“How much longer could this possibly last”, she thought, again smiling and raising a glass to Russian-American friendship. “One more champagne toast and I might expire”, she muttered to herself under her breath. Under normal circumstances, something like this group travel banquet in Moscow, in what is incontrovertibly one of the world’s most fascinating cities, would be enough excitement for her.
But tonight a certain handsome young Russian businessman was to be waiting for her right outside of this glorious old-faded beauty, the Hotel Nationale near The Kremlin. In the end, to her slight and growing dismay, the gala party for the Sister City group ran so late she had to run downstairs barely making it at the appointed time, but just to have to tell Vitaly, who was standing outside on the sidewalk in the cold autumn air smoking cigarettes, that they weren’t done quite yet.
He was totally unfazed by the delay. “I wait”, he said. She went back up, thinking, “Now I just have to try and sneak out of the banquet hall without causing gossip or disappointment among my mostly older group of slightly tipsy citizen diplomats.” The vixen. The minx. Is that what they would say? That she was perhaps like one in heat.
Actually, if you wonder what people are thinking about you, fact is, they probably aren’t, she remembered her Grandfather saying, a saying that stuck with her and served her well.
There was, blessedly, a break in the, well, uncannily loud Russian folk music, which did indeed amplify the experience of all who were attending the banquet, with possible hearing loss she supposed. Then she clearly saw her chance. Two couples, the Mayor and her husband with the elderly Cantrells had just, collectively, bade their goodnights, while the remaining dozen couples, still talking loudly, full of animation and joy danced awkwardly to the balalaika trio. Those who remained were seriously drinking copious amounts of vodka and Russian champagne.
In an instant, she realized with absolute certainty they weren’t paying any attention to her at all. “Even though I’m their hard-working tour leader on this trip and at this event”, she mused, grinning to herself, then calculated that it was, if ever, just the perfect time to slip away.
So she made her move. She grabbed her full-length black wool coat from the coat rack. Thus attired, she swiped two full bottles of room temperature Sovietskoye Champanskoye off the still heavily-laden table, cloaking them each under an armpit. Then stopping briefly at the — as she expected of course — foul-smelling Ladies Room, she touched up her lipstick, fluffed her hair, and headed down in the ancient and creaky elevator. With some trepidation for the mechanism, which was ultimately faithful in its task, as she walked out, she barely even noticed the ornate marble floors and gilt-crowned pillars of a triumphant but long-gone pre-Soviet era. Then she burst through the massive front doors into the chilly autumn night, and, glancing to the right, she saw him in an instant, about twenty yards away, again surrounded by a group of men. They were, all of them, drinking, smoking and laughing loudly like a group of street hooligans.
Oh no. She thought, “Now that’s not the kind of man I thought I was meeting”, and stopped still on the stairs, sort of holding her breath. But in a matter of seconds, “just a matter of seconds” she would replay in her mind, like a sort of slow-motion newsreel that she could view in private for years to come, she moved out to the street.
...===. . .
He dropped his nasty cigarette on the dirty trash-filled Moscow street, then spoke a word to his band of younger miscreants, who quickly disappeared as if by the wave of a magic wand. Just as quickly, his hand went up, and seemed to just cause a sleek black car to slide right in front of her. He strode over, took her firmly by the elbow, and guided her to the back seat of the car, jumping in next to her, and forcing her, gently, to the driver’s side.
He gave short instruction to the driver and the car sped away. Just as she felt his arm easily and most confidently go around her shoulders, she began to shake, inside, with anticipation, fear, and the sense of potential for new adventure, he then said, “Don’t worry, you’re with me”.
She totally melted. Breathe, she thought, breathe, then stammered, “Wh-where are we going?”, trying her most relaxed-looking smile, realizing she’d previously not given a single thought to what this date might, actually, entail.
