Текст книги "Catch the Wolf of Wall Street"

Автор книги: Jordan Belfort

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CHAPTER 21

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

t's fucking ridiculous!” I muttered to Gwynne, as she walked one step behind me through the living room. “How could she just disappear?”

“Did ya check out by the tennis court?”

“Yeah,” I replied quickly. “I checked everywhere, and she's nowhere to be found.”

It was Sunday afternoon, and the party was in full swing. Outside, on the other side of the plate-glass wall, a merry band of fifty or sixty people—few of whom I knew and none of whom I cared about—were scattered on my rear deck, partying like rock stars and devouring the last vestiges of my crumbling empire. Most of them were young females—tall, lean, and gorgeous—and not one of them seemed to have a care in the world.

Just then something caught my eye: breasts—two pair, very young, perfect in every way. One pair belonged to a lithe blonde with a dazzling head of curls; the other belonged to a curvy brunette with a luxurious mane of waves that went down to the crack of her ass. They were dancing away their afternoon—shaking their little booties, with their palms up to the sky, raising the roof, so to speak.

I shook my head gravely. “You see that, Gwynne?” I pointed to the two young girls with their gravity-defying boobs. “They shouldn't have their tops off while my kids are around. It's not fucking right.”

Gwynne nodded sadly. “I think thair druhnk.”

“They're not drunk, Gwynne; they're stoned,probably on Ecstasy. See how they're rubbing against each other? It's the first sign.”

Gwynne nodded without speaking.

I kept scanning my deck, astonished. Christ-who were all these people? They were eating my food and drinking my wine and swimming in my pool and lounging in Carter's Hacuddi and– another wave of panic! Carter!

I ran into the TV room, and there he was, safe and sound. He was lying on the couch watching a video. He was dressed like me, in blue nylon swimming trunks and no shirt. He looked rather content right now, with his head resting on a young girl's lap. She was a blonde, no older than twenty. And she was gorgeous. She had on a sky-blue bikini the size of kite string. Her cleavage was terrific. Someone had dimmed the lights, probably the girl, and she was tickling Carter's back, as he relished a Power Rangers episode from a side angle.

“Carter James!” I said urgently. “Have you seen your sister?”

He ignored me and kept watching. The girl, however, looked up, and she flashed me a thousand-watt model smile. “Ohhhh,” she said, twirling her finger through Carter's loose blond curls, “he's soooocute, your son! I could eat him up alive!”

I smiled warmly at the young blonde. “I know. He's really beautiful,” I agreed, “but right now I can't find my daughter. You haven't seen her around by any chance, have you?”

The blonde shook her head nervously. “No, I'm sorry.” Then she suddenly perked up. “But I could help you look if you want!” She pursed her lips like a goldfish.

I stared at her for a moment, thinking dark thoughts. “No, it's fine,” I said. “But could you keep an eye on my son, please? I'd hate to lose them both at once.”

Another thousand-watt smile: “Oh, I'd love to! But he better be verrrrycareful or I might try to steal his eyelashes!” She looked down at Carter. “Right, Carter? You gonna let me steal your eyelashes?”

He ignored her.

“Carter!” I snapped. “Have you seen your sister anywhere?”

He ignored me too.

Carter's new babysitter began rubbing his cheek softly. “Carrrrrrrter,”she nearly sung. “You have to answeryour daddy when he asks you a question!”

Without averting his gaze even one millimeter from the TV screen, Carter whined: “ IIIIIIIIIIIIII'mwatching!”

Carter's babysitter looked at me and shrugged. “He said he's watching.”

I shook my head in disbelief and walked back into the living room. I looked around—nothing but unfamiliar faces, those thousand-watt model grins. I found them wholly depressing. It was like the Roman Empire before the fall. All this would be gone soon, save the mansion, which would be the ruins and…

There! Justbefore the plate-glass wall, one of the towering floor-to-ceiling curtains had a suspiciously large bump at the bottom. I stared at the bump for a moment, watching, with relief, as it resolved into the shape of a mischievous six-year-old girl. I walked over and peeked behind the curtain, and there she was: my daughter. She was down on both knees, in a white bikini, staring out at the deck. I followed her line of sight… right to the topless girls!

“Chandler!” I snapped. “What are you doing down there?”

