Her mother decided from the first that he was more than wonderful. Sasha knew better than to disagree. It was an fast way out of the tiny apartment with broken furniture and nothing she wanted to remember. It was a way away from soup for dinner that was really only made with onions, celery leaves and two day old bread that she often ate in the winter when she was small. It was a way to grow out from sleeves that hit too far above her wrists and coats with worn elbows. He had begun by buying her father a new television and her mother a microwave. He gave Sasha a bracelet with stones in several colors. He took her to the shop to buy dresses for when they went to dinner. He replaced her things which he did not like. She did not comment because it happened each time. Her mother liked to taste the end of their dinners and the touch the fabrics on new clothes. Sasha learned Sunday was for arguing with the televised football game, not long talks at the table. She did not like his hands. Sasha had stood silent and white while he shook her father’s hand for the first time. Papa had thick warm hands because he used them. This man had pale soft ones that often felt cold. But each of these men seemed happy that Sasha had stumbled into this. Papa looked like a coarse little elf standing beside him. Mama just refolded her hands in quick prayers that this American boy would take her daughter. She was a pretty girl with long hair. She worked hard in school. She wanted to be somewhere else and not need the sorts of checks and coupons that her parents depended on. She had met him at the coffee shop and he liked the way she served him. He was different than the man she used to know. Her Sergei would always bring her to the sea. “We don’t need anywhere else.” His car was loud and made lots of smoke so everyone knew when he was coming down the street. It had rusted parts and no air conditioning. “It goes.” He would open the door for her and laugh from the pit of his belly, “My princess, let me take you away.” He would fetch her no matter the hour after her shift at the diner. He would not want her to go home alone and not to spend some time with him. Along the shore on Fridays and Saturdays, he would sing, he would run, he would take her in his arms and dance. He had great strong arms and would lift her and say he was going to run toward the sea until she kissed him. Then he would walk with her slowly and tell her old poems while he pointed her hand to the stars. He had put the tired of his long week away like tools locked in the trunk. Things he would need later, not now. They would laugh and mix languages. He would tell her they should kiss in the rain and pull back both their hoods to do it. He was as unkempt as his hair. And how they would talk. Through the whole night, unless she was tired, then he would just hold her and hum her old songs until she slept and couldn’t hear them any longer. He would pull her beside him with two blankets around because he wanted her to watch the dawn later and not be cold. He would bring her take-out Chinese food, spare ribs and egg rolls usually. Or they would share two hamburgers back and forth. They would have them in the car before their walks. When they went back in the morning the seats smelled like an old kitchen because he kept what was extra for his Monday breakfast. He always stamped on the fortune cookies in the parking lot because he did not believe in luck. He wanted the stars, the sea and the weekend not to have to work. He did not dream of things like a house or a car. He was content that his work was steady and he had his own apartment. He did not understand Sasha’s shame about not having many things. That was their only disagreement. Sasha decided he was too simple. She discovered the credit card husband was like a white shirt still in the plastic package. Flat and wrinkled, kept in place with pins. Three hundred thread count perhaps, but not from a country that actually paid attention to what it was looming. He needed things. The import car, the brick front house in the up and coming area of Brooklyn, and a quiet girl to wear his name and make him a proper dinner. Sasha sat blankly staring out the window of his car. A four door with fifteen airbags so she would be swallowed whole by instant inflation of the equivalent of Michelin Man if she decided to slam into a wall without her seatbelt.