A Date You Can't Refuse (6 page)

“That we know of,” Alik added, under his breath.

“Unless you count Olive Oyl,” Kimberly said, entering the room and heading for the deck. “Hello, Wollie. Let's eat outside.”

“My father should've been a Mormon,” Alik said, taking my arm and escorting me onto the deck. “Hundreds of children, dozens of wives. That would've made him happy.”

“I am happy,” Yuri said.

“Wollie, Alik's field is psychology,” Kimberly said. “He can't help himself, he psychoanalyzes everything that moves. Damn, there goes my visor.” She leaned over the deck, watching her red visor ride the breeze
down into the canyon. She wore a sporty dress, tight and sleeveless, showing off a flat stomach and muscular arms.

Parashie looked through a telescope, into the canyon. “I see it, the hat.”

Donatella joined us, giving Alik a kiss. “Hello,
ragazzo
. Kimberly it is too breezy to eat outside. We shall be covered in soup.” And back into the house she went, with all of us following. What was it like for her, watching her ex-husband live out his life with his trophy wife? And Kimberly? How was it for her to live and work with her husband's previous wife and a knockout stepson her own age?

“I don't psychoanalyze, by the way,” Alik said to me. “I'm not an analyst. But I want to do a Myers-Briggs on you, Wollie. After lunch. The short version. It'll be fun.”

“You and your Myers-Briggs,” Kimberly said. “Wollie, it's the standard psychology student pickup technique. I'd lie if I were you.”

“What is a pickup technique?” Parashie asked.

“American girls,” Dontalla said, “do they fall for this silliness?”

“Stepmother,” Alik replied, “you would be shocked.”

“Come, come,” Yuri said. “Wollie has just met us. Wollie, you're family now, and
en famille
, informality rules. When the trainees arrive, we become more discreet.”

“We try,” Alik said.

“Respect,” Yuri said, “for cultural and religious backgrounds is imperative. We resist sexual innuendo and avoid the careless use of the name of God.”

“So I guess Pope jokes are out,” I said.

Alik put an arm around my shoulder. “Not to me. I love Pope jokes.”

“Stop flirting with her, Alik,” Kimberly said. “She might not like you.”

“She doesn't know me well enough to dislike me, Stepmother.”

“Shut up,” Kimberly said.

“This must be my orientation,” I said.

“In fact,” Yuri said, “I planned to do a proper orientation this afternoon, but Zagreb just called. I fly to New York tonight. Kimberly, make that happen, will you, my love?”

Kimberly walked over to a keypad on the wall and pressed a button. “Grusha, are you there? Pack up Yuri again. He's going to New York.”

“Lunch first,” Grusha's voice barked back.

We seated ourselves at the conference table, joined by a middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Nell and avoided eye contact. No one explained who she was.

Grusha came through an archway with pot of soup. Alik went to take it from her and was told to sit and not treat her like a weakling.

“Yes, Grandma,” Alik said, and he winked at me.

I turned to Yuri. “Grusha is … your mother?”

“My mother-in-law,” Yuri said. “From my first marriage.”

So Yuri's household was composed of a wife, an ex-wife, the mother of a dead wife, the son of the dead wife, the daughter of an as-yet-unidentified mother, and Nell, sitting next to me.

And me, of course, taking over a dead woman's job.

“You,” Grusha said to me, ladling soup into Wedgwood bowls. “No beets, no sauerkraut, no liver. So. Now you eat.”

I looked across the table to see Alik smiling at me.

“Welcome to
la famiglia,”
he said.

Lunch conversation centered around cars. The Porsche I'd seen Yuri driving to court turned out to be Alik's, and was the automotive black sheep of the family. “The Audi's out of the shop this week,” Kimberly said, munching on celery, “so we can take the Porsche in.”

“To do what?” Alik asked.

“To convert it to biofuel.”

“Dream on,” Alik said. “Can't be done. First, it's not diesel—”

“Stanislas says he'll be able to—”

“Kimberly, you're not feeding bacon grease to my Porsche. Forget it.”

“Honest to God, Alik, how can you morally justify that car?” Kimberly asked.

“It is no better than the Corvette,” Donatella said. “Bourgeois in the extreme.”

Yuri broke off a piece of crusted bread, then said, “I am not convinced
biofuel is the Holy Green Grail. I want to see agricultural impact numbers before we do more conversions.”

