Well, why not? I had money in my pocket, all my army pay I’d never had the chance to spend, and Lady Death wanted some life for a change. Lady Midnight wanted to put on a little sunshine.
“Would you mind waiting out here?” I asked Yuri. “Or are you going to follow me into the dressing room?”
“No, Comrade Pavlichenko. That is not part of my directive.”
“Small favors,” I muttered, and went in. Coming out half an hour later with a shopping bag in hand, I saw an unpleasant sight: Alexei leaning up against the lamppost, smoking a cigarette with Yuri.
“Is the pretty lady out buying herself pretties?” my husband asked.
“What, you’re going to report me for succumbing to Western decadence?” I retorted. “When half the men in this delegation raced out to buy lipsticks and nylons by the sack for both their wives in Moscow and their Bolshoi Ballet mistresses?”
“Everyone knows the perks of trips like these. Nylons and lipsticks are only the beginning.” Alexei fell into step beside me. He’d already kitted himself out in a Western-style suit, a fine supple tweed that draped his long lean body with casual elegance. “There’s one of those Hot Shoppes around the corner—a big improvement on the cheburek cafés in Odessa. Let me buy you a root beer.” He glanced back as my minder fell into step a dozen feet behind us. “Yuri too.”
“Root beer is not part of my directive,” Yuri said stolidly.
“Mine either.” I’d been told there was a park not far from here, so I reversed down Decatur Street instead. A sniper could look at only so many shop windows before yearning for trees and brush.
Or maybe it was cover I was looking for. The spot between my shoulder blades had been feeling itchy since I read that scrawled threat this morning, and now here was Alexei pressing me, too.
“Wait up, kroshka.” My husband tagged along behind me, Yuri behind him. Thank goodness Alexei hadn’t been deemed important enough to also have a minder （and oh, but that must be annoying him） or else it would have looked like I was leading a parade. “Have that root beer with me. You’ll like it.”
“What I don’t like is taking anything from you, Alexei.”
“You used to call me Alyosha. Not in public, but when it was just the two of us, and you weren’t talking so much as moaning.”
I stopped on the corner of Decatur and Blagden, nearly bumping into a woman with a patent leather pocketbook. “Alexei, what do you want? Why are you being like this?”
His eyes danced. “Being like what?”
I nearly shrieked. It wasn’t fair that he could still get under my skin this way. It wasn’t fair. “Forget it. I’m going for a walk in the park.”
“Then I’ll walk with you. Would you mind falling back out of earshot, Comrade Yuripov?” Alexei asked. “A man wants a private discussion with his wife, eh?”
Yuri fell back another twenty feet without consulting me. It wasn’t broadly known in the delegation that Alexei was my husband, but clearly it was no surprise to the NKVD. I sighed, tempted to tell Alexei I’d rather walk out into a live fire zone than walk with him, but if my husband and I were going to have it out, better to do that away from the embassy. So I shrugged, taking a fast clip in the direction the hotel clerk had told me Rock Creek Park lay. I was expecting some tame stretch of city-bound grass, but it turned out to be a proper stretch of woods in the heart of the capital. What looked like miles of brush and boulders and trees, some clinging to their green needles, some weathering to red and gold autumn glory. Even trailing my irritating entourage, I couldn’t help but be enchanted.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a hamburger instead?” Alexei said, still ambling along at my side as I threaded in among the beeches and oaks. “I tried something called a Mighty Mo—charred meat and flavorless white bread, strangely addictive. I wouldn’t mind trying more American food. Seeing more of this country . . .”