WHEN SASHA RETURNED, AN hour later, Iris sat on the garden wall and stared into the fallen sun. The sketchbook lay open on the bricks beside her, along with a bottle of wine. Sasha had done most of the drinking since they arrived, as usual—a bottle of wine at lunch and another at dinner, gin and tonic to quench the thirst in between—but this time Iris retrieved the bottle from the cellar, a red wine from Tuscany, easy on the palate, and drank it solemnly atop the garden wall.

Iris’s first thought, when he walked through the doorway onto the grass, was how beautiful he looked. Did she think he was plain when she first saw him, at the Villa Borghese? You could argue that his features were not beautiful, sure, that his big ears and long nose and bony cheeks and especially that sharp brow were maybe coarse and not in perfect balance, as in a work of art. But the overall effect just dazzled her. His height, and his hair, and the ultramarine eyes. He walked straight up to her and put his hands on either side of her hips and kissed her. He smelled of sweet liquor, limoncello maybe, the kind that Italians drink as digestivo.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Suit yourself.”

He pulled his cigarettes from his jacket pocket. “Something wrong?”

“No, not at all. Did you get hold of Harry?”

“He bought it. Swallowed it whole actually. Swore at me a little.”

“And your errands?”

“What about them?”

“Did you get them all done?”

He was having trouble lighting his cigarette, which was odd because there was no breeze at all. At last the end flared orange. He closed his eyes as he inhaled.

“Because I was wondering, you know. Isn’t everything closed on a Sunday?”

“Oh, yes. Of course it was.”

“But you were gone so long.”

“I had trouble finding a working telephone.”

Sasha squinted at some point past Iris’s ear, the hillside or something, while the smoke curled in extravagant ribbons around his face and hair. There was some difference to him, but she couldn’t pin it down. Was he paler? Maybe. His face was so rigid. His mouth and his cheeks made small adjustments as he smoked the cigarette, but his eyes, his forehead, his brow were cast in wax. He lifted the cigarette back to his lips, and Iris noticed that his hand was trembling.

“What’s the matter? Didn’t the photographs please her?”

“What’s that?”

“The photographs in the envelope. In your suitcase. I assume you were passing those along to that woman? The one I saw you with in the Borghese gardens?”