3. Chocolates

4. Lingerie

5. Telephone calls

6. Visit

7. Marriage

He understood that the “Ukraine Brides” would not be so readily available – would not have their photos on the Internet, would not be willing to leave home and family – if they were not desperate to escape a hopeless future. So it was that a beautiful and well-educated woman like Irina was, if not for sale, on offer. Not to anyone, of course. She had the power of rejection. But Wilson guessed that if push came to shove, she’d probably accept most of the Americans now standing in the lee of the formidable Madame Puletskaya.

As for Irina’s appeal, well, she had it all. Even more to the point, once she was in Nevada, she’d be in a foreign country, thousands of miles from home. Which is another way of saying she’d be totally dependent on her husband, having no friends and nowhere to turn if and when the relationship went south.

She’d be his. Really his.

“Ah, Mr. Wilson,” Madame P. oozed now, grasping his arm. “I recognize you instantly.”

Wilson glanced around at the others. “Was it my name tag?” he deadpanned, gesturing to the red-rimmed HELLO badge stuck to his lapel.

Madame Puletskaya looked alarmed until she realized this was a joke. Then she broke into peals of girlish laughter.

“This one,” she said, giving him a poke in the arm, “such a comic. He’s looking even more handsome than his photograph. I promise!”

Wilson shook his head in a self-deprecating way. Madame P. counted heads, then efficiently swapped her welcome sign for a clipboard, extracting it from a huge, red tote bag. She checked off names in a methodical way, looking back and forth from the name tags to her clipboard.

“All here!” Madame P. enthused, herding them toward the airport exit. “Now to van.” They walked out the automated front door, rolling their suitcases.

“We’re like sheep,” one of them muttered.

“Baaaaa,” said Wilson.

A nervous eruption of laughter. As if this was one of the funniest things any one of them had ever heard.

A big man, wearing a FUBU T-shirt, tossed the suitcases into the van’s rear compartment, then spoke into a cell phone. Madame P. tried to open the van’s sliding door. Wilson stepped forward to help, earning another peal of delight from Herself. “So strong, too,” she said.

Wilson rolled his eyes. “Most of us are outstanding with minivans.” More laughter. Christ, Wilson thought, it’s like I’m Chris Rock.

“Well, we’re all here – so let’s get going,” Madame P. said, suddenly in a hurry. She jammed her clipboard into her tote. Turning to the back of the van, she smiled. “Surely, you must be tired and need to nap and freshen up before this afternoon’s tea with the ladies. Two o’clock,” she said. Then she beamed a smile and wagged a finger. “Don’t be late.”

One of the oddities of the situation was that, in order to soften the commercial aspect of the arrangement, everything was done with a stultifying propriety. After months of obligatory letters, flowers, and chocolates, there would be a couple of hours of face-time – mediated by a chaperone. Then a “touristic hour” the next day, and, after that, a dinner dance.

The “romantic tourists” were booked into a second-class hotel on a noisy street just off the Vulitsa Deribasovskaya. Madame P. gave them three hours and insisted that they synchronize their watches. They might as well have been in summer camp.

The women were waiting at the appointed hour in the hotel’s threadbare breakfast room, where an effigy of high tea was to be served. Irina blushed and smiled as Wilson took her hand and kissed it. Somewhere behind him, the man with the high-pitched giggle let out a whoop.

When the lukewarm tea and stale sandwiches had been consumed, Madame P. led the couples hand in hand on a stroll down a shady promenade along the Prymorsky bulvar. Irina seemed sweet and shy, although Wilson had no illusions about his ability to judge her correctly. He bought her an ice cream, he bought her a bottled water, he bought her a fake Gucci purse from a street vendor. She loved this, stroking it like a pet. Her English was not as good as he’d hoped – they’d spoken on the telephone very briefly – but it didn’t matter. Her face was sweet with concentration as she labored to make small talk.

“I’m so happiness.”

“Happy.”

“Happy,” she repeated. “Happy to make walk with you.”

“I think you’re very brave,” he said. “To leave your country, your family…” Not that there was any mystery in it. Irina and the other women were willing to take a leap into the unknown because their prospects at home were so poor. Standards of living in the former Soviet Union were trending down for a lot of people, even as the economy grew and the “oligarchs” prospered. Life expectancy was contracting, and so was the birthrate. Social services that were formerly taken for granted had all but disappeared. Irina and her family lived in a one-bedroom apartment – parents in one room with her younger brother, Irina and her sisters in the dining area.

“Some days, I am hope they come to visit,” she said. “And I visit here, too, yes? This is possible?”

“Of course.”

Meanwhile, Madame P. and her staff were busy making complex arrangements for the women to visit the States. Among other things, this entailed applications for K-1 visas – the so-called “fiancée visas” required of people coming to America to be married.

In addition to the K-1 visas, the would-be brides would need an open-return ticket – and a traveling budget. Most of the men had taken advantage of Madame’s boilerplate prenuptial agreement, but Wilson said that he wouldn’t require one. This was taken as a gesture of love by Irina, but of course it was nothing of the sort. In the world to come – which Wilson was beginning to think of as A.W. (or After Wilson) – a prenup would be about as useful as an umbrella in a hurricane.

Sitting on a park bench under a beech tree, bright with spring leaves, Wilson described the ranch where they would live.

“It’s paradise,” he told her. “There’s a stream where the deer come to drink, spectacular sunsets, the biggest sky you ever saw, hawks and fish, trees.”

“I am sure, very beautiful. Pictures you send, I put under my pillow. Such a big house. Is room for many children, I think.” She blushed.

Irina stroked the purse. “Is dishwasher?”

Wilson nodded. “Yes. And a big TV with a flat screen. Also… you’ll like this: I bought you a car. A convertible.”

She squealed with delight, and then her face fell. “But I am not knowing how to drive.”

“I’ll teach you. It will be fun.”

“Is new car?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No,” he told her. “You don’t want a new car. Computer goes on the fritz, and you’re outta luck. Trust me.”

She frowned. “Our home… in Nevada, yes?”

“Yes,”

“Is Las Vegas?”

He shrugged and smiled. “We’re out in the country, but… you’ll fly into Vegas, and yeah, you’ll get a chance to see it.”

She squirmed with embarrassment and then, at his prompting, confessed that she wanted to be married in the same “chapel of love” in which Britney Spears had tied the knot. “White Chapel. Is possible?”

He couldn’t help but laugh. She was sitting there beside him, with her bright eyes and rosy cheeks, so eager, almost pleading. He couldn’t help himself. He was charmed by her innocence, even if it wasn’t that, even if it was just naïveté. Her infatuation with celebrity and stardom was as natural as it was predictable. Hollywood did that to people – even, it seemed, Ukrainian waitresses who’d never seen a copy of People or Parade. So why not indulge her? He’d been thinking of a simple ceremony, but… “If that’s what you want, why not?”

She smiled her demure dimpled smile, blushing with delight. “Wait until I tell Tatiana.” She stroked the purse and turned her body toward him. Raising her chin, she kissed him on the lips. For the first time, he noticed her soft floral scent. Combined with the warmth of her breath and the look in her eyes, it excited him in a way that he hadn’t been for years. Not since they’d sent him to Supermax.