I drove back to Clara Bow Drive wishing I hadn’t made the invitation, though I told myself: Just as well he’s married, Roxanne. After watching the chaos sown by adultery in my own family, I stay away from married men. No chance now I’d have an affair with Terrence Dexter, who could prove very dangerous. Not only was he married, he was a Negro. Just look at what happened to Diana Jordan, with her beautiful, battered face spread all over the papers and her promising career in tatters. Even apart from his being black, I don’t like complicated men, and clearly, Terrence Dexter was too complicated, too smart, too deep, and too intense by half. So why did I find him so compelling, and why did the very sight of him raise my heart, my spirits?

•   •   •

Irene was already sipping a cocktail when I arrived at the Ambassador that Friday for our standing lunch date. “Tsk-tsk, Roxanne, if the shiner weren’t enough to make you conspicuous, you’re wearing trousers too? No hat. No gloves?”

“A black eye is its own fashion accessory this spring.” I sat down and signaled the waiter for a Campari. “Besides, Betty Bacall wears trousers. Kate Hepburn wears them.”

“I don’t think you’re quite Kate’s equal yet, are you?”

“Who is?” We ordered, and then I noticed a new sapphire solitaire ring on her finger. An enormous sapphire solitaire.

“From Gordon,” she said, nodding toward Julia’s sparkling diamond gleaming on my hand. “A present, and for exactly the same reason. I found out because Gordon isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, and he slipped up.”

“Oh, Irene, this makes me so mad. Who was it?”

“Some twit with a twat. Gordon is a powerful man, and there are ten thousand girls who don’t care if he’s married.”

“He ought to care that he’s married,” I said, thinking of the married Terrence Dexter, of the way he had danced with me, the way he had held me in the middle of the mayhem.

“Actually, he does. Gordon’s been contrite, really sorry. He promises it’ll never happen again. It will, of course. This ring is a sort of business proposition, even if Gordon doesn’t yet know it. I have to get smarter as I get older. I’m almost thirty. I have to think of him less as a husband and more as a business partner, and the business is Us. That’s what Julia and Leon had for years. Of course, she detested Leon’s little peccadilloes, but together they were their own corporation, and that corporation was worth preserving.”

“Until she walked away from it, from him, from everything, and started all over again in Paris.”

“At least she had you.”