

When we cross the street, I look over my shoulder. But nobody’s there, after all.

WE REACH THE ATELIER. Orlovsky unlocks the iron-studded door. He ushers me inside first, and as he turns to follow me, he seems to look both ways, up and down the sidewalk, before he steps into the vestibule and closes and locks the door behind him.

“When do we meet this friend of yours?” I ask.

Orlovsky replaces the walking stick in the stand and puts his hand to the small of my back. “Is here already. He said not to waste any time.”

“Good. I agree.”

I say this bravely to stifle a tremor of panic. We climb the stairs, which spiral upward in a pleasant medieval way. The damp, cool smell of the stones wafts by. I find myself wondering who he is, this contact of Orlovsky’s, and what he does. Is he some kind of double agent nested inside the Soviet embassy? A disaffected Italian Communist?

All these possibilities whirl through my mind as we reach the first floor and walk down the hallway, at the end of which lies the studio that runs the width of the courtyard below. None of them comes close to the truth. The man who looks up from the drafting table, who scrapes the chair back and stands politely, is a man I already know.

“Miss Macallister,” says Sumner Fox. “You’d better take a seat. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

Iris

JULY 1948

London

At half past six the next morning, the boys burst into the room and jumped on the bed.

“Mama! Daddy! I lost a tooth!” Kip said.

Next to her, Sasha groaned and rolled on his stomach. Iris’s head throbbed. She must have drunk more champagne than she realized last night. She glanced at Sasha—out cold—and sat up painfully. “You lost a tooth! Where?”

He showed her.

“There was blood all over his nightshirt and Mrs. Betts put it to soak!” Jack announced.

“The tooth or the nightshirt?”