When the Chef was done, he said, “Now this is a fucking Picasso—although you better throw it in the garbage!”
I crumpled the note into a tiny ball and did just that. “Better safe than sorry,” I said casually. We exchanged a Mafia-style hug, a firm handshake, and then confirmed our plans to meet James Loo on Monday. I suggested the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Manhattan, where, by sheer coincidence, I explained, I would be staying for a few days with my new girlfriend. But it was no coincidence, of course. Long before Loo and the Chef arrived there, OCD and his tech team would have the room wired for sight and sound.
When I met OCD afterward, I joked that I was up to my old tricks again—passing notes and such—although I had saved this particular note for posterity.
With that I handed him a sealed envelope with the tape and the crumpled note inside. “You better go stop at Macy's and pick up a steam iron,” I said jokingly. “You're gonna need it.” Then I climbed into my Mercedes and headed back out to the Hamptons.
But, alas, over the next days I began feeling guilty again.
In fact, by that Sunday evening, the thought of ratting out the Chef had become wholly depressing. Apparently, falling in love with KGB had softened the sting of recent events—those terrible betrayals that had ignited flames of revenge in the glare of which I had come to view friends as enemies and enemies as friends. Now, however, I wasn't so sure again.
It was a little before nine, and KGB and I were enjoying our nightly ritual—sitting on a white cotton blanket, near the water's edge, with a small fire blazing away, struggling against the first chills of autumn. Just over the horizon, an orange full moon hung heavy in the night sky, with the dark waters of the Atlantic just beneath it.
“It looks close enough to touch, doesn't it, sweetie?”
“Da,”she replied cutely. “It look like Swiss cheese.”
“Looks,”I said, correcting her. “It lookslike Swiss cheese.”
“What you mean?” she asked.
I grabbed her hand and squeezed it lovingly. “I mean, you have a habit of leaving the soff words, especially verbs. Like you just said, ‘It looklike Swiss cheese,’ when you should have said, ‘It lookslike Swiss cheese.’ It's no big deal, really; it's just a matter of singular or plural. You see, when you say it,it relates to one thing, so you would say looks,but if you were talking about they,which is plural, you would say, ‘Theylook like Swiss cheese.’ Again, it's really no big deal, but it just kind of sounds funny. It's sort of hard on the ears.” I shrugged my shoulders, trying to make light of it.
She let go of my hand. “What do you mean: hard on ears?”
“Theears,” I said calmly, although a bit of frustration had slipped out around the edges, “and that's a perfect example of what I mean.” I took a deep breath and said, “You never say the word the, Yulia —ever!And it's probably the most commonly used word in the English language! It gives a certain rhythm to things, a certain flow, and when you don't say it—like when you just said ‘hard on ears’ or when you say, ‘I want to go to store,’ it just sounds funny. I mean, it sounds like you're uneducated or something, which I know you're not.” I shrugged again, not wanting to make a big deal of it, although I couldn't help myself. We were spending all our time together, and her bastardization of the English language was starting to get to me. Besides, I was in love with her, so I felt it was my obligation to teach her—or to trainher, so to speak—and lead her gently down the road to a little village called Assimilation.
“Anyway,” I continued, “if you really want to improve your English, I would start with those two things: using the word theand knowing when to add an sto the end of a verb.” I smiled and grabbed her hand. “From there, all good things will follow.” I winked at her. “And if you want, I could even be your teacher! Every time you make a mistake I can correct— ow!What are you —owww!Stop—that hurts! Owww! Owww! Owwwwwwwwwwwwww!”I screamed. “Let go of my fingers! You're gonna break them! Stop!”
“You little puta!” she muttered, as she bent my fingers backward in a KGB finger lock. “You and your stupid English language—ha! America think they own world! Bleaha muha! Capitalist pigs!”
Thinksit owns theworld, I thought, as I screamed, “Let! Go! Of! My! Fingers! Please!You're gonna break them!”
She let go, then turned her back to me and began muttering, “Stupido Americano… This ridiculous!”
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I began shaking my fingers in the air, trying to stop the pain. “You could have broken my fingers with that fucking KGB death grip!” I shook my head angrily. “And who the hell are youto call mea little puta? Do you think I'm a little whore now? Five minutes ago you were saying how much you loved me, and now you're calling me names!” I shook my head sadly, as if I were very disappointed in her. Then I prepared for makeup sex.
After a few seconds she turned to me, ready to make friends again. “Praste minya,”she said softly, which I could only assume meant thank you,and then she started babbling something in rapid-fire Russian. Her tone was rather sweet, actually, so I could only assume she was saying that she had tried to break my fingers out of love. Then she said, “Come here, musek-pusek;let my kiss your palcheke,”and she grabbed my fingers and began kissing them very softly, which led me to believe that palchekewere fingers.
Feeling vindicated, I leaned back on the blanket and prepared for my reward (meaning, she would kiss my erect penis), and just like that she was lying next to me and we were kissing. It was a soft, mellow kiss, a slow kiss, a Russkiekiss, which seemed to last for a very long time. Then she rested her head upon my shoulder, and the two of us, lovers once more, stared up to the heavens, beholding the awesome expanse of the universe—the orange moon, the glittering stars, the fuzzy white band of the Milky Way.
“I'm sorry about before,” I said, lying through my teeth. “I won't correct you anymore if you don't want me to. I mean, I don't care if the moon lookslike Swiss cheese or looklike Swiss cheese, as long as I'm looking at it with you.” With that, I kissed her on the crown of her pretty blond head and drew her close to me.
She responded by putting her long, bare leg over mine and cuddling even closer to me, as if we were trying to become one person.
“Ya lublu tibea,”she said softly.
“I love you too,” I said just as softly. I took a deep breath and stared up at the moon, wondering if I'd ever been happier than I was right now. This girl was truly something special— Miss Soviet Union, for Chrissake!—the very catch of the century, and, most importantly, she was the perfect antidote to the backstabbing Duchess.
With a fair dose of nostalgia in my voice, I said, “You know, I remember looking up at the moon as a kid and being totally blown away by it. I mean, knowing that people had actually been up there and walked on it. In 1969 you were only a year old, so you were too young to remember that day, but I remember it like it was yesterday.
“My parents had this little black-and-white TV set in the kitchen, and we were all crowding around it, watching Neil Armstrong go down the ladder. And when he took his first steps on the moon and started bouncing around…” I shook my head in awe. “I wanted to be an astronaut that day.” I let out a few embarrassed chuckles. “Boyhood dreams,” I said, smiling. “Which somehow led me to Wall Street. I would have never imagined it that day.”
KGB chuckled back, although her chuckles had an edge to them. “This is big American joke,” she said confidently. “You knows this, right?”