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something else, how this seemed to be what people called art. When she first got to know George, she imagined they’d have conversations about ideas the way the undergraduates did, that their kind of talk, broad and deep and open-ended, was the prize of every college degree, that the door to George’s apartment in Washington Square would be another door into this kind of life. But George was happy talking of nothing beyond the chalk outline of their day. He owns and seems to have read a lot of books. But she’s only seen him read the news, or about opera. When he does begin a book, she soon finds him asleep. And his music—this belongs to him alone. Maybe his apartment should have tipped her off—a cool, professionally decorated bachelor’s co-op with buttoned-black-leather-and-steel-framed seating, untouched gym equipment, solar blinds, a pointy blue-glass sculpture by the door, a massive opera-churning stereo system, and a trio of black-slashed prints—Franz Kline, she learned—and the hunter-green bedding a surprising number of straight men, when shopping alone, thought was the only color they were allowed to buy. But she said to herself, some people just don’t know how to make a place nice. She grew busy with early love, and later with what it meant to become a Somner, and forgot that his lack of curiosity had disappointed her; later still, when she was reminded of it, she scuffed it away again, best she could. When Victor gave her the book, she was surprised. She didn’t think he was the reading type. She didn’t think he thought she was the reading type.
    “We need books,” Victor says now, “because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend.”
    “That’s beautiful.” But how, she wants to ask, can books be good friends and good when they are upsetting? Who wants upsetting friends?
    “Tell me that scene right after they get off the ship and she’s all ‘Where’s my hat!’ didn’t kill you. And when—”
    “Stop, I haven’t read that far! Victor, I might have lost it. I’m so sorry! If I can’t find it, I’ll get you a new one. I want to finish it.”
    “You’ve been feeling guilty this whole time? It’s only a book. Put it out of your head. Hey, I saw the Vargas place is up for sale. Great house. You doing that one?”
    “Our agency, but not my listing. I’m all condos. I’m up to my elbows in condos. Or, I will be in a month or so. They’re setting me up on a development. But I’m part-time. I help the other agents, mostly. Which is, whatever. You’re being nice by changing the subject.”
    A high, whistling lamentation rises from under the table.
    “Don’t worry, I promise. Look, you’ve got 3D worried too.” Together they comfort the dog.
    “All I know about real estate,” Victor says, “is that sun-drenched means ‘small.’ Why does sun-drenched mean ‘small’?”
    “Hmm, let’s think. Maybe because the windows are so close together the sun reaches all the way in, all day long?”
    A few months before the wedding, CeCe and her friend Nellie Turner—of the Turner Group, LLC, where Iris is employed—encouraged her toward this line of work after she told George she would apply for a hostess job one of the local restaurants was advertising. Over iced tea on CeCe’s veranda, they suggested that if she wanted an activity, residential sales, rentals to start, might be more appropriate. A career, and only as much of a career as one liked. Nellie spoke about the historical legacy of the houses in and around town and implied the business of finding people homes was both feminist and feminine, a feminism split down to smaller and softer domestic units, atomized to the prettiness of drawer pulls and doorknobs, finials and joists, and even as Iris found this argument depressingly retrograde, she agreed to give real estate a try.
    “My problem is,” she says to Victor, “I imagine every house being my home. Even the