This new one sat like a drawing of a princess in a fairy tale. Like a drawing of a Norse goddess, who are always depicted, for reasons unknown, like comic book heroines, two steps even more idealized than women on the covers of bodice-rippers. Freya, conveniently the goddess of love and death.

Two rooms back, I had placed Maddie so that the light abused her. Intimidated. Revealed. Interrogated. This one, whomever she was, had placed herself so that the light gifted her with illuminations, gold that shimmered. I suspected that she always did that, always found the key light, like the old-time movie stars, Garbo, Bergman, Bacall, knew how to do. The other alternative was impossible, that she was such that the light sought her out.

Elizabeth began to tell the woman’s story. Young, beautiful, American, from the Midwest, junior year trip abroad. In Firenze, or Mykonos, or Lake Como, one of those places, maybe Paris, it didn’t matter, it was gilt, gelt, gold, glamour. A man who was immensely, impossibly, wealthy, though significantly older, spotted her. It was enticing. But she wouldn’t be rented or even purchased. Elizabeth didn’t say it that way, but it’s how it sounded when it reached my ears. He proposed. Swept up by it all, she succumbed.

I found Elizabeth’s voice to be harsh. Her tale to be tedious. Hackneyed. Vexatious. Irksome. Nagging. So, apparently, I replaced it. With a song. Unfortunately, the voice singing it in my head was from 1904 or thereabouts and had its own trilling irritations. These are the words it sang, both plaintive and self-righteous:

She’s only a bird in a gilded cage,

A beautiful sight to see.

You might think she’s happy and free from care,

She’s not, though she seems to be.

Her beauty was sold for an old man’s gold,

She’s a bird in a gilded cage.

Her maiden name was Kaylee Biggs Posey.

The man was Russian. A billionaire. An actual billionaire, that’s one thousand millions. Of dollars. Not rubles. The voice in my head sang on.

Her gems were the purest, her gown divine,

And what could a woman want more?

But happiness cannot be bought with gold,

Although she’s a rich man’s bride.

His name was Grigor God Voloshin. God? Yes. That was his middle name. Really. OK.

They had a son. Leo. He was three years old. Pictures of him were passed around. He was cuter than a button. Blond hair, bright blue eyes. A lively, intelligent expression. Playful and boyish. In the photos with his mother, the two appeared to utterly adore each other. But what mother shows pictures of her children looking upon her with anger, hatred, or even plain indifference. Therefore, adoration mandatory.

God could not come to America. Because of the Magnitsky Act.

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