“He sent you here.”

“Not personally.”

“He talks to your brother.”

“You really believe I’m some kind of special emissary of Khrushchev?”

“Why do you suppose I have gone everywhere with you for months?”

In a quieter voice, she replied: “I imagined it was because you liked me.”

The listening women made sympathetic cooing sounds.

“You’re not welcome here any longer,” he yelled. “Pack your suitcase. You are to leave Cuba immediately. Today!”

With that he jumped back into his car and roared away.

“It was nice knowing you,” said Tanya.

• • •

Dimka and Nina celebrated by going to a bar near her apartment that evening.

Dimka was determined not to think about his unsettling conversation with Natalya. It changed nothing. He put her to the back of his mind. They had had a brief fling and it was over. He loved Nina, and she was going to be his wife.

He bought a couple of bottles of weak Russian beer and sat beside her on a bench. “We’re going to be married,” he said tenderly. “I want you to have a wonderful dress.”

“I don’t want a lot of fuss,” Nina said.

“Nor do I, for myself, but that could be a problem,” Dimka said with a frown. “I’m the first of my generation to get married. My mother and grandparents will want to throw a big party. What about your family?” He knew that Nina’s father had died in the war, but her mother was still alive, and she had a brother a couple of years younger than she.

“I hope Mother will be well enough to come.” Nina’s mother lived in Perm, nine hundred miles east of Moscow. But something told Dimka that Nina did not really want her mother to come.

“What about your brother?”

“He’ll ask for leave, but I don’t know if he’ll get it.” Nina’s brother was in the Red Army. “I have no idea where he’s stationed. He could be in Cuba, for all I know.”

“I’ll find out,” Dimka said. “Uncle Volodya can pull a few strings.”

“Don’t go to too much trouble.”

“I want to. This will probably be my only wedding!”

She snapped: “What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing.” He had meant it lightheartedly, and he was sorry to have irritated her. “Forget I said it.”

“Do you think I’m going to divorce you as I did my first husband?”

“I said exactly the opposite, didn’t I? What’s the matter with you?” He forced a smile. “We should be happy today. We’re getting married, we’re having a baby, and Khrushchev has saved the world.”

“You don’t understand. I’m not a virgin.”

“I guessed that.”

“Will you be serious?”

“All right.”

“A wedding is normally two young people promising to love one another forever. You can’t say that twice. Don’t you see that I’m embarrassed to be doing this again because I’ve already failed at it once?”

“Oh!” he said. “Yes, I do see, now that you’ve explained it.” Nina’s attitude was a little old-fashioned—lots of people got divorced nowadays—but perhaps that was because she came from a provincial town. “So you want a celebration appropriate to a second marriage: no extravagant promises, no newlywed jokes, an adult awareness that life doesn’t always go according to plan.”