“My home, of course!” He said, with his grin and a mischievous twinkle of the eye, to say the least. She felt a flutter deep in her abdomen, that rose to her heart and throat. Again, she forced a calming breath. “Of course”, she thought, nodding somewhat senselessly as her adrenaline level continued to rise. No doubt her dilated pupils made the vista of central Moscow at night so much more impressive, as they took off to the unknown.
She then did her best to calmly and quietly assess the situation to herself. She’s in the back of a black private car. She’s in the capital of the former Soviet Union, thousands of miles from lovely, warm and safe central-coast California speeding recklessly (as all Russian drivers, of course, speed recklessly), across the enormous city of Moscow.
Out in the Night, with a Russian Man she Barely Knew. And, of course, no one in the world would know where she was should something bad happen.
“Oh great!”, she thought. “This is either the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life, or possibly the best thing ever”. She then mused that it’s kind of a thin line there, after all, in the grand scheme of one’s life, as she sat back, composed her smile again, to her most relaxed and care-free, the looked into his dancing blue eyes and relaxed, actually relaxed, against his strong, and very masculine presence.
___+++_=_++
In short time, after the dazzling display of lights and traffic in the chaos and wonder of teeming Moscow at night, in the heady and hopeful days of the late ’80s, she and Vitaly finally arrived.
She was not overly disturbed by the grimy exterior of this, as gray, blocky and bleak as any other Soviet-era concrete high-rise apartment building she had seen. She obviously wasn’t impressed, but she knew, having seen the interior of several Russian homes on her previous trip, not to judge a book by its cover. So, surely not knowing exactly what to expect, she was surely keen to see what this man’s life looked like from inside.
Vitaly hopped out with a bounce and came around to her side to open the door, laughing as he rescued the champagne bottles from under her armpits. Knees a bit weak, shaken from the ride, she just about crawled out of the car. Without more than a curt dismissal from this man with the blue eyes, the driver sped away.
He then gave a dramatic bow, with a sweeping gesture as if to enter a castle, and
she bravely, perhaps stupidly, walked first into the dark entryway, noting with some alarm that the car had immediately departed. So, “no going back now!”.
As they waited for the elevator, he managed to convey, with perhaps growing English skills, that this was “the best neighborhood” in the sprawling city of Moscow, “is safe”, he said, as the door closed in the creaky, unpolished elevator car. The light flickered slightly as they began their uncertain, to her, ascent.
“Good God!”, she was thinking, “I hope there isn’t a fire”, as the car stopped and they walked out to the fourth floor, to the smells of cooking cabbage and who-knew-what-else. After navigating the dark, dirty hallways, on the approach to his door, when they finally entered his place, she was delighted to find his two-room flat clean, modern, and cozy. Comfortable and admittedly decently decorated for a bachelor pad. He helped her take off her heavy wool coat, hanging it in the entry, then taking the bottles to the kitchen, after pointing to the two large, overstuffed, brown armchairs in the main room.
She dropped, thankfully, into one of them, taking a moment to catch her breath and survey the room while he puttered in the kitchen. A large number of Russian books were stacked everywhere, on shelves, the floor and scattered across the only two tables in the room. Her chair faced a wide Danish-style chest of drawers topped with some colorfully-embroidered fabric topped by a large TV. One wall displayed a colorful, strange-looking movie poster, as if it was from a children’s movie. It caught her eye.
When her eyes wandered again, she noticed that gracing another wall was an old black-and-white photo in a gilded frame of a stern-faced couple, probably his parents. They seemed to stare, coldly, right out at her. The bed was neatly made, just at the other end of the room. And she felt her face blush, just looking at it. Definitely in trouble, indeed.
Then Vitaly returned with the stuff they, one might say generously, call champagne, pouring generously into two tall, sturdy glasses. “Spaceba,” she ventured, her “thanks” in Russian. She took the glass, most grateful to have a drink and calm the butterflies and flashes of heat she was, admittedly, prone to. Vitaly sat in the adjacent chair, taking her hand and looking deeply into her hazel eyes, toasting “Nahzdrovia”, with a wicked grin.
