When Natalya spoke, her words shocked him. “What about me?” she said.

He hardly understood what she meant. “You?” he said.

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “We spent a night together.”

“I’ll never forget it.” Dimka was baffled. “But afterward, all you would say to me was that you were married.”

“I was scared.”

“Of what?”

Her face showed genuine distress. Her wide mouth was twisted in a grimace, almost as if she were in pain. “Don’t get married, please!”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want you to.”

Dimka was flabbergasted. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know what to do.”

“But now it’s too late.”

“Is it?” She looked at him with pleading eyes. “You can break off an engagement . . . if you want to.”

“Nina is going to have a baby.”

Natalya gasped.

Dimka said: “You should have said something . . . before . . .”

“And if I had?”

He shook his head. “There is no point in discussing it.”

“No,” she said. “I see that.”

“Well,” said Dimka, “at least we avoided a nuclear war.”

“Yes,” she said. “We’re alive. That’s something.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

The smell of coffee woke Maria. She opened her eyes. President Kennedy was in bed beside her, sitting upright with several pillows propping him, drinking coffee and reading the Sunday edition of The New York Times. He was wearing a light-blue nightshirt, as was she. “Oh!” she said.

He smiled. “You sound surprised.”

“I am,” she said. “To be alive. I thought we might die in the night.”

“Not this time.”

She had gone to sleep half-hoping it would happen. She dreaded the end of their love affair. She knew it had no future. For him to leave his wife would destroy him politically; to do so for a black woman was unthinkable. Anyway, he did not even want to leave Jackie: he loved her, and he loved their children. He was happily married. Maria was his mistress, and when he tired of her he would discard her. Sometimes she felt she would prefer to die before that came to pass—especially if death could come while she was at his side, in bed, in a flash of nuclear destruction that would be over before they knew what was happening.

She said none of this: her role was to make him happy, not sad. She sat upright, kissed his ear, looked over his shoulder at the newspaper, took his cup from his hand, and drank some of his coffee. Despite everything, she was glad she was still alive.

He had not mentioned her abortion. It was almost as if he had forgotten about it. She had never raised it with him. She had called Dave Powers and said she was pregnant; and Dave had given her a phone number and said he would take care of the doctor’s fee. The only time the president had spoken about it had been when he phoned her after the procedure. He had bigger worries on his mind.