Some say she has, at the least, a little something to do with my situation. There’s the $20,000 for one thing. That I still see Luba occasionally for coffee says everything about her impressive ability to entertain. For two hours I am not depressed. “Got time for another, Lesley?” she asks, and smiles for the first time since we sat down. Luba’s gorgeous when she actually looks at you with her hazel eyes. She is tiny and very, very blonde and dresses in couturier black. “It’s about Nadia. You know. The friend with the Lada.” I never met Nadia, but for three weeks in the coldest winter of my life, I wore Nadia’s coat, delivered by another of Luba’s friends to a corner on Leninski Prospekt. I rode from Moscow to Yaroslavl in that warm old thing. I tramped along the Arbat to McDonald’s many afternoons clutching the coat’s frayed hood to my face, sat in office after official office in its olive-drabness, sometimes getting a surprise poke from a wayward goose feather.
