He took her hand and looked at the simple platinum band on her finger. "But you're married now -- nothing wises you up faster in my experience." She looked at her hand. "Oh, that. No. That's just to keep the wolves at bay. Married women aren't the same kinds of targets that single ones are. Give me water, and then a beer, please." Glad to have something to do, he busied himself in the kitchen while she prowled the place. "I remember when these places were bombed-out, real ghettos." "What did you mean about being a target?" "St Pete's, you know. Lawless state. Everyone's on the make. I had a bodyguard most of the time, but if I wanted to go to a restaurant, I didn't want to have to fend off the dating-service mafiyeh who wanted to offer me the deal of a lifetime on a green-card marriage." "Jeez." "It's another world, Landon. You know what the big panic there is this week? A cult of ecstatic evangelical Christians who 'hypnotize' women in the shopping malls and steal their babies to raise as soldiers to the Lord. God knows how much of it is true. These guys don't bathe, and dress in heavy coats with big beards all year round. I mean, freaky, really freaky." "They hypnotize women?" "Weird, yeah? And the *driving*! Anyone over the age of fifty who knows how to drive got there by being an apparat in the Soviet days, which means that they learned to drive when the roads were empty. They don't signal, they straddle lanes, they can't park -- I mean, they *really* can't park. And drunk! Everyone, all the time! You've never seen the like. Imagine a frat party the next day, with a lot of innocent bystanders, hookers, muggers and pickpockets." Landon looked at her. She was animated and vivid, thin -- age had brought out her cheekbones and her eyes. Had she had a chin-tuck? It was common enough -- all the medical tourists loved Russia. Maybe she was just well-preserved. She made a show of sniffing herself. "Phew! I need a shower! Can I borrow your facilities?" "Sure," he said. "I put clean towels out in the kids' bathroom -- upstairs and second on the right." She came down with her fine hair slicked back over her ears, her face scrubbed and shining. "I'm a new woman," she said. "Let's go somewhere and eat something, OK?" He took her for pupusas at a Salvadoran place on Goat Hill. They slogged up and down the hills and valleys, taking the steps cut into the steep sides, walking past the Painted Ladies -- grand, gaudy Victorian wood-frames -- and the wobbly, heavy canvas bubble-houses that had sprung up where the big quake and landslides had washed away parts of the hills. "I'd forgotten that they had hills like that," she said, greedily guzzling an horchata. Her face was streaked with sweat and flushed -- it made her look prettier, younger. "My son and I walk them every day." "You drag a little kid up and down that every *day*? Christ, that's child abuse!" "Well, he poops out after a couple of peaks and I end up carrying him."