“I’m a mutant, Artie, darling,” she said. “I’m too tall and too weird. I take pictures because I’m obsessed with looking at people. Sometimes I find myself staring at them in restaurants or on the train. I want to know everything. It’s just how I am. I once ate a little piece of film, a piece of the negative, to see what it was like, see if I could make it get inside of me-Jesus, Artie, why does my dad have to be in London?”
“He likes London.”
“I know, and I’m a grown woman and I should let him live his life.” She gulped her coffee and added, “I just like it better when he’s here.” She got up.
“Where are you going?”
“What, my dad put you on my tail? I have to go pick up some stuff so I can pack it up.”
“What stuff? Where are you going?”
“For the kids, clothes, meds, stuff. I send it ahead of me to Moscow. I’ll probably go over in a couple or three weeks, and then only for four, five days, it’s just I need to get things ready.” She sounded defensive.
“Tolya knows?”
“Maybe. Butt out, darling. Look, I’m just going to Moscow to do a few things and spend a few days with my mom who’s on vacation.”
“I thought she lived in Boca.”
“Yes, so what?” Val was exasperated by all my questions. “She does live in Florida, but she can afford to travel now, so she travels, my dad gives her whatever she wants, even though they’re divorced, he says, she is the mother of my children, you know? In that pompous voice he puts when he’s on a roll? My mom has a great big dacha near Barvika, outside Moscow, okay, everything she dreamed of when she was a girl and she married my dad, and they lived in a one-room apartment in Moscow, back in the day. But her tastes she developed in Boca, right?” Val smiled at the idea of her mother’s tastes. “So she has the condo in Boca, and a place in London, and a great big dacha in Barvika, I mean huge, with a fabulous pool with faux Impressionists painted on the bottom.
“She was just this provincial Russian girl when they got married, and he was like this big rock guru in Moscow, and he performs and she lies down on the stage one night and licks his boots. She was gorgeous. What a crazy time, I wish I was there, the 80s sound so fabulous in Moscow. Well, whatevs. Anyhow, my mom’s new dacha has marble and gold taps, and there’s a tennis court, and a pool, one indoors, one out.”
“What about her boyfriend?”
“He loves it. You remember him? The one who wears the yachting cap and the real gold buttons on his blazer? He has money, but now he feels he has class. I mean he’s global now. I think he comes from New Jersey. So, you see, I’ll be in safe hands. You should come visit. Moscow is wild. Daddy’s club is hot, he’s a star, he’ll be going on celebrity chef or something, or celebrity wine master, whatever.” She leaned over the table. “I love him a lot, Artie. I love my dad, you know, more than anyone? I won’t do anything to make him worry, I promise. Or you.”
“But you’re careful, right? I mean you don’t get crazy when you talk to officials over there, about the kids you help and stuff.”
“Of course not. But it’s fine, it’s all really official, we get help from NGOs, we get help from the US ambassador. You think I want to get involved with anything weird over there? Forget about it. I’m an American. I’m a perfect American girl, right?” She pursed her lips and made a rueful noise.
“You have a Russian passport?”
“Yes. Also.”
“You travel a lot, you, Tolya.”
“We like to travel,” she said, half sardonic. “Movement is everything. My mom remembers when she was my age, the only place she was ever allowed to go outside the Soviet Union was once to Bulgaria.” She put her hand up to her head. “God, my head hurts,” she said.
“You okay?”
“I’ve been feeling kind of weird lately, I don’t know, my stomach, my head. I’ve been using some new chemical in my darkroom, I think the smell makes me feel bad.”
“What kind of stuff?” Tell me, I wanted to say. Tell me and I’ll make you feel better whatever it is.
I wanted to put my arms around her, but I just drank my coffee.
“Oh, Artie, it’s nothing. Listen, did my dad ask you to work for him again?”
“Yeah, every other day. I think he feels sorry for me because I’m always broke.”
“Don’t go into business with my dad. You wouldn’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“That would mean the end of your love affair.”
For a moment I thought she meant us, her and me, and I was startled.
“What love affair?”
“You and my dad, of course,” said Val. “Not like that, you idiot, I mean, never mind. It’s about the best kind, about friendship. But if you went into business, you’d have to do things you wouldn’t like. It would offend your moral code,” said Valentina.
“I don’t have a moral code. You make me sound like some guy with a poker up his ass. What moral code?”
She sat down again, this time on the edge of a chair, put her elbows on the table and her face close to mine. “Well, not that kind,” she said and kissed me lightly on the lips. “For sure not that kind, Artie. We got past that last night, didn’t we? That kind of crap that says I’m too young for you, you hear me?”
I nodded.
“I’ll tell you everything tonight, I will, I promise.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t remind me of my uncles one bit,” she added, leaned over the table again and put her hands on either side of my head, and I thought to myself: don’t do this. I thought to myself: don’t feel like this. Stop. I was besotted, but it was temporary, it was a fantasy, it was like falling for a girl in a movie. Wasn’t it?
The hours she had spent in my bed weren’t casual for her, I knew, but it wasn’t for the long term. I was too old. I was her father’s best friend. I wanted her so bad I could hardly look at her, but I had to, I had to pretend we were still just friends, just family, the way we always had been. I felt, in the far distance, a little door closing.
“Tonight?” I said.
“You’re going to take me to dinner,” she said. “Don’t look so serious,” she added.
“I’m fine.”
“You look gloomy as hell,” she said, then leaned over, kissed me three times on the cheek and the little gold cross she wore on a thin chain dangled against my forehead, as if she were a priest making the sign of the cross so I’d be safe. “I have to go,” she added. “I’ll meet you. Dinner. Around nine. Ten? And we could go to a late movie after? Or dancing?”
“Dinner,” I said. “Yes. Where?”
“My friend Beatrice’s, over in the East Village, you know the place? She cooks that fantastic spaghetti carbonara, my dad loves it, we go and he eats like everything on the menu.”
“On East 2nd Street, right? Ten.”
“Around ten,” she said.
I kissed the top of her head and said, casually as I could, “See you tonight.”
“Darling, I always show up for you, you know that, sooner or later. Sometimes later, I know, it’s my vice, bad time-keeping, but for you, I always show up.”
“Promise?”
“Artie, I do love you.”
All I could do was scramble in my jacket pocket for some money to pay the check. I couldn’t look at her, I couldn’t say what I wanted to.
“Artie?”
“What?”
“People worry about me, I say, listen, I was named for Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, and she came back, so I always come back, too. I’ll definitely be there.” She kissed me on the cheek once more, stuffed the last piece of cake into her mouth. “You are stuck with me, Artie, darling. So I’ll be there, or as we used to say when we were little kids, cross my heart and hope to die.”