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In their Uber back to Tatyana’s apartment, they sat in silence for several minutes. Paul struggled with his seat belt, trying to find the buckle, which was buried deep between the seat and the seat back.

Finally, Tatyana said, “You’re not going to say anything, Pasha?”

He didn’t look at her. “It’s an amazing house. Never seen anything like it.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Did you not trust me?” he said.

“Of course I trust you. What are you talking about?”

“You obviously didn’t trust me enough to tell me how rich you are. And you use a different surname, ‘Belkin.’ Is that a fake name? A cover name?”

“It’s my mother’s last name.”

“Which you use so nobody will know you’re Arkady Galkin’s daughter.” He’d heard the name ‘Arkady Galkin’ before, he thought. He was one of those Russian oligarchs who lived in the U.S. and owned a famously big yacht and lots of real estate.

“Obviously.”

“Especially your artist friends.”

“Yes! I admit it. I didn’t want to be known as his daughter. I wanted to have my own life. Is that so hard to understand?”

“Does your dad not give you money?”

“Of course he does! I have trust funds and real estate and offshore entities and all that.”

“Yet you live in a—”

“I love my apartment! Where am I supposed to live, in some duplex in a skyscraper like all the other Russian kids?”

“But—”

“Don’t you get it, Pasha? I need to establish a separate identity. I’m trying to make it as an artist, as a photographer, and I want to have a separate profile in the world.”

“Are you estranged from your parents?”

“Me? No, not at all. My family is my”—she put a hand atop her breasts—“My hearth. My safe harbor. You asked me once if I was a daddy’s girl, and I said yes. My pápachka is the smartest man I know. And deep down, the kindest.”

“What about me?”

“You know what I mean. I didn’t want you seeing how my parents live. I mean, all that glitz—that’s not who I am. You know that by now.”

Paul was silent, processing everything Tatyana was telling him, everything that was now upside down. “And I’m surrounded by twelve-thousand-dollar suits and I’m wearing khakis from, like, J.Crew.”

Paul thought: To your father, I’m a flea. A poor, insignificant flea . “You come from that kind of money . . .” he said. “. . . I mean, given what you’re used to, being with me is a huge comedown for you.”

“Huh? No, Pasha—it’s nothing, I don’t care at all. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“I’m not in that league, you know that.”

“Nobody is.”

A long pause. That was an understatement. “How did he get so rich? Do you mind my asking?”

“He’s in finance. The finance world. I don’t really know what. It’s not my world. I’m kind of clueless.”

He would be googling “Arkady Galkin” in a matter of minutes.

“He liked you,” she said.

“Well, he sure did his research on me.” He laughed, then smiled. “But—yeah. He gave me, I don’t know, a warm vibe or something.”

“You’re both up-by-your-bootstraps guys.”

*

At Tatyana’s apartment, while they undressed, Paul asked, “Who’s the red-haired guy with the earpiece who was always talking to your father?”

“Oh, that’s Andrei Berzin. He’s my papa’s chief of security. His right-hand man. Sometimes I don’t know who’s really in charge,” she joked, “Berzin or Papa.”

Bernie Kovan didn’t have a chief of security, but then, he wasn’t a Russian oligarch. “He has enemies, huh?” Paul said.

She shrugged. “He thinks so.”

“Who?”

She shrugged again. She didn’t want to answer, or maybe she didn’t know. “Berzin also does intelligence work for Papa.”

“Intelligence?”

“Research, you might say.”

“Is that how your father knew so much about me?”

“No doubt. It’s a sign of respect that he had Berzin check you out.”

“Can’t say that I feel flattered, exactly. What’s his story, this Berzin?”

“Papa hired him away from the FSB, the Russian security service. He was a colonel. He’s Siberian—grew up outside Irkutsk. Anyway, he’s an asshole. A terrible person. But he’s been loyal to my pápachka for a long time. So I’m . . . polite to him. He’s going to be very suspicious of you for a while.”

“Who is? Tvoi otyets? Your father?”

“No, I mean Berzin. Berzin will be suspicious. Nothing personal.”

*

Paul showered and came to bed naked, and found Tatyana already there. Instead of her lace teddy, she was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, an unmissable signal that she didn’t want to play around.

“Pasha, can we talk about something?”

“Of course.”

“I know it’s not cool to talk about your exes, but I need to tell you about an old boyfriend.”

“Why?”