She looked up, her face a mask of bewilderment and embarrassment. Those fabulous blue eyes she'd inherited from her mother were as wide as saucers. She opened her mouth for a moment—as if getting ready to say something—but then she compressed her lips and looked back outside at the topless girls.

“What are you doing down there, silly? Gwynne and I were looking all over for you!” I reached down and picked her up gently and gave her a warm kiss on the cheek.

“I lost my dolly,” she said innocently. “I thought it fell behind the curtain.” She looked down at the curtain, searching her mind for a way to support her white lie. “But it wasn't there.”

I nodded suspiciously. “You lost your dolly, huh?”

She nodded sadly.

“And which dolly was that?”

A surprisingly quick response: “A Barbie. One of my favorites.”

“And you weren't by any chance doing a little bit of spying while you were down there, were you?”

At first she didn't answer; she darted her eyes around the room, to see if anyone was in earshot. Then, in the tone of the tattletale, she said, “Those girls are showing their boobies, Daddy! Look…” She lifted her arm to point to the half-naked girls.

I gently pushed it back down. “Okay, sweetie; it's not nice to point.”

I was ransacking my mind for something to say, when she said, “Why do they have their boobies out in public?”

I was appalled, aghast. How could these girls expose my six-year-old daughter to such a thing? (Their fault, not mine.) There was a certain decorum, wasn't there? “Those girls are French,” I said casually. “And in France, girls take their tops off when they go to the beach.” It was sort of true, at least.

Wondrously: “They do?”

I nodded eagerly. “Yeah, they do, sweetie. That's their custom.”

Chandler looked at the girls again, her lips twisted in thought. Then she looked back at me and said, “But we're not inFrance, Daddy; we're in America.”

I was bowled over. My daughter was brilliant! Even at the tender age of six she knew inappropriate behavior when she saw it. With a little bit of luck, I thought, she wouldn't report it to her mother. “Well, you're right,” I said, “we arein America, but I think the French girls might've forgotten.” I kissed her on the cheek again. “Come on, let's go take a walk on the beach together. We can remind them on the way.”

“Okay!” she said happily. “I'll remind them.”

Outside on the deck, I beat Chandler to the punch. “Okay!” I yelled to the bare-breasted duo, as Chandler and I hurried past. “You gotta keep your tops on while you're visiting our country! Save that for St. Tropez!”

They smiled and flashed us the thumbs-up sign, seeming to understand.

Chandler said, “They got big boobies—like Mommy's!“

“That's true,” I said, and it's because they all use the same doctor,“but I think you should just pretend you never saw them.” Better to discuss this with your therapist down the road, when you're a troubled teen trying to make sense of the insanity your soon-to-be-jailed father exposed you to during his final days of freedom.

With that thought, I reached down to my innocent daughter and said, “Come on, I'll carry you to the beach, silly goose!” She jumped into my arms, and off we went, father and daughter, enjoying our last days together on Meadow Lane.

As sweltering as it was on the streets of Manhattan, it was perfectly comfortable at the edge of the ocean. It was as if every last drop of humidity had been sucked out of the atmosphere, replaced by an air mass so pleasant and inspiring that it felt like a gift from God Himself. As Chandler and I walked along the water's edge, her tiny hand in mine, the insanity of my life seemed to be held in harness. Every so often a middle-aged couple or a stray jogger would pass by and smile approvingly, to which I would smile back.

There was so much I wanted to tell Chandler, and so much I knew I couldn't. One day, of course, I would tell her everything– about all the mistakes I'd made and how the greed and drugs had all but destroyed me—but not until many years from now, when she was old enough to understand. So we spoke only of simple things today—of the seashells on the beach, of the dozens of sand castles we'd built over the years, and of all the holes we'd dug to China, only to give up after hitting water a few feet down. Then she nearly knocked the wind out of me when she said, “Guess what, Daddy? My sisters are coming into town tomorrow,” and she kept right on walking.

For a split second I didn't know what she was talking about, or at least that's what I told myself. Deep down, though, I knew: She had been referring to John's daughters, Nicky and Allie. Nicky was a few years older than Chandler, but Allie was exactly the same age. The perfect playmate, I thought.

John Macaluso: I was hearing more and more about him lately, and not just from the kids but also from the handful of friends the Duchess and I still shared. Thankfully, I was hearing only good things—that he was a very decent guy, that he'd been divorced twice himself, and that he didn't do drugs. Most important, however, was that my kids liked him. So I liked him too. As long as he treated them well, he would be aces with me—always.

