I tried about ten years ago. She had a nervous breakdown, or so she claimed, and she's never been the same since. I can't leave her now. And, well …” He hesitated, and then decided to be honest with her. She was a woman he could trust, in the past year they had become fast friends. “To be honest with you, she drinks. I couldn't live with myself if I were responsible for something happening to her.”
“It doesn't sound like much fun for you,” an icy Boston debutante who drank and wouldn't give him a divorce. Zoya almost shuddered at the thought, but she saw a lot of women like that at the store, women who shopped because they were bored, and never wore what they took home because they didn't really care how they looked. “It must be lonely for you,” she looked at him with gentle eyes, and he reminded himself not to say too much. They had to work together every week, and he had learned that lesson long since. There had been other women in his life, but they never meant very much to him. They were just someone to talk to once in a while, or to make love to occasionally, but he had never met anyone like Zoya before, and he hadn't felt this way about a woman in years, or perhaps ever.
“I have my work to keep me going,” he smiled gently at her, “just like you.” He knew how hard she worked. It was all she lived for now, that and the children she loved so dearly.
By 1943, they were having dinner together every Monday night, when they left Simon's offices. It became an opportunity to discuss at greater length whatever they had done that day, and they usually ate at the little restaurants just off Seventh Avenue.
“How's Matt?” He smiled at her one night that spring.
“Matthew? He's fine.” He was three and a half, and the light of her life. “He makes me feel young again.” It was ironic that she had thought she was too old to have a child when he was born, and yet he gave her the most joy of all now. Sasha was out so much, it was almost as though she were gone. She had just turned eighteen. He had seen Sasha once, and was stunned by how beautiful she was. But he suspected what a handful she was for Zoya too. More than once Zoya had said that she could barely keep her in school. And Nicholas was still in London, and she prayed for his safe return night and day.
“How are your children, Paul?” He didn't talk about them much. His daughters were both married, one in Chicago, and the other on the West Coast, and his son was somewhere around Guam. And he had two grandchildren in California he seldom saw. His wife didn't like to go to California and he was afraid to leave her alone at home.
“My kids are fine, I guess,” he smiled, “they're so long gone from the nest, we don't hear from them much. Their childhoods weren't easy anyway, with Allison drinking so much. Something like that changes everything,” and then he smiled at her, he always liked hearing her news. “What's new at the store?”
“Not much. I opened a new department, for men this time, and we're trying out some new lines. It's going to be nice to get to Europe again, after the war, so we can try new things.” But there was no end in sight as it raged on across the Atlantic.
“I'd love to go back to Europe again sometime. By myself,” he grinned at her honestly. Baby-sitting for his wife was no fun, as she made her way from bar to bar, or hid in her room, pretending to be tired instead of drunk. Zoya wondered why he put up with it. It seemed to be a terrible burden on him, and she said as much when he took her home and she invited him up for a drink. He had only been in her apartment once before, and he remembered only an impression that it was cozy and warm, the way she was when she looked at him. He went up happily in the elevator with her, and sat on the couch in the library as she poured him a drink. She had called out to Sasha when they arrived, but the maid was out and Sasha wasn't home yet. Only