“Know? It’s his only hope,” said Leon. “He’s exhausted from thinking up new state secrets to keep her attention.”
These remarks, physically aimed at Essie, seemed also to be intended for Florence, who had hoped that the return to socializing in a group might restore a platonic amity to her and Leon’s relations. What she had not counted on was that their physical distance would present not a discouragement but a tantalizing obstacle. Florence was uncomfortably aware of Leon watching her every gesture (and had she not chosen the seat at the table that would offer him the best view of her profile, which he so claimed to admire?).
“It’s too bad no one gives a damn about Australia’s secrets,” concluded Seldon, before getting up from his seat with his drink in hand. “A toast, to our American friends!” he said. And though his knees seemed in danger of giving out under him, he held his glass elegantly from below with a linen napkin. “I propose that we bid a fond farewell to 1934, the first full year that this fine nation which has hosted us was recognized by the United States.”
“To no longer living in sin!” Leon exclaimed from his end of the table. “Za nas,” he suggested, urging the table to clink glasses, which everyone did happily.
“How much longer do we have for all this nostalgia?” Seldon said.
Michaels consulted his watch. “Twelve minutes left of good old ’34.”
With this information, Leon bluntly turned to Florence. “Time for a last dance?”
Florence let her napkin drop on the table. Glancing at Essie, she offered a wan smile of apology and stood up, a little languidly, to convey the impression that she was assenting out of politeness. Her efforts at conciliation were pointless; Essie’s acquaintance with romance had always been characterized by extravagant hopes and swift concessions. Florence drained her glass of champagne and rose to her feet. A physical sensation of plunging downward accompanied the column of champagne bubbles fizzling upward into her head, their sour effervescence absolving her of accumulated guilt. The unfairness of being allowed to pass ahead of the Russians in line because she’d addressed the Metropol’s guards in English. The injustice of abundance in the midst of scarcity. Her failure to discourage the attentions of a young man she couldn’t allow herself to be serious about. But it was New Year’s Eve, for heaven’s sake, and she was tired of feeling bad about everything. She set the glass down decisively and walked on ahead of Leon to the dance floor, not pausing to let him lead her by the hand.
The six-piece band was playing a recognizable number slightly altered by an accordion’s minor keys. The song sounded like a Slavic interpretation of an old Guy Lombardo hit, which it was. No words were being sung, but Leon Brink provided them murmuringly in her ear: Hear me—why you keep foolin’, little coquette? Making fun of the one that loves you…Breaking hearts you are ruling, little coquette. True hearts, tenderly dreaming of you-oo…
Florence’s reluctant smile gave him an opening, but she turned her face sideways just in time to avoid his lips. From the corner of her eye, Florence was watching her friend at the table. Wishing to look enticing, Essie had not worn her glasses. She was gazing about myopically while wetting her lips on the edge of her champagne glass like a kid faking devotion at communion. “Hmm, la dididi, little coquette…,” Leon sang. Like a rooting animal, he buried his nose in the fragrant updo at the back of Florence’s neck.
“Behave.”
“Why?”
“There’s people around.”
Leon looked about. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.” For the past three weeks, while he’d been taking her out, Leon had gotten nothing from this girl besides a few stolen smooches on wet park benches. What had been denied him in private he now pursued, like a deprived teenager, on the public arena of the dance floor.
“Stop it!” she said when he licked a bead of sweat from behind her ear.
“What’s the matter? You didn’t sit down beside me. And now…you waiting on some other fellow?”
“It’s nothing like that.”
Her answer was not, in the strictest sense, true. Being out with Leon, she’d been unable to stop thinking about the irony of her situation: of this forceful, big-talking youngster from Allen Street showing her the beautiful city to which she had hoped Sergey would be her guide. Even as she’d grown fonder of Leon, the ghost of Sergey continued to haunt their encounters. She saw him in the broad backs of the theater audience, in the dull-blond heads of hair at the park, a stock type of which Moscow had no shortage.
“What is it, then—have I got horns on my head?”
“Leon, I feel maybe I’ve been giving you a wrong impression.”
“And that would be…?”
“I’m quite a bit older than you. I’m almost twenty-five.”
Her confession generated a lopsided smile. “So what?”
And she realized he already knew.
“I promise,” he said, “not to hold your wanton cravenness against you, Madame Comrade, if we can set aside this divide in our generations.”
“You see! Even you think it’s…”
“What?”
“Unbecoming.”
“Unbecoming?” The word was so quaint it actually caused him to hiccup a laugh.
“Yes, when a woman is older than the man.”
“I am genuinely surprised by you, Miss Fein. I didn’t think you went in for that sort of petit-bourgeois philistinism.”
“Leon, you’re…you’re a boy, practically.”
“Now, there’s no need to call names. What about Krupskaya and Lenin? Were they unbecoming?” He swung Florence around.
“Oh, Leon.”
“And Catherine the Great and Potemkin! She had a good ten years on that powdered old queer.”
At last Florence gave in and laughed. “But she was the queen!”
Leon gave her a quick glance-over, as if to say, And this one here is not?