With that thought, I said, “Do you mean John'sdaughters, sweetie?”

“Yes!” she said eagerly. “They're flying in from California tomorrow, and they're coming out to the beach!”

A lovely thought: the Duchess gallivanting around the Hamptons with another man. Then a darker thought: If, after only a few months of knowing them, Chandler was already referring to John's daughters as her “sisters,” might she one day refer to John as her father? For a moment I felt very concerned—but only for a moment.

I would always be my children's daddy,and there could be no other. Besides, the ability to love was not mutually exclusive. So let them be loved by anyone and everyone, and let them return that love in spades. There was enough to go around for everyone.

“Well, that's great,” I said warmly. “That's really great. I'm sure you'll have a ball with them this week. Maybe one day I'll get to meet them.”

She nodded happily, and we spent a few more minutes walking and talking. Then we headed back to the mansion. A long mahogany walkway, bounded by thick dock ropes on either side, led you over the dunes to the rear deck. As I carried Chandler along the walkway, my spirits sank lower with each step.

The Romans were waiting.

Why did I subject myself to this? I wondered. Was all this self-torture in the simple name of getting laid? It couldn't be, could it? I mean, I wasn't reallythat shallow, was I? In fact, that was just what I was thinking when I first laid eyes on her.

She was tall and blond, and she stood out among the Romans like a diamond among rhinestones. She seemed to swayto the music, in perfect time and rhythm. She seemed aloof to the Scene, as if she was a casual observer and not a member.

At first glance she struck me as the sort of girl I would never dare approach in a nightclub and ask to dance. She was the better part of five-nine, and her blond hair gleamed like polished gold. She was wearing a white cotton skirt, very short, a good six inches above the knee, revealing her long bare legs, which were flawless. She wore a light-pink baby-T that hugged her luscious breasts like a second skin and exposed her perfectly toned tummy and belly button. Her feet were shod in the merest of white sandals, although it was obvious, even at a glance, that they had cost a fortune.

Then– a terrible shock!

From behind the blond vision emerged a horrendous-looking creature. It was short and squat and had the face of a bulldog. Its body seemed to be comprised of thick cylindrical stubs, glued together in haste by nothing but God's good humor. The Creature had burnt-orange hair, pale skin, thick fleshy features, the nose of a prizefighter, and a very wide jaw. It wore a short purple sundress, which hung on its stout frame like a printer's smock. The smock was very low-cut, exposing all but the tips of its sagging D-cups. The Creature grabbed the blond vision by the hand and came waddling. I felt Chandler recoil in my arms.

“Come, Yulichka,” the Creature snapped to the blond vision, in a gravelly voice that reeked of Brooklyn, Russia, the gutter, whiskey, the Teamsters’ Union, and late-stage throat cancer. “This is the owner of the house. I want you to meet him.”

I was shocked—and awed. Beauty and the Beast, I thought.

“You must be Jordan,” growled the Creature, who then looked at Chandler and said, “Oh, cute-cute, very cute.”

I felt Chandler shudder in my arms, as the Creature grabbed her hand and muttered, “Hi, munchkin!I am Inna, and thishere is Yulia.” With that she nearly swung Yulia into the forefront, as if she were a blond peace offering.

It seemed clear the two came as a package.

Yulia smiled, and her teeth were as white as porcelain. Her features were fine and even and chiseled to near perfection. She had pale blue eyes shaped like a cat's, which revealed something that the rest of Yulia's appearance otherwise camouflaged: that somewhere along the way, perhaps five hundred years ago, an invading Tartar had raped one of her ancestors.

Daintily, Yulia reached forward to shake Chandler's hand. “ Alloa,”she said with a surprisingly thick accent. “I am Yulia. What is your name, beautiful?”

“Chandler,” my daughter said in a shy voice, and then I waited for her to attack—to say something like, “Oh, another stupid blonde, eh?” or, more likely, “My daddy already has a girlfriend and he cheats on her all the time!” But, instead, all she said was, “You have very nice hair, Yulia,” to which we all started laughing.

Yulia said, “Well, you are very sweet, Chandler,” and then she turned to Inna and started saying something in rapid-fire Russian. Her voice was soft and sweet, almost melodic, in fact, but the only word I could recognize was krasavitza,which meant beautiful.

