Remembering Claudia

We snuggled under the covers and slept for a few hours, then Claudia roused me in order to ride me. We finally emerged from her bedroom in the late morning to get breakfast. That was the last I ever saw of that basement. After that day I never saw her or her family again.

She went back to Georgetown that very day. I was sorry to see her go, but I didn't know what to do about it. I still had a bar exam to study for and classes to finish taking. I took her email address and phone number and tried to stay in contact.

She got a boyfriend or two down there, and we soon broke contact. I felt dismissed and betrayed once more and I never spoke to any of the Radzoff's again. There was a voice inside me however, saying that if I truly loved her, I would have gone down there and told her how I felt. I should have sent her a dozen roses, gifts, and letters, and treated her like a princess instead of a one night stand.

By the time the first holidays since that time rolled around, Claudia was a very guilty memory. Things only got worse. This year I saw her face on TV. She had been arrested as one of about a dozen members of a Russian spy ring. The rest of her 'family' had also been involved. So were the couple that came to visit that one night on New Year's Eve.

I wondered if the other members of her family actually were her biological family, or if they had simply been a team assembled by the KGB. Certainly, the family resemblance had been uncanny and convincing. Either way, it seemed like such a shame for such a first rate bombshell, raised for over 10 years in America, had been caught up in espionage. Had I only known, had she told me her secret, I could have gotten her out of that situation. I could have supported her and put her in a fine home.

Was she ever as innocent as she appeared? I chastized myself for asking this question. She was a girl and I was a young man, and I would have loved her if given half a chance. There was no reason for me to make excuses. If I had been there, I still think she could have walked away from it all. Then again, if she was indeed the daughter of the Radzoff parents I had known, if she was the biological sister to Natasha, maybe there was nothing I could have done to save her from the trade that cost Claudia her freedom. For as they say, blood is thicker than water.