“He’s just teasing,” she said softly.
Sasha winked and straightened. “What do you say, Macallister? Are you maybe headed to the Gallo d’Oro?”
“I’m game if you are. Ruth?”
Ruth leaned her elbows on the back of Iris’s armchair, pure dynamite in her red dress, barefoot and long limbed and just shapely enough. Her red lipstick had long since faded to pink, but on Ruth it looked natural instead of cheap. Smashing—that was Ruth, not Iris. Not exactly beautiful, but striking in a way that was better than beauty and—more importantly—photographed extremely well. The tendons rippled in her throat as she finished her drink. “You two go without me. I can’t leave poor Iris alone on her first night home, and anyway, I’ve got to clean up after you swine.”
“Oh, don’t stay on my account!” Iris exclaimed.
Ruth sent Sasha a funny look and tapped out another cigarette from the pack next to the ashtray. “Believe me,” she said, “I’m not.”
Of course, the telephone did eventually ring and some friend or another persuaded Ruth to go out after all. Iris fell asleep at eleven o’clock to an empty apartment and woke up after ten hours of monumental slumber, rich with dreams. She checked the other bedroom, where Ruth lay on the bed atop the covers, facedown, wearing nothing but her satin slip.
Iris hobbled into the kitchen on her crutches and made coffee. While the percolator got going, she found an overlooked glass or two, and a piece of discarded cheese crawling with ants. She cleaned them up. On her way past the front door, she spied a small white note on the floorboard. It was addressed to her and went like this:
Dolce Iris, is it too much trouble to meet a fellow for coffee in some scurvy dive where we won’t be interrupted by motorcycles or siblings? I propose the Vespri Siciliani on Via del Plebiscito at 11. It’s only a short walk from your place but if you’d rather not, no hard feelings. I’ll wait until noon. Yours ever, S.
Ruth
June 1952
New York City
Nine mornings out of ten, I’m the first person to report for duty at the Herbert Hudson Modeling Agency, and the day after Sumner Fox’s visit I believe I set some kind of record, charging through the glassy lobby at twelve minutes to seven—this in a business where people regularly stagger to their desks at eleven o’clock, still drunk from the night before.
I flip on the lights and make coffee, and when the coffee’s good and hot I sit at my desk, light a cigarette, and flip through the morning papers, because nothing distracts you from your woes like the woes of other people.
But my luck is out, I guess. First off, my eye catches some headline to do with those missing English diplomats. one year later, maclean wife and children carry on, it laments. I suck down some coffee and turn the page, but you know how it is when a particular item of news fascinates you. You can turn the page, all right; you can force your attention on all kinds of worthy stories about corruption at City Hall and the plight of refugees in some war-stricken country you’ve never heard of. But your brain wants what it wants, does it not?
Eventually I give in. I flip back to the column on Maclean’s family—a blurred photograph of the Maclean children ducking through the school gates, one of his wife, Melinda （who happens to be American, it seems）， gazing haughtily from the doorway of their house in the English suburbs. I learn that Mrs. Maclean, who delivered their third child only three weeks after her husband’s disappearance, gives short shrift to any insinuations that Maclean has defected to the Soviet Union. “I will not admit that my husband, the father of my children, is a traitor to his country,” she insists.
Herbert walks in at half past eight. I rise to take his coat and hat and usher him into his office. Bring him his coffee and cigarettes and arrange myself in the chair before his desk for our usual morning chat.
Most people are not aware that Herbert Hudson suffered a stroke in the summer of 1945, in between the capitulation of Hitler and the capitulation of Tito. I’m telling you now so you’ll understand why his attention wanders from time to time, as we review the day ahead, and why he sometimes sticks the wrong word in the middle of a sentence or two. I figure as long as I understand his meaning, who cares about the delivery?
This morning Herbert’s having a little trouble lighting his cigarette—the right side of his body being a touch clumsier than the left, though you’d have to know him extremely well to notice—so I lean forward and help to steady his hand until the end of the cigarette flares comfortably orange. He nods his thanks and asks how Barbara’s getting along.