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riesling that spelled “headache” after the third glass. They held hands. The lights were going out at the Garibaldi nursing home across the street, a five-story residence built in the sixties to prove how closely a building could resemble Formica. The Jamaican record store on the first floor, three Bob Marley records and a lot of dope for sale, was gearing up for the night’s business, the volume of the reggae constrained by the whims of the sleepy Garibaldi denizens across the street. Along with the cops, they had reached a sort of negotiated settlement, Alphabet City style, with the profitable Rastafarians. Everyone left everyone alone, the music stayed low.
    “Hey, in three months I’ll be twenty-five,” she said.
    “It’s no big deal, turning twenty-five,” Vladimir said. Immediately he felt bad. Maybe it was a big deal to her. “I just got a thousand dollars from a client,” Vladimir said. “Maybe we can go to anice French restaurant for your birthday. The one with that famous plat de mer. I read about it in the paper. Four kinds of oysters, a very special crawfish—”
    “A client gave you a thousand dollars,” Challah said. “What did you have to do to him?”
    “Nothing!” Vladimir said. He shuddered at the implication. “It was just a tip. I’m helping him get his citizenship. Anyway, this plat de mer . . . ”
    “You know I hate those slimy things,” Challah said. “Let’s just go out for a really good hamburger. Like at that fancy diner. The one we went to for Baobab’s birthday.”
    Hamburger? She wanted to eat a hamburger on her twenty-fifth birthday? Vladimir remembered his parents upcoming barbecue, an event replete with many hamburgers. Could he invite Challah? Could she wear something decent? Could she pretend she was attending medical school where Vladimir had discreetly placed her in the Girshkin family imagination?
    “That fancy diner sounds perfect,” Vladimir said, kissing Challah’s peeling lips. “We’ll get Caesar’s salads for everyone, gourmet relish, pitchers of sangria, the works . . .” And the next time they had sex he would keep his eyes open. He would look into her eyes directly. This is what one did to keep a relationship going. These were the desperate measures. Vladimir knew the drill. Preserving his fief, no matter how meager, this is what it meant to be an older, wiser Vladimir.

5. THE HOME FRONT
    THE WEEKEND FOUND Dr. Girshkin sweating beneath the midday sun, his bald spot browning like a flapjack on the griddle, as he gestured about with a giant beefsteak tomato. “It is the biggest tomato in New York State,” he told Vladimir as he showed it off from every angle possible. “I must write to the Ministry of Agriculture. Maybe they have a prize for someone like me.”
    “You’re a masterful gardener,” whispered Vladimir, trying to hustle some encouragement into his faltering voice.
    It wasn’t easy. Having spent this strange June morning watching oversized radishes bask in the suburban haze, Vladimir had noticed a new and disturbing fact about his father: His father was old. He was a short, bald man, not unlike Vladimir when it came to his slight frame and dark oval face. And although his chest remained firm from the constant fishing and gardening, the black carpet of hair covering it had recently turned gray, his perfect posture had deteriorated, and his long aquiline nose had never looked so frail and thin, the skin around it so sun-wrinkled.
    “You know, if the dollar collapses, and we’re all reduced to an agrarian lifestyle,” Vladimir said, “this one tomato can be an entire entrée.”
    “Why, sure,” the doctor said. “A big vegetable can go a long way.There were times during the war when one carrot would feed a family for days. For instance, during the siege of Leningrad, your grandma and I, well . . .if truth be told, we were nowhere near Leningrad. We fled to the Ural Mountains at the start of the war. But there was