Annika's day runs to a different schedule. She rises at ten, drains a glass of grapefruit juice over the sink, eats jam toast on the terrace, crumbs floating down to the sidewalk as she watches the neighborhood below: the bank security guard who is always on his cellphone, schoolboys kicking soccer balls, little old ladies tromping to and from the covered market. She stretches her arms above her head, emits a little squeak, licks her jam-sticky fingers. She showers with the bathroom door open, lets her hair dry while reading emails, browses the Internet, sends messages to Menzies. By 1 P.M., she emerges into the sun for a stroll up Lungotevere, along the sidewalk that overlooks the Tiber. She follows the river's snaking path from Testaccio toward the Centro Storico. The bottle-green water eddies in parts, is still in others. As with much in Rome, the river has been left to its own devices, a strip of jungle winding through the caterwauling city. Weeds clamber down the riverbanks, clasping at bogwater, snagging what litter washes downstream: plastic bottles, furniture flyers, shoeboxes, a thousand bobbing cigarette filters. The sidewalk has been abandoned, too, left to the tree roots, which seam the pavement, cracking it upward into concrete lips. Back home, she deposits her groceries on the kitchen table and flings open the shutters. Light slices across the parquet, up the white walls. She stuffs in another load of laundry, sets the dial, sits down with a book. She is trying to improve her Italian by reading short stories-Natalia Ginzburg and Alberto Moravia of late. She lunches late-3 P.M., typically-in order to contain her appetite till his nighttime return. She watches a little idiotic Italian TV, irons, washes dishes, hangs laundry, preps dinner. By the time he arrives, she is famished and she bundles him into the kitchen. She never inquires about the day's news-news is only disappointing, and there is nothing she can do about it. After dinner, Menzies falls into bed while she watches old movies with headphones, eating homemade yogurt sweetened with rhubarb compote. When friends ask her about life in Rome, she says, "It's fine, it's good," then is out of words. She does not admit that the apartment is magnificent, the neighborhood ideal, and Menzies an endearing mess. She does not speak of the pleasure she takes in tidying him, nor that she hasn't snapped a single photo in earnest since coming to Rome, that she has no desire to, that she doesn't care about grants or galleries anymore, if indeed she ever did. Above all, she will not admit that she is happy.

"I just don't want you to get bored," he says.

"I'm not." She puts on music: Dinah Washington singing "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes." Menzies was clueless about jazz before meeting her, but she has been educating him, introducing him to Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Frank Sinatra.

"You're amazingly self-sustained," he says. "I'm just afraid you'll get sick of me. Of my socks in particular."

"There is that possibility. As long as nobody sees me cooking you dinner every night, I'm fine."

At least this life takes place overseas. She can point out that she's learning another language and that Rome is such an artistic city and that living here is itself an aesthetic education. When she does return to photography, this experience will have had a salutary effect. If she were tending house like this back in D.C.-well, she simply wouldn't. But living overseas changes the rules. As long as no one sees her. She discourages visits from friends and family, and flies home twice a year to avert them. If her mother saw this! After all those efforts to instill the importance of financial independence and a career. Or if Annika's art-school friends saw her Nikon sitting there, its case gray with dust, as her cookbook collection mounts-the domesticated horror of it! He gets the career, he gets the prestige. She? She gets to clean socks. And if anything goes wrong he has a bank account. And she? How will she explain this gap on her resume? How will she explain her contentment at living like a housewife?

Menzies' colleagues know little about his life with Annika. For a time, she was friendly with Hardy Benjamin and the two met for coffee most afternoons at the espresso bar downstairs from the office. But Hardy got a boyfriend, and her friendship with Annika faded. As for the others at the paper, they tend to forget that Menzies lives with someone-if they were to imagine him outside office hours, they would picture him alone, eating thin sandwiches, reading the ingredients off the bread package. For them, he exists less as a man than as a wrinkle-headed prig in a desk chair.

An office party approaches, and he considers not telling Annika. If she sees him among his colleagues, she'll gather what they think of him. "It'll just be dull news people, I warn you."

"Do you want me there?"

"I don't want me there."

"Maybe you need backup. Unless you don't want me to come."

"You're welcome anywhere I go."

"What should I tell them that I do out here?"

"No one'll ask that sort of thing."

"But if they do?"

As they enter the newsroom, he releases her hand, then wishes he still held it. He sees in the glances of his colleagues a thirst to know what connection he could possibly have with this much younger woman: she, in a purple frock and green-and-black striped tights, a smile so spontaneous it seems almost to surprise her; and he, in a blue oxford shirt and brown corduroys, pudgy despite the weekend sit-ups, a horseshoe of chestnut hair around a bald dome that glistens when he is agitated, and glistens often.

Hardy catches sight of them, waves a little too exuberantly, and comes over. She and Annika chat for a few minutes and agree to sign up for yoga classes together, though both know the pledge is hollow. "Well," Hardy says, "I should probably go save my man." Her boyfriend, Rory, was last spotted with a bottle of wine in hand, trying to engage a frowning Herman in a debate on the factual accuracy of the James Bond series. Hardy trots off to the rescue.

Other staffers approach Menzies, their gazes shifting between their dreary news editor and this curvaceous young woman. "So, Menzies my man, you going to introduce us?"

Once home, he tells her, "You were very"-he pauses-"very popular with everyone."

She smiles. "Popular? What is this, ninth grade?"

"I know, it sounds ridiculous. I'm saying it in a good way, though-I'm impressed."

She kisses his eyelids and gooses his behind.

He wakes early the next morning and lies a few extra minutes in bed, alive to the softness of her back, the scent of her hair. She feels unreal: the tide of her breathing against him in the dark.

He walks to work and hesitates at a boutique window. That turquoise bracelet? What about those earrings? Are they part of a set? He can't assess jewelry, can't tell if it's pretty, if she'd like it. He needs her opinion, but that defeats the purpose. He checks the opening hours. Perhaps he can sneak back between editions. Does she need earrings? Is "need" the point? What is the point? To make a point. Which is? He doesn't know, only that there is one. He's always catching her hand, then letting it go. His every effort to make his point flops. He'll buy those earrings. But the shop is closed.

At dinner, she chats about the office party, comments on his colleagues. "Herman's adorable," she says.

"That is not the word I would have chosen."

"He's sweet," she insists. "And so insecure."

"Herman is? Herman Cohen?"

"And it was interesting talking to Kathleen. She loves you."

"Kathleen loves that I do all her work."

"She clearly has a lot of respect for you."

"Really?"

"All those interns are so young. Made me feel ancient. Actually, I already feel ancient."

"If you're ancient, you must think I'm prehistoric."