Page 128 of The Oligarch's Daughter

“Yet you are Superman.”

She sank into a leather club chair next to his. “I didn’t have a chance to talk to you at dinner,” she said. “You were so far away. Arkady never seats me near you.” The night veiled her face.

“It’s a long table.”

“Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Very much.”

“Tatyana gets seasick sometimes. Is she seasick?”

“I doubt it. I imagine there’s an excellent stabilization system on this boat.”

“I think she gets seasick smelling salt water. Or looking at the sea.” She touched his thigh.

Was she putting the moves on him?

“That poor man next to you at dinner,” she said, shaking her head.

“What happened to him?” Paul asked.

“In the infirmary, is what Arkady says.”

“Does anyone know what’s wrong with him?”

She shrugged. “Like they say, shit happens.” She smiled uneasily, uncomfortable with the profanity.

He heard the faint chuffing of a helicopter overhead.

“Do you know why he was invited?” he asked.

“Who Arkady invites or won’t invite, he doesn’t share this with me. You are enjoying the yacht, yes?”

“Very much.”

“And you are impressed with the yacht, of course.”

“How could you not be?”

“It’s all theater, you know.” A smile.

Paul looked at her, said nothing.

“We all have roles to play on the stage. And we are the outrageously rich. People want us to be larger than life. This is something I found out about America when I moved here. People want you to be bigger than them or smaller than them but never their size. You are salt of earth or you are crème de la crème.”

Paul nodded.

“You know people say Arkady is down to earth, yes? You have heard this?”

“Yes.”

“Nobody says an Uber driver is down to earth, yes?”

Paul chuckled. “You have a point.”

“You know, Tatyana’s photographs intrigue me.”

“Me, too.”

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