As soon as he learned of Viktor’s departure, he had taken the opportunity to arrange a date with the young woman, and he didn’t want to arrive late, so he accelerated his newly washed Ford Model A through Gorky’s narrow streets.
He found her sitting on her mansion’s porch, busy untangling her hair. With the mild temperature, Elizabeth had shed her overcoat, showing her figure. Jack honked his horn and held up the picnic basket he’d prepared. She smiled and approached to inspect the freshly cooked pork chops. She said hello, opened the passenger door, and took her seat.
“Where’re you taking me?” she asked.
Jack didn’t hesitate. “Let’s go to the river.”
“I ain’t got my bathing suit,” she replied, winking, aware that, even in summer, nobody in their right mind would swim in the Volga’s icy waters.
“Then we’ll have to bathe naked.” He smiled and started up the car without waiting for a response.
They stopped on a hill near the Oka River from which they could see Gorky like a distant park dotted with little white bricks. The temperature was so pleasant that if not for the bottle of vodka that poked immodestly out from the basket, Jack would’ve sworn he was back in America. Elizabeth laughed as she told him about the progress she’d made learning Russian, which her teacher described as backward steps, if anything. Jack was happy. Elizabeth felt close and relaxed, as if they’d been going out together forever, and he loved the feeling. They chatted for hours about their lives, their routines, their projects. Finally, she admitted that she was sick of the Soviet Union, and that all she wanted was for the factory to start running smoothly so that her uncle Wilbur would be transferred back.
“And when you return to New York, what’ll happen to Viktor?” asked Jack, instantly realizing the poor timing of his remark.
“Nothing. Why does he come into it?”
Jack cleared his throat. He admitted that he’d assumed she and the official were engaged. She burst into brazen laughter. “Oh, don’t be so old-fashioned, Jack. We’re in the country of liberation! Haven’t you seen that you don’t have to be married to have children?”
Jack felt even more confused. “You’re thinking of having children?”
Elizabeth looked at Jack as if he understood nothing.
“Come on, let’s get back to Gorky,” she said, straightening her hat. “I don’t want you thinking we really are going to bathe naked.”
They met several times over the next few weeks. On Jack’s days off, they frequented the cool banks of the Oka, strolled through Gorky’s shopping quarter, and went to the parties that senior officials held at their homes. Whenever they met, Jack would try to take their relationship further. Yet she seemed to change her mind for no apparent reason, as if her desires shifted depending on which way the wind was blowing. No sooner did she seem to be interested and warming to him than she would become distant and speak to Jack haughtily, treating him like a stranger. When that happened, it riled Jack, making him question why he was even bothering with such a fickle young woman. But the moment Elizabeth gave him a smile, he was disarmed by her beauty.
“So, when will you go back to the States?” she asked him when they came out of the theater. That Saturday they’d seen The Cherry Orchard.
Jack had asked himself the same question a thousand times. He longed for New York’s nightclubs, its hustle and bustle, its avenues packed with colorful cars, but as a fugitive, he was aware that he’d never be able to enjoy them again. Elizabeth’s question made him wonder why he was staying at the Avtozavod when he already had enough money to move to any other European country. He guessed he was still in Russia because life was simple there, but that answer didn’t satisfy him. After all, the only things he liked about the Soviet Union were going out with Elizabeth and continuing to amass his fortune. “When I have enough so that you’ll agree to marry me,” he said without thinking.
She laughed as if he’d cracked a joke. Then she adjusted the emerald necklace that Viktor had given her and looked him in the eye. “Jack, honey, if I wanted to marry an aging millionaire, I could do it right now.”
To Jack’s surprise, on the last Sunday of August, Elizabeth agreed to have dinner with him in the American village. When he went to her mansion to fetch her, she appeared on the porch wearing a simple close-fitting dress and holding a bottle of vodka. Jack took the bottle and kissed her hand. Then he helped her into the car and drove slowly toward the village.
He’d offered Yuri the day off in exchange for giving the house a thorough clean and decorating the living room with flowers, but seeing the results, Jack realized the young man hadn’t quite understood the word thorough. As for the flowers, Jack wouldn’t have noticed the difference had Zarko’s nephew left a dish of salad on the table. Fortunately, Elizabeth seemed to pay no attention to it, and she made herself comfortable in a chair while Jack lit some candles. He poured her a glass of vodka and raised his own decisively. “To love in the Soviet Union,” he toasted.
“To love, plain and simple.” She drank her vodka in one shot.
They had drunk half a bottle by the time they set the main course aside and Jack got up to serve dessert. He took the chance to brush his lips against her neck.
Elizabeth stood to return the gesture, but he held her from behind, stopping her from turning around. As he kissed the back of her neck, he heard her breathing deepen. He prolonged the moment until she couldn’t hold on any longer and turned to seek out his mouth. When their lips met, Jack thought he would go crazy. He pressed her against him. He kissed her vigorously, then delicately, delighting in the flavor of her mouth, which half opened to allow their tongues to meet.
They let themselves fall onto a sofa in each other’s arms and continued to kiss, biting each other, caressing, searching with their hands for the regions of the other’s body they didn’t yet know. Jack slid his fingers under a dress that seemed to be shrinking away from his grasp, as if desire were making it move by itself. He unbuttoned her dress and searched for her breasts with his mouth. She offered them to him and groaned when he took possession of them. They slid onto the woolen rug as Elizabeth, anxious and evasive, nevertheless pressed her bare skin against Jack’s torso.
When Jack entered her, he thought he would die. He wanted to pinch himself to make sure it was really happening, but her groans were as real as her mouth, as the hands that pulled him closer and held him, as real as the slender legs that were wrapped around his waist and the fresh sweat that pearled on her face. He kissed her until his lips hurt, and kept kissing, kept moving, madly and then slowly, with fire and then tenderness, with love and with desire, while their bodies blazed, reared, and convulsed, faster and faster, until they exploded together. Then, exhausted, they fell asleep, holding each other.