Sasha disappeared into the kitchen and Iris swung herself into the armchair, which still stood like a throne in the middle of the floor. She propped up her ankle with a sigh. Sasha returned with two glasses of gin and tonic. He handed her one.
“It’s very strong,” she gasped.
Instead of taking the nearest chair, Sasha walked to the window and leaned his shoulder against the frame. His eyes seemed to disappear underneath his heavy brow. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pair of twin sisters less alike than you and Ruth.”
“That’s what everyone says. I take after my mother, I guess.”
“And Ruth? She takes after your father?”
“No, she’s more like my aunt Vivian. Tall and blond.” Iris smiled. “Like you.”
“Then I guess it’s true, that we’re attracted to our opposite.”
Iris coughed on her drink. Sasha started toward her, but she waved him away and hoisted herself back on her feet. “I should get those drawings before they miss you at the embassy.”
“There’s no rush,” he said.
She hobbled to her bedroom and pulled the sketchbook from her nightstand. When she turned around, Sasha stood in the doorway, holding his drink and hers.
Iris held out the sketchbook. “Be kind.”
He set down her drink and took the sketchbook from her hand. “I am always kind, Iris.”
Iris retreated to sit on the edge of the bed, sipping her gin and tonic. The mattress was old and creaked every time she shifted, so she sat still and looked around the room, everywhere except directly at Sasha, who leaned one elbow on the dresser and examined her sketches, one after another. He furrowed his brow and took his time. Whenever she glanced from the corner of her eye to his face, he was frowning. Her hands shook a little. She drank the rest of the gin and tonic in a gulp, so she wouldn’t spill it, and tucked her other hand under her thigh.
“These are very good,” said Sasha.
“Do you think so?”
“Yes.” He pointed to Ruth’s profile. “You’ve got the sense of her, not just the look of her. You can almost tell what she thinks of the book. And the potted palm, the proportions just right. Excellent.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s how you look at things, you know. It’s how you really see them.”
He stared at her again with his technicolor eyes, as if to prove his point—as if Iris were the only person in the universe, the only person who mattered. Iris couldn’t speak. Ruth would probably have had some clever reply ready, but then Ruth could never have drawn those sketches. It was one or the other, really.
Sasha set down the drawings.
The bedroom was not quite square, maybe twelve feet by ten feet. The door was open partway, but the stuffy air and the shuttered window made Iris feel that they were together in some kind of cave. This room, in which she’d slept for months, became a new room altogether. It even smelled different, because of the gin and tonic and all the cigarette smoke steeped in Sasha’s clothes. He moved his arm, and Iris thought he was maybe going to fish out his cigarettes, but he only leaned his elbow on the dresser as he stared at her.
“Does your family understand this? How good you are, I mean?”
Iris shook her head.
“No, I guess they wouldn’t. Your crowd—our crowd—you know who I mean—they think they have taste, but they only like what they’re told to like. What’s already been approved by some gallery or museum or the arts page of the New York Times.”
“Some man, probably.”
Sasha’s eyebrows rose. “Yes, some man, undoubtedly. Nobody takes a woman’s art seriously. Not even women.”
“Of course not. It’s too sentimental, isn’t it? Too banal or trivial or domestic. Not important enough.”
“What’s important,” Sasha said, “is what’s important to you.”
“Oh, that’s easy to say—”
“No, I mean it. As long as you know you’ve done something worthwhile.”
“But what use is that? If nobody else cares. If nobody else sees.”
“I care.” He set his fingertips on the sketchbook like a spider. “I see them.”
He wasn’t looking at the drawings, though. He was looking at her—so earnestly that Iris thought maybe he was looking at the ugly bruise on her cheekbone, or a smear of dirt, or some other mesmerizing flaw. She flexed her fingers around the empty glass. She had something to say, but she didn’t know how to put it into words. There was nothing in the whole English language that could express what she was thinking.