Insofar as mycircumstances were concerned, I was certain that she knew more than she led on. On the day my cooperation was announced, I offered her a brief explanation of what was going on—stressing the Dave Beall incident and how, in spite of it coming back to haunt me, I still felt like I had done the right thing. I had maintained my self-respect, I told her, to which she grabbed my hand and squeezed it reassuringly. And when the Chef was indicted two weeks later, I told her about that too—how he had been my accountant, a loyal friend who seemed to get an irrational joy out of “scheming,” which, ultimately, had led to his undoing—to which she said that there are no friends in business and that, if I hadn't learned my lesson with Dave Beall, then I never would.
She spent a great deal of time telling me about the great Russian soul—the velikaya russkaya dusha,she called it—and how no American could truly understand it. Honesty, integrity, sensitivity, imagination, compassion, guilt, the need to suffer in silence. Those were just a few of the words she used to describe it, thumbing through her Russian-English dictionary.
Yet, from my perspective, it wasn't her great Russian soul that was impressive, but her loyalty. We had known each other for less than two months, and it had to be plainly obvious to her that I wasn't the man she had thought I was. I was burdened with problems, my future uncertain. I was a man whose financial star was on the fall, not on the rise. Still, none of this seemed to bother her.
When I told her that I had to get rid of the beach house, she shrugged her shoulders and said that she couldn't care less about Meadow Lane. Better we should live in Manhattan, she added, and who needed such a big house anyway? And when I told her that money might get tight for a while, she assured me that any man who could make as much as I had so young could figure out a way to do it again.
Emboldened by her words, I nodded in agreement and then made a decision to start trading stocks again, albeit legitimately. The NASDAQ was flying—dot-com mania, they called it—and with the money the government had left me, I could make a few million a year in my sleep. Just why I hadn't thought of this before I wasn't so sure, although I knew it had something to do with KGB believing in me.
In that sense, she was everything the Duchess wasn't. She was willing to bet on me,not on what I had come to surround myself with. Yet, in the Duchess's defense, Yulia didn't have two children to worry about, nor did she have “history” with me.
Whatever the case, the Duchess was my past and KGB was my future, and here she was, about to reach the twenty-fifth level of Crash Bandicoot. All she needed to do was defeat Dr. Neo Cortex, Crash's nemesis, and then Crash would be reunited with his girlfriend, Tawna, another genetically enhanced bandicoot, who, in the world of bandicoots, was as sexy as Jessica Rabbit.
Suddenly, KGB started screaming: “Blyad! Blyad! Nyet! Nyet!”
“Back up!” screamed Carter. “He's throwing fireballs!”
“I can't!” screamed KGB. “I have lost power!”
“No!” screamed Carter. “Use a power crystal…” and I watched the screen with total fascination as a muscle-bound ape named Koala Kong picked up a fireball and winged it at Crash's head, causing him to burst into flames. At this point Crash screamed in agony, jumped into the air, did a three-sixty, and then landed on his tiny bandicoot butt and burned to death. Then the TV made a sound like: “Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa… boom!”And that was it: The screen went black.
At first, KGB and Carter just looked at each other, frozen. Then KGB shook her head and said, “Chto ty nashu stranu obsirayesh!”
Carter compressed his lips and nodded his little head in agreement, having no idea that KGB had said, “I just shit all over this stupid game!” Then Carter said, “Again, Yuya,”to which KGB nodded in resignation, took a deep breath, and hit a button on the controller, bringing Crash back to life, albeit at the bottom of Neo Cortex's castle.
And as they lost themselves in the game, I found myself wondering what kind of mother KGB would be to my children if disaster struck. Unlikely as it seemed, it was still something I had to consider—that the Duchess could die and the kids would become solely my responsibility.
KGB and Carter had a close connection based on their love of video games, but, outside that, I wasn't so sure. There was a certain disconnectbetween them, inasmuch as when they weren't sitting in front of the TV screen they said very little to each other. Of course, she was never anything but nice to him, no two ways about that, but there was a lack of warmth, I thought, a certain apathy that one wouldn't expect to find given the storied nature of the great Russian soul.
Chandler, however, didn't play video games; she played with Barbie dolls and she played house and dress-up and she liked to watch TV—of the American variety—so she and KGB had very little in common. And that bothered me; it bothered me that I never saw KGB reaching out to her. Indeed, as with Carter, she was always nice and always quick to offer a warm smile, but there was still that same disconnect.
In my mind it was simple: KGB was the adult and Chandler and Carter were the children, so the ball was in hercourt, not theirs. Or was I expecting too much? She wasn't the mother of my children, so perhaps it was unreasonable to expect her to be a second mother to them. Maybe a degree of casual indifference was healthy, maybe it was normal, and maybe I should just thank my lucky stars that KGB was kind. No, I thought, kindness wasn't enough. Apathy is its own form of cruelty, and children can spot it a mile away.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum was John Macaluso, the Duchess's boyfriend. Just last week he'd called me out of the blue and suggested that we meet for a cup of coffee. He was spending a lot of time with my kids, he said warmly, and he wanted to assure me that he would always try his best to be a positive influence in their lives. It was a classy move, to say the least, and when we met a few days later at the Old Brookville Diner, we hit it off instantly.
He was about my height and was thin and wiry and bursting at the seams with energy. He was handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair and prominent Italian features, but he was charismatic more than anything. We spent an hour exchanging war stories—carefully avoiding the subject of my failed marriage to the Duchess or his current relationship with her—while I resisted the urge to ask him if she moaned, “Come for me, my little prince!” while they were having sex. Yet, with all the laughing and smiling, there was one issue that hung over the meeting like a dark cloud.
Finally he brought it up.
“You know, it really sucks that I live in California and Nadine lives in New York,” he said wearily. “It figures I'd fall in love with a woman who lives three thousand miles away!”
And that was it: The cat was out of the bag.
There was a major problem—he knew it and I knew it—and it wasn't about to go away on its own. Either he would have to move here or she would want to move there. And knowing the Duchess's attorney—that fat bastard Dominic Barbara, with his notoriously fat mouth and penchant for bathing his even fatter ass in the limelight—he would use my legal predicament as leverage.
John was no fool; upon seeing my reaction, he quickly added that Nadine would never do anything behind my back. She knew how close I was with the kids and was always saying what a good father I was. And, with that, we dropped it, although I think we both knew that at some point this issue would rear its ugly head again.
And the lovely KGB—where did she stand in all this?
Just watching her with Carter right now, united by their love of the genetically enhanced bandicoot, gave me hope for everything she might be. Perhaps she could learnto love my children, and perhaps I could learnto love her the same way I had once loved the Duchess and the way I had once loved Denise—for, in truth, I felt the same disconnect in my own relationship with her that I sensed between her and my children.