We spent another minute or so making small talk, but Chandler was growing restless. In fact, just what little gem of poison she might choose to sputter in Yulia's direction was anyone's guess, so I excused myself with a wink and a smile.

As I was leaving, I said to them, “Make yourself at home. My house is your house,” to which Yulia smiled warmly and said thank you. Inna, however, didn't smile at all and didn't say a word. She simply nodded her head once, as if to say, “Of course I will!” After all, in her ownmind, she had done her job well. She had come to Meadow Lane bearing gifts, so she was entitled now to devour anything and everything in sight.

While there was no denying that Inna was a world-class eyesore, I would have never guessed how adept she was at earning her keep. Later that evening, after the Duchess had picked up the kids and the party was winding down, Inna suggested that the few remaining Romans, eight of us in all, take a ride to East Hampton to catch a movie. It struck me as a reasonable idea at first, which quickly became a fabulous idea before we even made it out of the driveway.

“Come on,” Inna growled to Yulia. “Let's drive with Jordan. We'll pick up the car later.”

“That's a great idea!” I agreed quickly, and indeed it was.

Amid all the madness, Yulia and I had hardly had a chance to speak. Complicating matters, her English was borderline horrific, so any meaningful conversation would have to take place in silence, without distractions. The only problem was that Inna would now be sitting in my rear passenger seat with us.

But, once again, she was one step ahead.

The moment Yulia had climbed into the front passenger seat of my Mercedes the Creature growled, “I gotta go pischka.You two go on ahead; I'll catch up with you at the theater.” And, just like that, Inna turned on her thick, calloused heel and waddled back up the stairs.

Fifteen minutes later, Yulia and I were alone in my Mercedes, driving down a wide country road on our way to East Hampton. At eight p.m. on a Sunday night, the traffic was going the other way, so we were moving along at a pretty good clip. We had the windows open, and the sweet scent of Yulia's perfume was mixing with the earthy scents of hay and pine in a most delicious way.

Keeping one eye on the road, I was sneaking peeks at her out of the corner of my other eye, searching for even a hint of a bad angle. There was none. She was absolutely perfect looking, especially those long, bare legs of hers, which she had crossed at the thighs. She was doing something very sexy with her foot—letting her right sandal dangle from the tips of her toes and slowly swinging her foot up and down. I tried my best to keep my eyes on the road.

Through the sound of rushing air, I raised my voice and said, “So what was it like winning that contest? Did it change your life forever?”

“Yes,” replied Yulia, “it is beautiful outside.”

Whuh?I had been referring to the rather astonishing fact that Yulia Sukhanova was the first, last, and certain to be the only Miss Soviet Union. After all, the Evil Empire was now residing in the failed-nation-state crapper—next to Rome, the Third Reich, the Ottoman Empire, and King Tut's Egypt—so there would only be Miss Russias going forward.

Still, Miss USSR or not, Miss Yulia was even weaker in the English department than I had originally expected. I needed to cut her some slack and keep things simple. “Yeah,” I said, “it's a beautiful night for a drive.”

“Yes,” she replied, “it will start at nine o'clock this night.”

What the…?“You mean the movie?”

She nodded eagerly. “Yes, I like to go to movies.”

Themovies, I thought. How come these female Russkies couldn't say the word the?What was so fucking difficult about it? Well, whatever. The beauty queen was gorgeous, so her deficiency could easily be overlooked. Changing the subject, I asked, “So do you think Inna will show up tonight?”

Thatone she caught. “No ways,” she said. “This is Inna for you. Always playing… uh… how do you say this in English, uh… svacha.”

“Matchmaker?” I offered.

“Da, da!”exclaimed the linguistically challenged beauty queen.

I smiled and nodded, feeling like I'd just reached the pinnacle of Mount Everest. So emboldened, I reached across the center console and grabbed Miss Soviet Union's hand. “Is it okay if I hold your hand?” I asked bashfully.

Just as bashfully, she replied, “Three months now.”

I stared at her for a moment. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “This is last time hand held.”

“Really? That long?”

She nodded. “Da;this is when I break up with boyfriend.”

“Ohhhh,”I said, smiling. “You mean Cyrus, right?”

Her blue eyes popped open. “You know Cyrus?”

I smiled and winked. “I have my sources,” I said slyly.

