When the roar of Harry’s motor died away down the lane, Iris rose, washed off the sweat from her skin, and put her dress back on. Her hair tangled around her face, but when she looked inside her valise, she realized she’d forgotten her hairbrush, of all things. Sasha’s valise lay open on the floor next to the dresser. She looked inside and found a hairbrush under a folded shirt. Under the hairbrush was a thick manila envelope, of the type you found in offices, bound with a loop of twine that fastened around a clip.

Iris brushed her hair in the scrap of mirror above the dresser. Over the past few weeks her skin had acquired some pleasing color. Her short hair was thick and shiny, frizz in submission—curls in order that looked like disorder—little glimmers of Italian sunshine starting to streak through. Her large hazel eyes—by far her best feature, she’d always thought—sparkled back at her, rimmed with wet black lashes. She looked like a child, she knew, so heart-shaped and rose-skinned, and she also knew that her innocent face and delicate, curving figure—in contrast to Ruth’s—drove Sasha’s obsession for her. But her small mouth bowed downward. She brushed her curls a little too aggressively. Why should Sasha bring work with him this weekend? He’d had all week to clear his desk for their holiday together.

Don’t be childish, she told her childish reflection.

Then she set down the hairbrush and returned to Sasha’s valise. Carefully she disengaged the twine from its clip and opened the flap of the envelope.

THEY ATE IN THE garden, on a small wrought-iron table and chairs, somewhat rusted. The garden was enclosed by a low wall of crumbling brick, and a gate at the back opened to the hills and the stream that rushed happily past. Sasha fiddled with the terra-cotta fountain, trying to make it work, but it was no use. He threw himself on the grass instead and stared up at the generous sky. Iris joined him.

“Tell me about your friend,” she said.

“What friend?”

“The friend who owns this place.”

He shrugged, inasmuch as you could shrug your shoulders while lying in grass with your hands behind your head. “A friend, that’s all.”

“A girlfriend?”

Sasha squinted one eye at her. “A friend who happens to be a woman, yes.”

“Was she your lover?”

“Why all the questions? Christ. Yes, we were lovers once. Are you satisfied?”

Iris rolled herself on top of his chest and set her chin on her linked fingers, just below the hollow of his neck. “Is she the same woman you met outside the Borghese, the day of the accident?”

“How—”

“I saw you from the window.”

Sasha untucked his hands from behind his head and slid them under her dress. “Ah.”

“Ah what?”

“Somebody’s jealous.”

“Of course I am. Aren’t you?”