Nastia recalled the stories: The bride who’d thought all of America looked like New York and ended up hanging herself from a rafter at her new husband’s hog farm. The bride whose husband forbade her from leaving the house for months while she was between health insurance plans. The bride who kept getting sicker and sicker, kept getting medical

wished she could cut off circulation to her feet so that they’d stop screaming in their high-heeled shoes,

36-24-36, as listed on their online profiles, long, thin fawn limbs (the women the agency took in to appear “body diverse” and appeal to “eclectic tastes” were rare)—the men’s shapes varied.

She’d been adamant about keeping her first name, though. When the bachelors heard the name Anastasia, they thought about Russian royalty—about the Duchesse who’d vanished by the time the White Army reached her family, having either been murdered or escaped.

A former American president and owner of Miss Universe pageant confirmed: Ukraine is always well represented in the contestant demographic.

Modal verbs, deliberate vagueness, an avoidance of the present tense, the imperative practically taboo.

Kyiv was the new Berlin, her mother told Nastia, and everyone, including the sex tourists, was flocking in while it was cheap.

tariffed through overpriced taxi rides and dinners, through kickbacks with restaurants who charged inflated prices,

The way a Slavic name can bend and fold in countless forms was, Efrosinia warned during the women’s induction session, deeply confusing to the Westerner. “So, stick to the stickers.”