IF SHE HAD TO confess, Iris would’ve told you that she rather enjoyed carrying on a secret love affair right beneath Ruth’s sharp, perfect nose. (Iris’s nose was decidedly snub, although Sasha called it adorable.) The secret was part of the fun! They’d go out to dinner, for example, the four of them, and Iris and Sasha would carry on a little flirtation of the feet under the table; or else Sasha’s hand would slide underneath her dress, and Iris had to keep her face absolutely straight while he fondled her right there in the restaurant in front of everybody, while Harry told some story about the Swiss consul. Or they’d meet at some diplomatic party—those officials and their wives, all they ever did was meet and drink—and Sasha would flirt outrageously with some woman on one side of the room, to keep up appearances, while Iris did her best to flirt with someone on the other side, until by some prearranged signal they’d steal out separately to meet in the fragrant, darkened corner of a courtyard or a hallway and kiss the daylights out of each other, or worse. Or they’d bump into each other quite by accident in the Vatican museum, say, or the ruins of the ancient Roman agora, or even the Villa Borghese again, and experience all the riches of Western civilization, which they later discussed over coffee or lunch or the pillow of Sasha’s bed.

Best of all were the times when Sasha rang the telephone around eleven o’clock in the morning and asked whether the coast was clear, and Iris would say yea or nay, depending on the proximity of Ruth. If yea, then Sasha arrived in a taxi fifteen minutes later, and they spent the next hour or two in bed, or on the sofa, or really anywhere a person wearing a plaster cast on her leg can have sexual intercourse with another person without discomfort or outright injury. Iris learned to speak up boldly and ask for a pillow or a change of position or a load off, for God’s sake. Sasha always complied. He was terribly considerate, if also insatiable. After the first hasty bout, he liked to stalk naked around the apartment, mixing drinks for both of them, while Iris lay back and watched him happily. She told him he was like a cat, always prowling except when he was sleeping. He’d drink a couple of gin and tonics, maybe three if he was especially thirsty, while they talked about everything, the state of the world, capitalism, communism, Spain, East Hampton, Schuylers and van der Wahls and Digbys, where they would go on holiday.