in Russia can be used as hostages if hubby suddenly develops a desire to transgress against the mob.
Not American wives, not California girls.
Who don't know the code, who ask questions, who make demands, who can't keep their mouths shut, who get unhappy and when they get unhappy get divorces.
Marry a Russian girl, Dani tells him when he sees Pamela on his arm two, three, four dates in a row.
'I want children,' Nicky argues.
'Have Russian children,' Dani advises. He whips open a catalog of Russian would-be brides eager to immigrate. 'Pick one out. Any one and she's yours. There are some real beauties here.'
And there are, Nicky agrees. Stunning Russian women, but that's the point. He doesn't want a Russian woman. He wants an American woman. He doesn't want to strengthen the bond, he wants to break it.
And they don't get it.
Mother does.
She sees exactly what's happening.
'It is a slap in the face,' she says.
'No, it isn't.'
'You are a Russian.'
'I'm an American.'
Nicky Vale.
The turnaround in one generation, but to make that a reality he needs to regenerate. To have children.
American children.
Besides which, he has to have her. She's driving him insane. He knows she dresses to provoke him. Shows him the tops of her white breasts, her long thighs. Wears perfumes that make him hard the second she walks into the room. Kisses him with full warm lips and swipes her tongue across his in a way that makes him feel that tongue on his cock, and then she breaks away and smiles at him to let him know that she knows exactly what he's thinking, and laughs at him.
Or she'll press against him. Press her breasts into his arm or his back, or worse — no, better; no, worse — press her pussy against the front of his pants and say, 'Oh, baby, I wish we could.'
'We can,' he'll say.
'No,' she'll say, frowning. Then a little whimper, her lips in a frustrated pout. 'It's against my beliefs.'
Then she rolls against him, sighs, pouts, and steps away.
Sometimes even touches herself over her dress and looks at him with sad eyes and he knows what she's doing. Knows that she is a cockteaser extraordinaire, knows this, but can't help himself.
Maybe because she represents to him everything that is so close but just out of reach.
America.
California.
A new life.
A turnaround inside one generation.
And he can see her as the mother of his American children. She is beautiful, free, happy in that careless California way that just doesn't carry the long tragic burden that Russians bear. And if his children come from her, in his mind they come somehow cleansed of all that history.
And besides, he has to have her.
'Then have her as a mistress,' Mother says. 'If you absolutely must have the little tease, then set her up in an apartment, give her money, give her presents, screw yourself silly until you're tired of her, then give her more money and say goodbye, but don't marry her.'
If you marry her, Mother says, she will take your heart, your money, and your children because this is America and in America the father has no rights. She will ruin you. She's a gold digger.
'Marry this piece of trash,' she says, 'and she will leave you in the rubbish in her place.'
Which, of course, cuts it.
Nicky gives Pam a ring that night.
They marry two months later.
On their honeymoon, on the lawn of the private villa on Maui, she sheds her flowered dress for him. Invites him inside her.
Where she is hot sweet honey.
Liquid gold.
Nicky remembers her neck, the smell of vanilla in the nape of her neck as he stood behind her and put his lips and his tongue against the sweet-smelling white skin below her ear, below her black hair. How she moved against him so he ran his hand down the scooped neck of her dress and felt her breast. Felt the flimsy bra give way and then he rolled her nipple between his thumb and finger and she didn't object so he slid the dress down over her breasts then held them in his hands and slid his thumbs back and forth across the nipples and how she brought her hand around — to stop him, he thought at first, but she just held her palm to the back of his head — so he took one hand and ran it down her stomach, and down, and she was wet.
He remembers the sound she made — mmm-hmmm, a sound of unashamed pleasure — and he rubbed her with a finger and she sank back into him.
It's funny what you remember, he thinks again, because what he remembers most is the smell of her neck and the flowered dress. What it looked like as he pushed it over her breasts, and down around her hips, and how it looked lying rumpled at her feet as she stepped out of it, and laid down on top of it, and held her arms up to invite him to come into her. Strange, he thinks, but that moment was America to him, was California to him, that open- armed, open-legged invitation to unabashed pleasure. The sound of California to him is and always will be: mmm- hmmm.
And he remembers her wide purple eyes when later she wrapped her legs around him and pushed him deeper in and held him there as she climaxed, and then he did, and then he laid his face into her neck.
And how she said, 'Kiss my neck and I can't stop you.'
'Why didn't you tell me this much, much earlier?'
'Because then I couldn't have stopped you.'
Then she scratched his back with the diamond of the engagement ring he'd given her.
Mmm-hmmm.
71
For quite a while they're happy in their California life.
The money rolls in as they ride the top of the real estate boom. She becomes a south coast housewife. Mornings in the gym, lunch with the ladies, afternoons harassing the interior decorators who come to make the house a showpiece. Or getting her hair, her face, her nails done at this salon or that, usually with the same ladies with whom she'd lunched.
Parties in the evening. Lovely friends, beautiful people.
She becomes pregnant quickly, as he sensed she would, her body a lush field of spring wildflowers. Natalie is born with Daddy in the delivery room doing that American thing, coaching his wife's breathing. But little coaching is needed. Pamela was serenely pregnant — cheerful, relaxed, happy. The birth is as easy as births can be.
'I am a Russian peasant woman,' she jokes. 'The next baby I'll just drop in a wheat field.'
'You are hardly a peasant,' Nicky says.
She reminds him that she grew up on a farm.
'Knock me up again,' she tells him.
He's delighted to.
Michael's birth is also easy.
Pamela, Nicky thinks, is made to be a mother. She is inseparable from the children. He has to cajole her to get a sitter and go out even once a week. He feigns annoyance, but secretly it pleases him.
That his American wife is a homebody. Content to be with her children. To take them on long walks, play
