“If you keep moving backward you’ll be out of the window and in that fountain down there,” he said as she kept backing away from him toward the open full-length window in her bedroom that overlooked the Barberini gardens. He was loosening the chain around her waist and undoing the pajamas.

“Do you want me to tell you the truth?” she whispered as his hands found her. “I had planned to sleep with you this night.”

“Was that your plan? You had already decided on it before I got here?”

“Yes.”

“Brava.”

“And you?”

“I was oriented the same way.”

“Truly?”

“Yes. Depending on how you acted.” He took her head in his hands and kissed her gently, tentatively. He took her hand and led her toward the bed. She hesitated.

“But now . . . now I feel . . . I think. . . .”

“Don’t think—it takes you away.”

They made love with a moon orange and luminous as her desire visible through the window . . .

“You are beautiful as the sun,” she said, feeling the strong warmth of his body, his exploring hands and tongue and eyes. A true collision of bodies, limb for limb; eyes stuck to eyes and mouth to mouth. No marriage of true minds, but a delectable physical feast.

“You are splendid, like a girl . . . firm and nervous, and you come strong like a girl.”

“Why did we wait? Were you suspicious because I’m American?”

“Yes, maybe . . . and the fact that you’re Alberto’s wife—I don’t want to risk losing you.”

“Now do you know you won’t?”

“Yes, now I know.”

They didn’t wait any longer. They had little time before he joined his family in the Marche. She began to suggest to Alberto that it was time for them to get a place away from Rome, at the sea—in the Marche region, for example, near Ancona.

Skills sharpened. She grew adept at calling and meeting Massimo. Sometimes he could arrange his time so that he found daytime hours to come to her place at Angela’s. Casa nostra, he began to call that shed on the roof.

It was like being in a ship, or in some small log cabin in the wilderness. Even when, as they made love, the street sounds of passing boys and vehicles or the sharp tirade of the woman they called Principessa Spada pierced the walls, they were alone, contained, out of the world and time and pressure.

“Do you know what I think, Massimo?”

“What, amore. Tell me.”