“Just listen. So Charles Helmworth was, is , this Social Register type, you know? Belongs to the New York Athletic Club and the Metropolitan and this yacht club and that yacht club, and he’s a member of the Brook.” Paul knew this was often considered the most exclusive gentleman’s club in New York.

“Very fancy,” Paul said. A different kind of rich , he thought. Inherited .

“Not what you’d think. He was always just barely scraping by. His grandmother paid for all his club memberships, but he was still desperate for cash. His family had gone broke. They had the prestige but not the fortune.”

“So why didn’t he, I don’t know, work ?”

“He was lazy. My father called him a ‘layabout.’” She laughed. “He must have looked that word up. He also called him ‘Astor,’ though he wasn’t an Astor. Pápachka kept saying, ‘Who was the last person in that family who did a lick of work? His great-great-grandfather?”

Paul smiled, then laughed.

“Charlie wanted us to live in keeping with my wealth. Which I paid for. Wherever we went, he wanted to stay at the Mandarin or the Four Seasons, in a suite. He wanted to go on these big, lavish vacations—a safari in South Africa, or stay in the South of France or a private island in the Caribbean. The swankiest ski resorts. He insisted on Courchevel, in the French Alps, or Verbier. He said because the skiing was better. But I knew it was really because of the scene. He kept asking me to marry him, and I kept saying no.”

Paul noticed that she was no longer smiling. She’d grown pensive. “Is this the artist with the coke problem?”

She shook her head. “Before him. Anyway, Charlie became insatiable. He wanted to go to the fanciest restaurants, the—”

“He was a gold digger.”

She paused. “My friends warned me, and I should have listened.”

“What happened?”

She paused even longer. Her eyes filled with tears. “My papa put a P.I. on him and caught him cheating.”

Was she sad or was she angry? He couldn’t tell.

“I went into therapy. I—how could I trust anyone again? I just became really wary of everybody. Do men just want me for my money? What about friends who take advantage of me because they know I’m rich?”

“Do you think I love you for your money?”

“No, but I’m getting the feeling you’re going to break up with me because of it.”

Paul felt stung. “Seriously, Tatyana?”

“I know you don’t like that I kept it from you.”

“That’s true. I don’t.”

“I wanted to know you loved me for me.”

“I get that now. Obviously I do.”

“Are we okay?”

“Of course we are.”

“I know you want to be the big breadwinner in the relationship. Isn’t that the conventional thing?”

He smiled. He didn’t want to admit to her that that was exactly how he thought: the conventional, patriarchal mode. “It’ll take some getting used to. I know you don’t like spending money on anything.”

“But that’s not true! I’ll spend money on clothes—have you taken a look at my closet? My clothes aren’t from, you know, a vintage clothing store.”

“I did notice that,” he admitted.

“So let me ask you something.”

“Yes?”

“As long as our relationship isn’t the traditional patriarchal . . . thing.”

“Yes?”

“You’re the first guy I’ve ever met who bothers to understand me. Who appreciates my work. Who isn’t after me because I’m rich. You’re a regular guy, and you seem really grounded and real . And we love each other.”

He nodded. “Yes,” he said. They’d been seeing each other for eight months, had lived together for two. Every once in a while, they’d make flip references to marriage, jokes about the “institution of marriage,” punch lines.

“When Charles Helmworth asked me to marry him,” she said, “it made me start thinking about the idea of marriage. What it means, and am I ready for it. I feel like I’ve been adulting recently.”

He rolled his eyes. “That’s why you’ve been thinking about marriage? Adulting? ”

She nodded, then said, with a catch in her throat, “That and . . . I love you. The person I am with you is the person I want to be. And that person wants to build a life with you. And I kinda think you might feel the way I do.”

He realized she wasn’t joking. His throat went dry. He began to think about what it would mean to lose her, about how much she meant to him. The fact was, he was in his thirties and had shopped around enough to know what he was looking for, what he wanted. And what he wanted was Tatyana. She was a happy, sparkling presence. She lit him up. She loosened him up, straitlaced workaholic that, he had to confess privately, he was. His heart lifted when he thought about her. She was everything: she was smart and talented and kind and fun, the whole package. To him, the world was an obstacle course; to her, it was a playground. He was a better person when he was with her. She brought out the colors in the world.

His heart was pounding. “Same,” he croaked out. He swallowed. “You said you wanted to ask me something?”

“Well, this isn’t very traditional, I guess, but . . . Pasha, will you marry me?”