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and sometimes she had to slow him down, afraid he’d have a heart attack.
    “What would I do without you, Marcel?”
    “Oh, you’d probably find someone else just as fat, ugly, andstupid to spoil you. You’re a love magnet, sweetie-pie. They’d be lining up get a taste of your cute ass.”
    “Don’t say things like that. It makes me feel weird, just thinking about it.”
    “Oh, stop. Come pay Mister Johnson here some attention. He’s feeling lonely.”
    “Marcel, if anything should ever happen to you, what would become of me? Are you sure you’re leaving me something in case you—”
    “If I suddenly croaked? Is that what you mean? Don’t worry, honeybunch, you’ll be taken care of. In fact, you’ll be at the head of the line. Make sure you look beautiful that day. Get out all your pearls and diamonds. I want you to do me proud at the lawyer’s. God, how I’d love to be there to see Henriette’s face! But right now Johnny really needs you.”
    Josiane hummed as she hungrily took her lover’s cock in her mouth. No special talent required: she’d learned very early how to make men happy.

Chapter 3

    I ris dropped her keys in the tray on the hall table. Then she took off her coat, kicked off her shoes, and dropped her purse and gloves onto the large kilim she had bought with Bérengère one bleak winter afternoon. She asked Carmen to bring her a good strong whiskey. She planned to hole up in her study, where no one was allowed, except her ever-faithful housekeeper—once a week—to clean.
    “Whiskey?” Carmen asked in disbelief. “In the middle of the afternoon? Are you all right?”
    “Not really. And no questions. I need to be alone, to think.”
    Carmen shrugged and went to get the whiskey. “So now she’s taken to drinking alone,” she muttered.
    Iris curled up on the sofa and looked around her den.
Either I confront Philippe
, she thought,
tell him I can’t stand the situation and that I’m leaving and taking my son with me. Or I can wait and pray that this lousy business doesn’t go any further. If I leave, I prove the gossips right, expose Alexandre to scandal, hurt Philippe’s practice, and therefore myself. If I stay, I’ll be denying thefact that we’ve been living a lie all these years. But at least I don’t lose the comfort I’ve enjoyed for so long.
    Her gaze came to rest on a photo of her and Philippe on their wedding day. They’re smiling at the camera. He has his arm on her shoulder, in a loving, protective manner. It looks as though nothing bad could ever happen to her again.

    Iris and Philippe were always going to art auctions. They shared a passion for finding undiscovered treasures and bidding on them. They had bought
Still Life with Flowers
by Bram van Velde ten years earlier. They bought the Barceló just after the exhibit at the Fondation Maeght. And the long handwritten letter by Jean Cocteau in which he talks about his love for Natalie Paley.
    If I left Philippe, I would lose all this beauty. I would have to start all over again. Alone.
    Iris shuddered at the word
alone.
Single women made her skin crawl, and there were so many of them!
Stressed out and pale, always rushing around, forever on the prowl. Terrifying, the way people live these days, burning themselves out.
She sipped the whiskey. Thanks to Philippe—t hanks to Philippe’s money, that is—Iris wasn’t burning out. In fact, she was trying to blossom. For a while now, she’d been writing. One page a day. No one knew. She locked herself in her office and scribbled words onto sheets of paper. When she wasn’t inspired, she doodled. It was slow going. She copied out La Fontaine’s
Fables
and reread
Madame Bovary
and La Bruyère’s
Les Caractères
, trying to figure how they chose just the right word. She tore up almost everything she wrote, but she felt that the work brought some intensity to her life.
    She had once written screenplays she wanted to shoot, but she’d dropped everything when she left