“Yes. Why not? I don’t usually go out to lunch. But there’s an easy restaurant down the street. We have dinner there sometimes, and lunch on Sundays.” He knew it too, it was L’Avenue, a casual, friendly, popular restaurant full of models and movie people and people who worked in fashion, ordinary people, and sometimes celebrities, and they had tables on the terrace so Vladimir could smoke his cigars. It was a fashionable Parisian hangout, and only two blocks away. “I’ll get my coat,” she said, and came back with an enormous Russian sable Vladimir had bought her at Dior. It was a rich dark brown in contrast to her light hair, and she had put on tall dark brown suede boots, and was carrying a brown alligator Birkin and brown alligator gloves from Hermès. He smiled when he saw her.
“Are you sure you don’t mind being seen with me?” He had dressed to go to the gallery, and hang out in the sixth and seventh arrondissements, where the galleries were. He was wearing jeans, a heavy sweater, and a windbreaker that had seen better days, and brown suede boots too. He looked considerably less formal than she did, although he had had a good haircut and looked neat. And she wasn’t entirely unaware of his good looks, although she didn’t flirt with him. She didn’t know how to behave. Having lunch with young men close to her own age, who might even become friends, was entirely out of the realm of the possible for her. It was part of her unspoken agreement with Vladimir. She was entirely his in every way, body, mind, and soul. That left no room for anyone else in her life, which was how he wanted it, and she knew that too. She told herself, as they walked to the restaurant, that this was a one-time exception she would make, and it would do no harm. And this time, with no boat crew to report to him, Vladimir would never know.
Once at the restaurant, they sat down at a table, and she felt awkward with him for a few minutes. He had turned off his phone so no one would bother him, and he gazed at her intensely, as though trying to understand her, and drink her in, but she felt as though he already knew her. They made casual conversation until they ordered, a salad for her and a veal chop for him. The food was good there, and the restaurant was busy. She felt like a child at Christmas, looking around her. She lived in Vladimir’s shadow, and never spoke to his friends, and they never spoke to her. The Russian businessmen she saw him with only spoke to each other. Even when they had women with them, they never addressed them. The only thing that interested all of them was work, and the deals they were making. Women were for decoration, and entertainment later. And Vladimir was no different. It was what she was used to.
They chatted inanely for a few more minutes, and then Theo couldn’t stand it any longer. He had lived with her in his studio for months and felt as though he knew her. It made him braver about asking her what he didn’t know.
“I don’t know how to say this nicely,” he began cautiously, “and I know it’s none of my business, but I feel as though I know you after painting you, and there is always something familiar about you every time we meet, as though we have a connection. I think I want to understand you better…Why are you with him? Do you love him? It can’t just be the money. I don’t even know you, but that doesn’t seem like you.” He had great faith in her, even though they were essentially strangers, but there was a certain purity about her. She just didn’t seem like the sort of girl who would sell herself for what she could get. The expensive clothes she was wearing and her surroundings seemed to mean nothing to her. And surely not enough to sell her soul.
“He saved me,” she said simply, looking deep into Theo’s eyes, and he could tell that she was being honest with him. “I would have died in Moscow. I’d be dead by now probably if he hadn’t rescued me. I was starving and sick, and freezing cold.” She hesitated for a moment before opening up to him. But she felt an odd connection between them too. “I grew up in a state orphanage. My mother abandoned me when I was two, and died two years later. She was a prostitute. I didn’t have a father. When I left the orphanage, I went to work in a factory. I didn’t have enough money to buy food or warm clothes or medicine…women died in my dormitory every month, from illness or despair…Vladimir saw me and tried to take me away from all that, and I wouldn’t let him. I turned him away for a year, and then I got pneumonia and I couldn’t do it alone anymore. I was very sick. He took me to his apartment and nursed me himself, and when I got better, I didn’t want to go back…I couldn’t…he was too good to me…I didn’t want to leave…he takes care of me, and where would I go if I left him? I can’t go back. He’s kind to me and he takes care of me, and I take care of him too. I have nothing to give him except myself. I am grateful for what he did for me then, and what he does now…it’s a special life,” she said quietly, well aware that it might shock him. She felt as though she owed Theo an explanation. But it seemed like a fair exchange most of the time, and people like Theo, and most people, had no idea what that kind of poverty and hardship was like, how hopeless it made life seem, and there was no way out. “He understood. He grew up poor too, very poor. He still has nightmares about it. We both do. You can never go back to that. I don’t care about what he gives me, although it’s nice, but what matters is that he protects me and keeps me safe.”
“Safe from what?” Theo probed deeper into her eyes and heart.
“Life. Dangerous people sometimes, who want to hurt him, or me.” She thought of the previous summer in Sardinia when she said it.
“I’m sure he can be dangerous too.” Vladimir had that quality about him, and Natasha seemed so innocent that Theo wondered if she was aware of it, but she wasn’t as na?ve as she looked. She had seen and guessed a lot in seven years, although she would never admit it to a stranger, out of loyalty to Vladimir.
“I’m sure he can be dangerous,” she said honestly. “But not to me. He would never let anyone hurt me. I respect what he has built, from nothing. I admire him for that. He’s a kind of genius, in business.”
“My father was too, as a painter,” Theo volunteered. “They’re never easy people. Don’t you miss having your freedom, or are you freer than I think? Do you do whatever you want?” She laughed at the question, and he was curious about her life, if it was as it seemed or different.
“And what would I do with freedom? Go to school? Have friends? That would be nice. But who would protect me if I didn’t have Vladimir?”