7
That day, as Dee Cameron was presented to the world in a newly unwelcome public light, Karen and Nat had gone on one of their morning walks, both of them singing “Fake Love,” “Boy in Luv,” “War of Hormone,” and other BTS hits, as well as songs from an educational cartoon about a silly Korean tiger who wants his mother to acknowledge him as a hyo-ja, or good son. They usually walked as far as the house where the pro-police flag fluttered black and blue and where the dogs ran up to the edge of the property in full bark. The pollen season for the devil grass, rye, and oat that had coated the Northeastern lawns like the hide of a well-cared-for terrier inspired a heightened allergy in Nat, and to temper her sneezes Karen put a high-end filtration mask on the child and a matching one on herself.
They were now walking past the sheep farm, the morning sun too weak to add bronze to their skin, as Nat hopped on one leg, or skipped on both, or ran in her dorky helter-skelter way down the tarmac, or turned around and did “the bull,” which meant plowing at full speed into Karen’s stomach, knocking the wind out of her a little, but all in this cheerful childish way, and Karen would shout her late mother’s happiest refrains, “Ohmama-ohmama-ohmama!”
Just then, a pickup truck （its color would remain a subject of contention） rounded the bend of Senderovsky’s property, and as it approached Karen and the child it appeared to pick up speed and tilt its snout toward them.
It happened within half a second. Usually, Nat liked to wave to passing cars （and what loveless creature would fail to return a child’s wave?）， but this time Karen barely had time to grab Nat and pull her out of the way.
According to Karen, the truck passed within half a foot of the child, at most, the wind swooshing past both of them like an added insult. “Fuck!” Karen yelled. She put her hand on her mouth as Nat looked up at her. “Sorry, honey, sorry.”
“What happened, Karen-emo?”
“That truck, it came so close to us. But it’s okay.”
“My daddy’s a bad driver, too,” Nat said. “Mommy took the booster seat out of his car so I can’t even ride with him to the store.”
Nat quickly plunged into her usual “anxiety talk,” and now the sheep were bleating as if they had seen the near accident （or was “accident” the wrong term?）， and two white horses on the other side of the road—a father and a son—nodded to them as they passed. A biplane from the nearby aerodrome flew directly above them, trimming the low clouds like an aerial lawn mower, and Karen looked up at its black iron cross on its bottom wing with suspicion. Nothing felt safe anymore.
She moved Nat to the grassy banks of the road and walked alongside her, keeping an arm out in front of her as if that alone would protect her from whatever came next round the bend.
That was her first thought: I had failed to protect the child.
Her second thought: Protect her from whom? It occurred to her now what the driver of the pickup had seen, an Asian woman walking with an Asian child, both of them wearing masks, at a time when people who put up black-and-blue flags honoring the police were inclined to despise such people.
So, as Asian mask wearers, she and Nat now constituted a double threat in the eyes of the homicidal motorist. And now she tried to backtrack and remember what she had seen beneath the glare that coated the truck’s windshield. Neatly trimmed, military-grade hair, it seemed like, a faint mustache and chin beard, sunglasses, a smirk? She couldn’t be sure, though. In fact, she may well have been thinking of the videos she had seen of the Midwestern policeman stepping on the innocent man’s neck. Maybe there really only was one singular white man staring down at the world from his official boots and his official vehicle and his official sunglasses hanging high over his official smirk. And the end result of all that officialdom? A one-ton truck passing within half a foot of an eight-year-old child.
Karen dropped off Nat with Vinod, who was staying in her bungalow, and knocked on the door of the Petersburg Bungalow. The landowner emerged in a cheerful caffeinated mood, printouts from the show’s second episode fluttering in his hands （INT. OLIGARCH’S SWISS HAREM—NIGHT）。 After his recent disgrace with Vinod, he was happy to receive any and all visitors. “Let’s smoke some morning pot like we used to!” he cried.
She told him of the incident with the truck and his daughter, her voice verging on the critical, as if this was somehow his fault, as if he had chosen this dangerous locale for his dacha on purpose.