Instead I sit in my chair and reach deep into the open drawer for the hidden compartment at the back. To be clear, I inherited this interesting secret from the previous owner of the desk—whoever he was—so I can’t take credit or blame. Still, it’s there, and it’s sometimes useful, and on the few occasions when I have nothing better to do, I ponder what my predecessor kept in there. Booze, probably. Prohibition was the mother of so many inventions.
But I came of age after the blessed repeal, so I don’t have much use for this compartment. Just money or jewelry, when I need a temporary stash for either. And now this thing. This slim rectangle featuring a photograph of St. Basil’s Cathedral on one side and a short, handwritten note on the other, which I haven’t read.
This foreign postcard, which I received about a week ago, here at the office.
Now I stare at this flat cliché rendering of the onion-shaped domes, the black-and-white stonework, and consider whether I dare to turn it over and read the message on the other side. Whether I’m better off tearing that postcard to shreds and dropping it in the wastebasket for the night janitor to consign to oblivion.
In the end, I turn it over, if only to confirm the suspicion that Sumner Fox has planted in my head. The funny thing is, I’m not surprised at all by what it says. I’ve always known it would come to this. I’ve always known Iris would wind up in the worst kind of trouble there is, ever since Sasha Digby walked into her life on a spring day in 1940 and smashed us all to pieces.
Iris
Late March 1940
Rome, Italy
The woman flailed against the giant who held her against his ribs. His hands snatched at her waist and her naked thigh with such force, his fingers sank into the tender flesh. How she fought him! With one hand, she pushed his head from her breast. Her curls flew into the air. But she didn’t stand a chance, did she? Not a chance in the world against all that bulging muscle, all that solid, masculine bone.
Iris couldn’t strip her gaze away. She stood hypnotized before the white limbs—the living skin—the long, curling ropes of hair. The robes that fell from waist and hip and shoulder. If she reached out to touch the marble, she would surely find it warm beneath her fingers. She’d feel the thrum of emotion—fear, desire, revulsion, passion, triumph—inside her own pulse. Once a week she visited the gallery, sometimes twice, and she couldn’t decide whether it was hatred or rapture that drew her back to this particular statue. Whether she was mesmerized by the beauty of the human shapes—the struggling Proserpina, the mighty Pluto; whether she was repulsed by the violence, by Proserpina’s helpless struggle; whether she was ashamed because she couldn’t stop staring into this intimate, brutal act. She wanted to stop it somehow, to wrest Proserpina from Pluto’s arms. But sometimes she caught herself in Pluto’s thoughts, so consumed by lust for this tender flesh that he couldn’t let her go—he couldn’t survive without Proserpina’s warmth in his cold, dark underworld, even though she hated him.
Some other visitors trickled around her. Iris didn’t really notice them. That was why she visited in the middle of the week, or on a rainy afternoon, so there weren’t as many people around to witness her in her trance, or to wonder why the small, young American virgin couldn’t turn away from that riot of licentious marble. Today was a Tuesday, and a delicate spring rain pattered on the windows. Also, there was a war on, didn’t you know. Only Americans went on vacations anymore, and even Americans weren’t exactly thick on the ground. So nobody bothered Iris, and Iris didn’t bother anybody, and when at last she broke the trance and turned to leave the gallery, she almost missed the bright blond head studying The Rape of Proserpina from the other side.
Almost, but not quite. You couldn’t really miss a mane like that, especially in Italy—sleek and gold, propped up high on a pink neck, its pink ears tucked neatly back. Iris couldn’t see the rest of him very well, hidden on the other side of all that writhing stone, and anyway she was on her way out and pretending not to look. All she could make out was a tall suit of dark blue, and a hand shoved in a trouser pocket, before she passed out of the room.
That was all. A glimpse of a golden head and a blue suit. So why did Iris feel as if she’d lost something precious, as she stood before another sinuous Bernini in the next room? A maiden who held the radiant sun in her hand as some invisible force pulled away the drapery that covered her.
He was just a stranger in a museum. She was never going to see him again, anyway.