The truth: “You were wonderful in The Mark of Zorro, Mr. Fairbanks” was not my best conversational opening, considering the actor’s drunken response was “That wash my father Douglash Fairbanksh Shenior.”
“BRILLIANT AS ALWAYS, Mrs. Pavlichenko! Champagne?”
“Nu ladno, Mr. Jonson,” I sighed. In a dinner jacket, no less, but he just looked even more pop-eyed and irritating. I hastily took the flute of champagne before he could seize my hand. “I did not think you would come to Los Angeles.”
“I submitted a request to the First Lady herself! I had something very particular to ask you, and her people put me on the list today . . .”
I blinked, coming down from the now-familiar sensation of having shaken two hundred hands, posed for two hundred photographs, and answered two hundred inane questions. “Ask me what, Mr. Jonson?”
“Lyudmila, I’ve invited you to call me William,” he chided.
“William, are you intending to hear every speech I give from Washington to Fresno? How much free time do you have?”
Too much, clearly. I bolted half my champagne, hoping it would kill the headache I’d been nursing since Chicago. I hadn’t slept well after the Grant Park event—the First Lady assured me it had been a resounding success （“I wouldn’t be surprised if Reuters reported that speech worldwide, my dear”）， but ever since, I’d felt like I had spiders running down my spine. It wasn’t even due to the appearance of yet another ugly note in my hotel room （I’M GOING TO RIP YOUR SPINE OUT AND CHOKE YOU WITH IT, YOU STALIN-LOVING BITCH）—I realized I was becoming almost inured to the hateful things. Given that whoever sent them was following me on the road, it seemed fairly obvious it was someone in the delegation, and even more obvious that that person was Alexei, and though I’d registered this suspicion with delegation security in no uncertain terms, I refused to be frightened by the notes anymore, or give my husband the satisfaction of confronting him. No, it wasn’t the anonymous notes. Something else was bothering me, at a level so low I could hardly register it.
Something I’d seen, something I’d heard? On the front line I could keep watch so closely that not a single leaf’s fall in the nightscape before me would pass unnoticed, but this tour had been such an avalanche of sights and sounds, something easily could have got lost in the hubbub. And I felt like something had, but couldn’t put my finger on what.
“You know I am a widower, of course,” Mr. Jonson was still yattering.
“I do? That is, yes, da—”
“And I read in the newspaper that you too were married. You lost your husband at Sevastopol—”
My second, unfortunately. Not my first. “Yes,” I said, thinking how Lyonya would have roared with laughter at this entire exchange.
“Then, my darling Lyudmila, why should we not salve our mutual loneliness? If you would but make me the happiest of—”
“Chto?” My attention snapped back to the man who was now gripping my hand regardless of the empty champagne flute in it. “Mr. Jonson—”
“William!”
“Mr. Jonson, you are out of your mind.”
“From the moment I saw you speaking in New York, my heart told me you were the only possible wife for me. Will you marry me?”
“YOU COULD ACCEPT his offer, you know.”
I paused, buttered roll halfway to my lips. “Are you serious, Eleanor?” The First Lady had invited me to use her first name, but this was the first time I’d done so.
“Why not?” Across the small table from me, Eleanor unfolded her napkin. The delegation had taken to having meals privately after these receptions, since whenever the First Lady and I turned up to dine at a restaurant, the entire meal turned into hours of autograph signing. Kostia, Yuri, and the rest were already tucking in at the table across the private dining room. “Mr. Jonson is perhaps a trifle eccentric, but pleasant and well-bred,” Eleanor went on. “He has not deceived you as to his background and prospects: he is a widower, he does in fact own a metallurgical company, his finances and reputation are sterling. Such men are investigated,” she answered in response to my puzzled look, “when they begin following my entourage from state to state. Mr. Jonson’s proposal of marriage may be sudden, but it seems sincere.”