“Don’t bother. I’m not twenty-two anymore, and I’m not here to be seduced. We can be perfectly honest with each other.”

“But I am always honest with you, bambina. When did I ever tell lie to you?”

I make a skeptical noise. “Shall we sit? I don’t imagine we have much time. The princess will want you home.”

“My wife? No, she is not so particular now.” He half shrugs, half gestures to the couch. “We are both getting old, yes? More kind to each other. Forgiveness. You see, it is relief to let go of passions.”

I sit not on the couch, but on the armchair next to it—a massive, ancient hulk made of unyielding dark wood upholstered in sumptuous bronze and green tapestry, which contains its own set of memories. I recall a few as I arrange myself, things I haven’t remembered in years, and I wonder at my own youthful abandon. What happened to that gamine blond girl who so gleefully straddled a married man in a chair built for a Medici prince and made him howl like some kind of Siberian wolf? Does she still exist? Or is age and wisdom a permanent affliction? The wine surprises me. “Oh, you’ve finally gone native, have you?”

“It seemed patriotic thing to do, in time of war. Then I developed taste for it.” He brushes his hand over the corner of the sofa nearest me and sits like an old man, stiff and deliberate, not altogether confident in his joints. My God, what the war’s done to him. Twelve years, and he’s transformed from a vigorous, distinguished, infinitely charismatic man enjoying a singularly virile middle age to this creaking roué. “You approve? Is some champagne in cellar, I think.”

“No, I like it.” I fiddle with the stem. I’ve realized it was stupid to come here right off the airplane, so tired and disoriented, not just from the marathon flight but from Rome itself. I lived here less than a year—why did it take such an outsized hold of my imagination? “I saw your fall collection. Marvelous. That tweed dress with the—”

“Bambina,” he says sadly, “you did not come all the way to Roma to talk to old man about his clothes, did you?”

“No.”

“Then tell me what you want. What this besotted old lover can do for you to make amends for his sins.”

“I need your help.”

“So I am guessing. What do you need? Some money? Some work for new model?”

“Nothing so simple, I’m afraid. It’s my sister, Iris. I think she’s in terrible trouble.”

He frowns. “Your sister? Little brown mouse with luscious tits?”

“The same.”

“What kind of trouble? She needs husband? My son Giovanni—”