“To my health!”, she thought. Well, by this point she certainly hoped so.
For a man who spoke very little English only three days ago, his vocabulary seemed to have improved magically. When Linda and he had met in Yalta, their conversation was slow and halting, taking a fair amount of guesswork, like an elaborate game of charades, just to get to each point. Nonetheless they managed to talk for hours across a wide terrain of topics including his somewhat sketchy description of his “biznis”. And his current career as a film actor. Yes, the movie poster on the wall was one of his early roles as a hero in a children’s movie. A classically trained dancer, though not good enough to perform professionally, as he readily admitted, he finally had gotten his degree in ship-building from the prestigious Ship Building University in Leningrad. So he had, after all, quite the resume.
She discovered in the course of their conversation that his muscular, sturdy build was from his earning a black belt in a Russian martial art call Sempo. Directing a movie in America was his greatest dream and he spent quite a bit of time trying to express the various plot lines and settings, most of which were lost on her.
None the less, she was very impressed with his enthusiasm for the venture, as he whirled like a dynamo and gesturing wildly with his hands.
It was getting quite late. Everything they’d spoken about in their newly-invented quasi-English/Russian patois, left her with a sense of intrigue. His charming and clearly intelligent personality, sharp wit and bawdy sense of humor, as well as his confidence, muscled stature, mischievous blue eyes and sensuous full lips, definitely had her entranced.
He’d been a total gentleman all night as the chemistry grew.
Then he abruptly stood, walked over to the Scandinavian dresser, opened the bottom drawer to pull out two white terrycloth robes, handing one to her, pointing to the bathroom, grinning confidently, giving her a gentle push. It took her a moment to realize what he had in mind, then grinned and willingly complied.
When she came out wearing the robe, he was also in the matching robe. Gently taking her hand, leading her to the bed.
No further language skills were required. They fell in love that very Moscow night wrapped up in each other’s skin and dreams, oblivious to anything outside of that room. Delicious kisses transported them to a magical place of naked passion without words, or borders, visas, group tours or any other, perhaps even marital, commitments to consider. She didn’t even think about how it would look when she walked into the hotel lobby in the morning. Wearing the same cocktail dress worn to the banquet. Smitten.
=_=--+_+
Yes, she was in trouble. Big trouble. But, the good kind. Life-changing, mind-blowing, no-one-can-believe-it kinda trouble.
“And this is only the beginning”, she thought. And I tell you, dear reader, it is only the beginning....
A nearly twenty-eight-year-old from Mid-Coast California, Linda was already a well-known travel agent in Santa Barbara. She was born in Louisiana, and had never graduated high-school, having chosen to go on to college in Austin, TX instead.
But then she moved to Malibu, following her mother (and her best friend), who moved there after their career successes with Mary Kay. Her mother had the pink Cadillac even. All it took was one visit on college break, and California was going to be home. Her BA in English she obtained at UC Santa Barbara after having met her future husband at a local in Malibu, the Crazy Horse, when she was sixteen. He was six-foot-four, huge shoulders, and utterly hilarious.
So married young she was, some time after graduating. It was a very dynamic time, the energy of the sun, sand, beach and drug-fueled party culture of the campus a backdrop when they moved to Isle of Vista, renting a house on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was a paradise populated with the vibrant recklessness of youth and a most lovely, persistent breeze rustling the palm trees every day.
The sheer density of the population, living four to six each per bedroom, meant there was plenty of resource to dedicate the parties, which never seemed to end.
A tall brunette with fine manners and a lovely Southern lilt, she had had no trouble having people convinced she was eighteen, including her employer, the Sand Castle Restaurant, where she was hostess several nights a week.
And yes, she was still married to Charles, and yes, now she really was in trouble. So, she tried forcing her mind to wander. She remembered how, as a hostess she would take folks to their table at the Sand Castle, being appropriately hostly as she thought she should be, and then one day, the boss took her aside and said, “If you ever lose that accent of yours, you’ll be fired, okay?”
Okay.