“You miss the point,” Donatella said. “It is hypocritical to teach trainees that each action is scrutinized by the media while Alik drives his gas-guzzler. There is a photo of him in the Porsche in the current issue of
Statement
. If you have no restraint, Alik, at least cultivate discretion. Think how that plays in Budo-Koshelyovo district.”

“Do you really think
Statement's
circulation extends to Belarus?” Alik asked.

The blare of an alarm, loud and insistent, assaulted our ears. From inside the house.

Everyone stood. Uncertain, I stood too. Yuri took a gadget from his pocket and pressed buttons. Alik moved to the wall and picked up a phone, covering his other ear to talk.

“What is it?” Kimberly asked Yuri. Grusha entered from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, asking the same thing.

Yuri shook his head, still on his keypad. “Deer. Coyote. Or system malfunction.”

Donatella went out onto the deck and looked through the telescope.

“Donatella!” Yuri said in a voice so sharp that I jumped. “In here. Now.”

Donatella turned and frowned, but she came inside, sliding the glass door behind her.

As she did so there was a sharp crack.

I flinched.

Grusha cried out in Russian and pulled Parashie away from the table as if she were a rag doll. Nell, my mouselike dining companion, looked at me with wide eyes.

There was a second of silence and then Kimberly left the room. I stared at the sliding doors, looking for the mark of the impact, but there was nothing obvious. Alik, still on the phone, took my arm and pulled me back from the table to where Grusha stood with Parashie.

Everyone stared out at the mountains.

Alik handed his phone to his father. Yuri listened, then said, “What's the range it can pick up? … Yes, southwest of the main house … All
right. Let me know.” He hung up and addressed Donatella. “What were you thinking, going out there like that?”

“You said it was a coyote,” she replied.

“I was wrong.”

The blaring ended as abruptly as it had begun.

Yuri returned to the table and sat. We all followed. Kimberly came in, accompanied by a dog of uncertain breed, big, yellow, and overweight. “Olive Oyl, down,” she said and took her seat. Olive Oyl put one paw on Kimberly's shoe, collapsed, and prepared to nap.

“At least the system is fixed,” Parashie said. “The last time someone shot at—”

“Parashie.”

The single word from Yuri stopped her. She dropped her eyes to her soup.

I watched Yuri. He stared at his daughter, then turned to me and smiled.

“Now, then,” he said. “Where were we?”

O
nce lunch was over, people took off in all directions, Yuri to catch a plane, Donatella and Kimberly to shop, Grusha to cook, and Parashie to study. “Nell tutors me,” she explained, walking me to the foyer. “Yuri wants me to catch up to American kids and go next year to school, to tenth grade. But I like it at home.”

“Wollie,” Alik said, phone in hand. “I have an errand to run, but I still need an hour with you. Can you meet me at five in the Valley? We'll have drinks.”

“Alik you are just meeting Wollie and already you date her?” Parashie said.

“Shut up, brat,” he said, and put her in a choke hold, a staple of big brothers everywhere, that made her scream with laughter and engage in a counterattack.

The minute I was in my car, I tried to call my Uncle Theo, who was waiting to hear about my new job, but there was no cell signal. How inconvenient. Hadn't anyone in the Milos family used cell phones that day? No; they'd all been landlines.

I felt a chill of isolation that dissipated only when I was outside the gates of Palomino Hills. This was a problem. For as long as I was at the compound, I'd be cut off. I could make calls from the Milos phones, but
those could conceivably be overheard by anyone in the household. And, of course, by the FBI, if they were indeed wiretapping them.

I told myself that this was a minor logistical problem, but it added to my growing sense of unease. Chai, my predecessor, was dead. There was no reason to think her death had sinister overtones, but I did. I considered Joey's advice, that I construct a character who'd be unfazed by this. The tough cookie.
Big deal
she'd say.
So the last social coach, drove off a cliff. You'll stay on the road
.

Two miles later my phone churned out a Mozart sonata, announcing a return to cell signals and one missed call. I hit my voice-mail button.

“Miss Shelley?” a familiar voice said. “It's Ulf. At Costco on Canoga. I've got your special order in. You can pick it up anytime after six.”

I smiled, my anxiety lifted.
Ulf?

