A year after the New Work crash, he filed a 1040 with the IRS and paid them forty million dollars in back taxes and penalties, and repatriated his wealth to an American bank. Now he lived in a renovated housing project on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, all upscale now with restored, kitschy window-bars and vintage linoleum and stucco ceilings. He had four units over two floors, with cleverly knocked-through walls and a spiral staircase. The kids freaking loved the staircase. Suzanne Church called him from SFO to let him know that she was on her way in, having cleared security and customs after a scant hour. He found himself unaccountably nervous about her now, and realized with a little giggle that he had something like a crush on her. Nothing serious -- nothing his wife needed to worry about -- but she was smart and funny and attractive and incisive and fearless, and it was a hell of a combination. The kids were away at school and his wife was having a couple of days camping with the girls in Yosemite, which facts lent a little charge to Suzanne's impending visit. He looked up the AirBART schedule and calculated how long he had until she arrived at the 24th Street station, a brisk 20 minute walk from his place. Minutes, just minutes. He checked the guest-room and then did a quick mirror check. His months in the Caymans had given him a deep tan that he'd kept up despite San Francisco's grey skies. He still looked like a surfer, albeit with just a little daddy-paunch -- he'd gained more weight through his wife's pregnancies than she had and only hard, aneurysm-inducing cycling over and around Potrero Hill had knocked it off again. His jeans' neat rows of pockets and Mobius seams were a little outdated, but they looked good on him, as did his Hawai'ian print shirt with its machine-screw motif. Finally he plopped down to read a book and waited for Suzanne, and managed to get through a whole page in the intervening ten minutes. "Kettlebelly!" she hollered as she came through the door. She took him in a hug that smelled of stale airplane and restless sleep and gave him a thorough squeezing. She held him at arm's length and they sized each other up. She'd been a well-preserved mid-forties when he'd seen her last, buttoned-down in a California-yoga-addict way. Now she was years older, and her time in Russia had given her a forest of smile-lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes. She had a sad, wise turn to her face that he'd never seen there before, like a painted Pieta. Her hands had gone a little wrinkly, her knuckles more prominent, but her fingernails were beautifully manicured and her clothes were stylish, foreign, exotic and European. She laughed huskily and said, "You haven't changed a bit." "Ouch," he said. "I'm older and wiser, I'll have you know." "It doesn't show," she said. "I'm older, but no wiser."