The “Cyrus” I had referred to was none other than Cyrus Pahlavi, the shah of Iran's grandson. I had done quite a bit of checking on Yulia that afternoon. I had found out that she'd just ended a three-year relationship with Cyrus, who, two years prior, had replaced the prince of Italy as her main squeeze. A royalty-monger, I'd thought.

In essence, Yulia had come to America as an ambassador of goodwill, arriving in 1990 under the watchful eyes of Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the then-head of the Komsomol, the Young Communist League, and now the richest man in Russia. More than anything, Yulia was a propaganda tool: bright, educated, cultured, classy, graceful, charming, and, above all else, drop-dead beautiful. She was meant to represent the very best of what the Soviet Union had to offer and, for that matter, Communism as a whole.

It was a wildtale—one of political intrigue and financial skullduggery—but everything was starting to make sense to me. There was a reason why Yulia stood out so regally among the Romans: She was supposed to. A hundred million women had vied for the job of “first Miss Soviet Union,” and Yulia Sukhanova had won. She had been groomed and trained to carry a single message: that the Soviet Union was best.

Upon her arrival in America, Yulia met with Nancy Reagan, George Bush, Miss USA, newscasters, socialites, rock stars, dignitaries, and diplomats. Ultimately, she traveled around the country, doing ribbon-cuttings and hosting game shows, while she served as a proud representative of the Motherland.

And then the Soviet Union fell.

Suddenly Yulia became the reigning beauty queen of a nonexistent superpower. The once-proud Soviet Union was now a bankrupt nation-state that would go down in the history books as nothing more than a failed experiment in bogus economics and corrupt ideology. So Yulia decided to stay in the United States and become a model. Inna, at the time, was one of the only Russian-speaking bookers in the modeling industry, so she took Yulia under her wing.

There were only two things that now troubled me about Yulia. The first were some references to a man named Igor, who was vaguely connected to Yulia and followed her around, in the shadows; and the second was the fact that Yulia was a KGB agent and Igor was her master. And as far-fetched as it seemed, they hadoriginally come here under the auspices of the Soviet government, hadn't they?

So here I was, five hours later, heading to East Hampton, with a female KGB agent sitting next to me, and the dreaded Igor lurking in the shadows. Igor, I figured, was the least of my worries.

“Anyway,” I said to the beauty queen/KGB agent. “I didn't mean that in a bad way. We all have our sources, you know? I'm sure you have yours too, right, right?” I winked playfully at KGB. “I guess mine are just a little better than most.”

KGB smiled back, seeming to understand. “Yes, you are very good cook.”

“Whuh? What are you talking about? What cook?”

“You say sauces,” said KGB, who apparently had slept through her English classes at the secret KGB training school. “Like this night: You make tomato sauces, on penne.”

I started laughing. “No—not sauces! Sources,with an r.“ I looked KGB in the eye and dragged out sourcesfor all it was worth, so it came out like Sourrrrrrrrrrces.Then I said, “You get it?”

She let go of my hand and began shaking her head in disgust, saying something like: “Bleaha muha, stupido English! Ehhh! It make no sense!” Then she started waving her perfectly toned arms around the car, as if she were swatting imaginary flies. “Souwwwwsses… Sourrrrrrces… Seeeeeeesses…Sowwwwwsses!” she was muttering. “Crazy! Crazy! Crazy…”

After a few seconds, she started giggling and said, “This English make me crazy! I swear—it make no sense. Russianmake sense!” With that, she hit the power-window button and pointed to the side of the road and motioned for me to pull over.

I pulled beneath a large maple tree a few feet off the road, put the car in park, and turned off the lights. The radio was barely audible, but KGB reached over and flicked it off anyway. Then she turned to me and said very slowly: “I… do… speak… English. It is just hard to understand with wind”– the wind—“blowing. I thought you say you make sauces, like tomato sauces, because you make that tonight: tomato sauces.”

“It's okay,” I said, smiling. “You speak English a lot better than I speak Russian.”

“Da,”she said softly, and she turned to face me, leaning her back against the passenger door and crossing her arms beneath her breasts. Over her pink baby-T-shirt she had thrown on a white cotton sweater, a very soft cable-knit, with a very low V-neck, bordered with two thick stripes, one maroon and the other forest green. It was the sort of old-fashioned preppy sweater that you see in old photographs of people playing tennis. She had pushed up the sleeves, revealing wonderfully supple wrists and a very classy watch, the latter of which was thin and understated. It had a pink-leather band and a pearl-white face. Her blond hair looked shiny as corn silk. It rested on either side of the front of her sweater, framing the face of an angel.

