It’s Saturday afternoon. Thursday and Friday came and went at their usual manic pace. Between meetings, negotiations, conference calls, brainstorming and strategizing, I hardly had time to eat. To be honest, I didn’t even feel like it, having lost my appetite since that night at the Ritz. Not that I consciously thought of Anna. But there wasn’t an hour during those two days, whether in my office or my apartment, where my mind didn’t dwell on that night. Which invariably made me hard and then vexed and angry with myself.

The only Anna-free moments have been my phone calls with Lena every evening. I can’t wait for my little girl to finish grad school in Switzerland and come home so that I can start involving her in the business. She’s far from keen on the notion of working for me, but I’m sure with time she’ll come around. All I need is patience—a quality I have by the bucketload.

So why can’t I muster enough of that legendary patience to stop myself from pacing this room and glancing at the clock every five minutes?

The phone rings. It’s Mama. She reminds me about her New Year’s Eve dinner next week—a tradition she’s maintained from the old Soviet days—and complains that Lena won’t be there. I explain that Lena is too young for Soviet traditions: She comes home for Christmas but prefers to spend the New Year’s Eve with her friends in Switzerland. And then Mama asks if I’ll be bringing a friend.

“No, unless you want me to invite Gary with his wife and kids.”

“I love Gary and his family, and you can certainly invite them, but that’s not what I meant.”

“Oh, I know what you meant. You’ve asked me this question every single year since my divorce. It’s been eleven years now—time to put the matter to rest, don’t you think?”

“You did almost bring someone here three years ago,” she says. “Your father and I were so much looking forward to meeting her, and then, a week before New Year’s, you broke up with her.”

“I discovered things about Eleonora that made it difficult to trust her.”

“Yes, yes, I know.” She sighs. “But, my boy, you have such high expectations of everyone! I’m sure the thing you discovered about the poor girl was totally innocuous, which is why you’ve never told me what it was. Did she buy her driver’s license?”

“Mother!” I’m doing my best to sound shocked. “You’re a former member of the Communist Party. I can’t believe you’re calling graft innocuous.”

I tut-tut for more impact.

She sighs again, but says nothing.

Thing is, her guess isn’t too far off the mark. The private eye I hired to look into Eleonora’s past dug up a first marriage she’d forgotten to mention and no record of the MBA she’d mentioned very distinctly.

What choice did I have but to break up? I couldn’t allow a cheater and a liar into my life again. Only fools don’t learn from their mistakes. And I like to think that I’m no fool.

Finally, at seven, I grab my car keys and coat, and head out. The plan is to meet with Anna, have dinner in Moscow’s best jazz club, and go to the Ritz. I’ve booked the same suite, which is hardly a rational choice, considering the abundance of other perfectly suitable and considerably cheaper venues. But I don’t care. This whole affair is outside the realm of reason and normalcy. I feel as though I’ve wandered into another dimension, a parallel world where all that matters is being able to hold Anna again.

At some point during the night, as I drift off in the satin sheets, drugged by Annushka’s intoxicating smell and exhausted after our wild lovemaking, she murmurs something that breaks me out of my drowsiness. She herself is dozing off in my arms, but I have a strange feeling her words were more than just a good-night, and I want them to reach my consciousness.

“Come again,” I say.

“Appreciate it,” she murmurs, hardly opening her mouth. Her eyes are shut and her breathing even.

“Appreciate what?”

“Your not hurting me.” She sounds a little less sleepy.

“Why on earth would I do that?”

“Because of who I am. Because you’re paying for this.”

We’re both fully awake now and staring into each other’s eyes.

“Don’t you feel entitled to my body?” she asks.

“Is that how your average client feels?”

“My average client is a lot older than you,” she says. “He may feel like performing all kinds of extravagant acts, but he rarely has the energy or the stamina to execute them.”

Anger fills my chest. I’m not sure whom it’s directed at—Anna or her dirty-minded average client.

“Don’t these men disgust you?” I ask.

“I’ve cleaned apartments and offices for years,” she says. “When you get to the toilet, you tell yourself it’ll only take few minutes, and you hold your breath and do it.”

“What a flattering metaphor.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.” She strokes my cheek. “With you, it’s different. I don’t need to… brace myself.”

I cringe at how embarrassingly close I am to believing her.

“So you’re a niche call girl,” I say with a sneer.

“I guess.” She smirks back. “I seem to appeal to men like you.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I’m physically fit and sexually conservative. What exactly do I have in common with your sleazebags?”

“Money, for one. Refinement. A penchant for women who can hold a conversation.” She pauses before adding, “But you’re the youngest and the most… vigorous client I’ve had so far.”

“How many have you had exactly?”

“Five. You’re the sixth.”

“When I called your pimp last week, he asked me if I was married. Would you have turned me down if I was?”

“Yes. And please don’t call Filip a pimp.”

I laugh. “Why? Would it upset his delicate sensibilities?”

She doesn’t answer.

I don’t insist—I’ve got bigger fish to fry. “So you escort single men only?”

She nods. “Mostly divorcees. One widower and one dyed-in-the-wool bachelor.”

“Doesn’t it limit your client pool?”

“It does. But it’s OK.” She gives me a tired smile. “I’ve kept my day job.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re a striptease artist.”

“Nothing so exotic. I’m a lowly assistant.”

“What sort?”

“Legal.”

I rub my forehead. “Let me get this straight: You have a degree, a qualified job, and yet you feel compelled to moonlight as an escort?”

“First, I don’t have a degree—I could only afford one year of law school. Second, in twelve nights as an escort I’ve made more than I would in a year working my ass off in my day job.”

I search her eyes. “Why did you bother studying then?”

“That’s a very good question.” She shuts her eyes and snuggles back into the crook of my arm.

We meet again on Tuesday and then on Thursday. Each time I’m with her, I sink a little deeper into the parallel universe where she’s the unique deity. The little self-command I have left goes to making sure not to call her Annushka out loud. I don’t even know why it matters, but it does.

When I manage to stay away from her, I’m in a foul mood because I can’t stop thinking she might end up in another man’s arms.

On Friday morning, I pick up the phone to call Filip and book Anna for the whole month. I have an amorphous plan to exhaust my lust for her during that time or, if I fail, extend the lease to a year. But something happens as I dial Filip’s number. For a brief moment, I fall out of the Anna dimension and experience a bout of clarity.

I hang up.

Who am I kidding? Here I am, plotting to turn a call girl into a surrogate girlfriend by outbidding my competition and bulk purchasing all her moonlighting hours. Only no money in the world can change the truth of what we are and what we’ll remain to each other—an escort and her client.

Because that’s what she is, my sweet Annushka—a geisha for the rich, a glorified prostitute.

As for me, I’m a raving lunatic. I’ve lost my mind, given in to a folly, let this peccadillo go much too far.

It’s time to end it.