I glanced at my watch, then dialed a number and spoke to voice mail. “I'll be in around six-thirty to pick up my special order. Oh, wait.” I did a quick calculation of traffic, geography, and my date with Alik. “Make that seven-thirty And Ulf? Glad to hear the package is in. I'm dying to open it.” That, I figured, would get a return smile.

Only when I ended the call did I consider what kind of questions “Ulf” would be asking tonight. My smile faded.

Club Red Square had a grungy facade that was nonetheless dramatic, a one-story turreted affair on Ventura Boulevard between an abandoned building and a storefront psychic, due east of a Jack in the Box. The exterior was a bold red and black, hinting at exotic pleasures within for those bewitched by the color red painted, curtained, wallpapered, and upholstered onto every available surface.

Alik and I sat on a red leather sofa in the lounge area of the club. Happy hour was in progress, pounding music played, and while Alik processed the results of my Myers-Briggs personality test, I focused on the cocktail napkin on which I doodled, rather than the red and black plaid carpet, which I found nausea-inducing. Or Alik's high-cheekboned face, which I found pleasure-inducing—but only because graphic artists are drawn to beautiful angles, I told myself. This wasn't sexual attraction.
Unless the hookah smoke lingering in the air was exerting an aphrodisiacal effect. I had little experience of bars that offered hookahs.

My big dilemma had been whether to answer the Myers-Briggs personality test questions as me, Wollie, or as my tough-cookie character, whose face was even now coming to life on my cocktail napkin. Yes or No: You like to be engaged in an active and fast-paced job. Yes or No: You often think about humankind and its destiny. Yes or No: It's difficult to get you excited.

I decided to go with me, since this action-adventure girl was still evolving. As I drew her, for instance, I noticed dilated pupils and a hookah coming out of her mouth.

“Wollie, you're an INFP,” Alik said, reading his laptop screen.

“Is that good?” I asked.

“There's no good or bad. But welcome to the team. We need another introvert.”

“So I'm guessing that's me and Nell and Grusha against the rest of you.”

Alik laughed and made notes on a legal pad.

“What was Chai?” I asked.

“A bitch,” Alik said. “And a mistake. My bad. You, I'll take credit for.”

“What was Chai's problem?”

He looked up from his writing. “What makes you ask?”

“Just curiosity about someone who died so young and so suddenly. And I'd like to not make the same mistakes on the job, if I can help it.”

“You won't.”

“You can predict that”—I nodded to his computer—“from the Myers-Briggs test?”

“No. I can predict that from attachment theory.”

“Which is what?”

“It describes the way infants, six months to two years, relate to a primary adult. With a negative or indifferent caregiver, bonding doesn't occur, producing serious, usually lifelong problems. Chai's mother was a narcissist with a substance abuse problem, so Chai had issues. I'm sure you have issues too, but not those issues.”

“How can you tell?”

He leaned in. “I've watched you all day. I'm willing to bet your mother loved babies.” He was very sexy at close range. Other girls were eyeing him, and eyeing me because I was with him. And they all knew his name. Everyone here knew his name.

“She does love babies,” I said. “It's everyone else she has trouble with.”

Alik's smile was infectious and I smiled back. There was something troubling about what he'd just said, but I couldn't put my finger on it. So I went with what was more troubling. “Alik, this afternoon when someone shot at the deck—”

“What makes you think that it was a shot?”

I blinked. “I wasn't the only one to think so. Grusha was yelling.”

“Oh, I see. You picked up on Grusha's reaction.”

“I'd have to be deaf not to. Do you mean she hears gunshots where none exist?”

Alik reached for his wineglass. “My grandmother was a child in Brest in 1944 when the Red Army came through, ‘liberating’ it from the Germans. Her daughter, my mother, was shot and killed fifty years later during a trip to Budennovsk. Parashie's mother died in Minsk, while a guest of the secret police. So now when a car backfires in Calabasas or a squirrel drops an acorn on the roof, yes, my family takes cover.”

“Oh.”

He smiled. “Don't look so stricken. It all happened a long time ago. Life goes on. Anyway, welcome. Now you need to go home and pack.” He stretched out his hand, palm up. “Hand over the valet ticket. I'll walk you to your car.”

He paid for my parking and threw in an extra five, which endeared him to the parking guy. And me.

It wasn't until I was driving down Ventura Boulevard that I figured it out, what had bothered me. How could Alik have been watching me all day, as he put it? Unless he was exaggerating? Because I'd known him a total of two hours.