She didn't look like a KGB agent, did she? I took a deep breath and looked into KGB's liquid blue eyes and smiled warmly. Try as I might, I couldn't help but compare her to the Duchess. In many ways, they looked very much the same: blond and blue-eyed, broad-shouldered yet thin-boned, perfectly proportioned above and below the waist. And they both stood with that same imperious posture—the eager young cheerleader, with the shoulders pulled back and theirs knees locked out and their perfectly round butts stuck out—that used to drive me so wild.

“You're beautiful,” I said softly to KGB, ignoring my last thought.

“Da,”she said wearily, “krasavitza, krasavitza…. I know this,” and she shook her head with equal weariness, as if to say, “I've been called that a thousand times, so you're going to have to do better than that.” Then she smiled and said, “And you are cutie too, and you like realRussian man! You know this?”

I shook my head and smiled. “No, what do you mean?”

She raised her chin toward my ankle bracelet. “You steal money”—she winked—”like real Russian man!” She giggled. “And I hear you steal a lot!”

Jesus Christ!I thought. Leave it to the damn Russkies! Of course, this was not the moment to alert KGB to the fact that I hadn't stolen quite enough—and that because of that I would not be living on Meadow Lane next summer. Better to cross that bridge when I came to it, I figured.

“Yeah,” I said, forcing a smile, “but I'm not exactly proud of it.”

“When is jail for you?” she asked.

“Not for a while,” I said softly. “Another four years or so. I'm not really sure.”

“And your wife?”

I shook my head back and forth. “Getting divorced.”

She nodded sadly. “She is pretty.”

“Yeah, she is,” I said softly. “And she gave me two great kids. I guess I'll always love her for that, you know?”

“You still love her?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No, I don't.” I shrugged. “I mean, for a while I thought I did, but I think I was just…” I paused for a moment, trying to find words that KGB would understand. In truth, I wasn't really sure how I felt about the Duchess. I loved her and hated her, and I suspected that I always would. But one thing I was certain of was that the only way to get over someone was to fall in love with someone else. “… I think I was just in love with the thoughtof being in love. I wasn't actually in lovewith her anymore. Too many bad things had happened. Too much hurt.” I looked into KGB's eyes. “Do you understand what I mean?”

“Da,”she replied quickly, “I do; this is common.” She looked away for a moment, as if lost in thought. “You know, I am here nine years now.” She shook her head in amazement. “Can you imagine? I should speak better, I think, but I never have American friends. My friends are all Russians.”

I nodded in understanding—understanding far more than KGB probably gave me credit for. There were only two types of Russians I had met so far: those who embraced America, and those who held it in contempt. The former did everything they could to assimilate themselves into the American way of life: they learned the language, they dated American men, they ate American food, and, eventually, they became American citizens.

The latter group, however, did just the opposite: They refused to assimilate. They held on to their Soviet heritage like a dog with a bone. They lived amid Russians, they worked amid Russians, they socialized with Russians, and they refused to master the English language. And at the very heart of this, I knew, was the fact that they still longed for the glory days of the Soviet Empire, when the world marveled at the ingenuity of Sputnik and the courage of Yury Gagarin and the iron will of Khrushchev. It was a heady time to be a Soviet, with the world trembling at the Warsaw Pact and the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Yulia Sukhanova had been a product of all that—no, she epitomized that. She still longed for the days of the Great Soviet Empire and, in consequence, had refused to assimilate. Ironically, this didn't make me respect her any less—in fact, quite the contrary: I felt her pain. I, too, had risen once, to the dizziest heights of Wall Street, becoming a celebrity of sorts, albeit in a twisted sense of the word. Nonetheless, just like Yulia Sukhanova, it had all come crashing down on me. The only difference was that hercrash was through no fault of her own.

Still, both of us, it seemed, needed to figure out a way to reconcile a completely insane past with any possible future. Perhaps, I thought, we could do it together; perhaps, once we got past the language barrier, she could help me make sense of what had happened in my life, and I could help her make sense of hers. With that thought, I took a deep breath and went for broke:

“Can I kiss you?” I said softly.

To that, Miss Yulia Sukhanova, the first, last, and only Miss Soviet Union, smiled bashfully. Then she nodded.