Hot Siberian by Gerald A Browne

for me.”
    To go with a sweet, some vintage port. The restaurant tried to pawn off some that was much too young, representing it as a 1968. Nikolai didn’t let them get away with it, asked for the bottle it had been poured from, which was true enough, but had been filled and refilled dozens of times. Nikolai made the waiter bring a fresh bottle and open it at the table, a W & J Graham Finest Reserve 1969. “Port has to be at least seventeen years old,” Nikolai said. (Vivian commented after several other such occasions that his restaurant deportment was a surprising plus. She doubted there was a maître d’ or headwaiter alive who could out-savoir-faire him.)
    â€œThen there was Christie’s, the auction house,” Vivian went on. I worked there for a while, even took several of their training courses in recognizing the finer things, as though I weren’t already marvelous at that. During the important auctions, I was one of those assigned to a telephone. Certain people make all their bids by phone.”
    â€œWhy?” Just to keep her going.
    â€œOh, perhaps they’re laid up with something or someone or think their face is too famous to be in public. Whatever. Anyway, picture, if you can, me with a phone to my ear having to do someone’s bidding. It was rather hectic and not at all fulfilling. I found out how much it wasn’t for me soon enough. During an auction of important Chinese ceramics I became so caught up in the spirit of the bidding on a Tang Dynasty female figure that I completely forgot about the person I had on my line. Went bidding on my own above the hundred-thousand level. I swear, I was only vaguely aware of the person’s voice cursing and shouting at me to stop. Fortunately, I came to my senses just short of the one hundred twenty-five thousand the piece went for. A complaint must have been registered, because the following day I was given notice.” She laughed at the recollection and took a sip of the port.
    Nikolai watched her tongue. Just the perfect pink tip of it emerged and licked taste from her lips. (Later, at an appropriate moment, she told him she was aware of how much of his attention was focused on her mouth.)
    She let him know many things that night. She let him know she was an incurable gambler and said that even if someone came up with a remedy she’d refuse to take it. She didn’t keep written records, just a running account in her head, and she figured she was as much of a winner as she was a loser. She claimed that whenever she lost she did so with quiet grace. (Nikolai later learned how untrue that was. She always had a supply of ugly vases and odd plates that she could smash to vent her loser’s spleen.)
    She let him know that she owned two houses. One there in London, a flat, really, with a seventy-five-year crown lease that she herself had bought, and one down in Devon that had been left to her. Both, she admitted insouciantly, were mortgaged up to their chimneys, but the men who counted at the bank evidently liked the looks of her, were understanding, didn’t press, just politely reminded her when she got a few mortgage installments in arrears. She’d perish, she said, if ever she lost her place in Devon. The mere thought of that possibility gave her the willies. Her place in Devon was her soul.
    â€œI wish I could pay off all your mortgages,” Nikolai said.
    â€œDo you?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œCan you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDon’t fret. I’d just mortgage them again,” she said, not having to do any inner appraising to know that was exactly what would happen. “But it’s comforting to know your nice thought.” She laced her fingers with Nikolai’s for the first time.
    Suspended from a long, delicate chain around her neck was a platinum-framed monocle about an inch and a half in diameter. Nikolai had noticed it the day before, and here she was wearing it