“Maybe not so much if you’re a banker. But if you’re a race car driver, running at three thousand feet a second, yeah, it’s a problem, a big problem.”

“Can you take medicine?”

“Nothing that’s worked.” I shrugged. “Well, except this, sort of.” I picked up the vodka and took a belt.

“I didn’t know this.”

“You never asked.”

“So what do you do now? I know, I see you at parties sometimes. But you don’t race, don’t work. What do you do every day?”

“Drink.”

“I’m serious.”

“I am too.”

“Well, what do you do when you drink then?”

“Do you really care?”

“I’m curious, Jack.”

“I have a car I’m working on rebuilding.”

“That sounds fun.”

“It’s more work than fun, but it fills in the time. I’m also working on a board game.”

She frowned. “A bored game? Why?”

“Huh? No—board.” I pantomimed a square. “Like Monopoly.”

“I know Monopoly.”

“Do you know IQ 2000?”

“IQ 2000?”

“It’s a board game too.”

“You forget where I come from, Jack. We did not have Coca Cola or Pepsi when I was child in Soviet Union. You think we had this IQ 2000?”

Sometimes I did forget Elizaveta grew up in the Soviet Union. It might have only collapsed a decade ago, but to me it seemed as relegated to the past as Nazi Germany. “Well, the game I’m working on is like IQ 2000, trivia. But the questions and categories relate to NASCAR.”

“That sounds fantastic. I will buy it.”

“It’s never going to be published. It’s just a hobby.” I shrugged. “What about you?” I asked, wanting to switch topics. “What do you do every day?”

“I work,” she said. “I am governess, you know.”

“But what about your free time?”

“Ha. Free time? I have zero free time, Jack.”

“You’re that busy?”

“I am like mother to these twins. It is exhausting.”

“But rewarding, I imagine.”

“Maybe if the children were…normal.”

“They’re not?”

“Their father is a Russian oligarch, Jack. They get anything they want. At last birthday party, they had pony rides, wild pigs, piñata, a cake bigger than me. They are…” She pinned her nose up with her thumb.

“Piggish?”

“Yes, but not that word. Snotty? Yes, they are snotty monsters.”

“Can’t you quit?”

“And do what? Go back to Russia?”

“Is it still that bad?”

Elizaveta nodded. “We have a president who says he will help poor, but he won’t. He only helps himself. He is corrupt. Everybody is corrupt there. Da, it is still bad.”

“Do you like Mexico?”

“Better than Russia.”

“Then just get another job. There are some good international schools around.”