Page 73 of The Perils of Paulie
“I didn’t borrow it—it was forced on me by my father. Oh, I’m going to have a few things to say to him when I’m out of the gulag...”
To my surprise (and profound relief) the search of my person consisted only of a request to remove my clothing behind a screen, at which point they were examined thoroughly, then returned.
I was told to sit at a row of chairs against the wall opposite the offices and waited impatiently for Paulie to reappear. She did so about twenty minutes later, bustling out of the room breathless and with a sense of excitement, and followed by three female officers.
“Thanks for all the info, Katya. And, Anna, be sure to e-mail me the pictures you took trying to get me back into the corset. Tatiana, I hope your mom feels better. If you e-mail me her mailing address, I’ll send her a postcard from California, OK?”
The ladies giggled and waved as they left her.
Paulie bustled up to me. “There you are! Did yourguys go where no man has gone before?” She took my hands in hers when I rose to greet her.
“No. You?”
“Unplumbed, thank god.” She squeezed my hands and leaned in to give me a quick kiss. “They told me to strip, which didn’t work very well because, as you know, I can’t reach most of the hooks in the back, and of course there’s the corset. Katya had to call in reinforcements, and Tatiana took the corset away to X-ray it for signs of bombs or something—I don’t know—and when she came back, Katya told me all about the fact that the Englishmen who came through here a little before us told them that they’d heard we had guns. Anyway, I see now why Dad left Russia. It took Katya, Anna, and Tatiana together to figure out how to lace the corset properly. And then, of course, we had to take some pictures of them with the corset, and me with the corset, and them putting me in the corset, and lots of selfies, which I wanted because I’ll need them to remember the last friendly people I see before I’m taken away to some distant camp.”
“You will not be taken anywhere,” I told her, allowing my lips to linger on hers. “If they find the object you mentioned—why on earth do you have it in the first place?—then I’ll simply say it’s mine.”
“That just means you’ll get sent away to break rocks in a chain gang,” she protested. “I don’t want that any more than I want to do it.”
“You’re mixing up your imprisonment scenarios.” I was about to continue, but the two men who’d gone over the car with a dog and undercarriage mirror entered the room.
Paulie stiffened. I put my arm around her, swinging her around to face them, my expression calm even if my heart was racing with fight-or-flight adrenaline.
Perhaps the gulag wouldn’t be so awful. Perhaps Paulie would visit me.
“Would you marry me for real if I was sent away to a Siberian camp?” I asked her quietly when the men consulted with the woman.
She unfroze long enough to blink at me. “I beg your pardon? Did you just propose?”
“Conditionally. I am conditionally proposing. Would you?”
“Why conditionally?”
I sighed. “If I am sent to a Siberian prison camp for the gun that you stashed in the tires, the only way we could have connubial visits is if we were married. So, will you?”
She thought for a minute. “If I was the type of person to allow another person to go to prison for something I did, then yes, I would marry you so we could get it on while you were serving out a sentence that should have been mine.”
“That sounds like a conditional acceptance,” I said suspiciously. “One that has far too many ifs connected with it.”
“And that would be because your conditional proposal is entirely ridiculous. Dixon, I’m not going to let you take the fall for—”
She stopped when we were summoned outside by the two officers. Paulie took my hand in a firm grip, and when I held the door open for her, she murmured, “I’m sorry, Dixon. I really am sorry about this...”
The man with the dog strolled off while the other one handed us our visas, passports, and other papers, including a pass bearing the stamp of Siberia.
“What?” I asked, feeling stupid. “Are we supposed to take this with us? To the camp? Both of us?”
“Yes, yes, you go. You take papers,” the man said,and, turning his back on us, gestured at the car behind us to pull forward into the next bay over.
I stared at Paulie. She stared back at me.
“They didn’t find it,” she said.
“It must have been in one of the tires that the Essex team stole.”
A beatific smile blossomed on her face, filling me with joy. “Serves the bastards right!”
“I will admit I was thinking something of the sort. Shall I drive?”
