Before I met Painter, before I worked for the CIA, I didn’t really have any secrets. You need privacy for something to be a secret and privacy was bad for business. But now that I’m officially offline — now that Natalie Perkins is no longer big on Instagram — I’ve become a bit more private, and I’ve got a few secrets to my name.
But one of those secrets is kind of a big deal.
As I stand on my front steps, watching his rental car pull into the driveway, I once again tell myself that I’m not doing anything wrong. I’ve only got the one biggie. Painter’s hiding, like, a thousand.
And yet the one thing I want to know as soon as he steps out of the car is where he got that outfit. No freaking way this is Painter. Six months into retirement — he left in the wake of Dubai, which we’re going to have to talk about — and he’s dropped at least thirty pounds. He’s wearing jeans and boots and a sexy bomber jacket that’s worn in just right.
I give him a hug. Painter’s not quite lean but he’s not as lumpy as I remember him. “Welcome to Nebraska,” I say. I tug on the sleeve of the jacket and vainly try to sneak a peek at the tag.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“A jacket,” Painter says.
“I’m asking who made it,” I say, “It’s gorgeous.”
“Probably a Vietnamese kid,” Painter says. (Later, OCD-fuelled doomscrolling will reveal this to be a Georgi Piolano jacket, retailing for $899.99. Italian leather, sure, but Painter was on the money: Made in Vietnam).
I look Painter up and down and ask: “Sooo … how’s retirement?”
“I’m not dead,” he says.
“Well,” I say, “At least you’re still fun.”
“Am I?”
“Oh come on. Picked up any hobbies? Travelled anywhere crazy?”
“What’s crazier than Lincoln, Nebraska? Plus, I’m fishing now, if can you believe it? I sure as hell can’t.”
“You’re living the old white guy dream.”
“It’s someone’s dream, for sure,” Painter says.
He kicks at the gravel. The boots are nice, too.
He says: “Natalya, let’s try to do this in English. My Russkie’s gotten rusty in retirement.”
I’d not even realised we were speaking Russian.
Painter motions to the house. “He home?”
I shake my head and lead Painter into the kitchen. I have tried — so hard — to decorate this home in the style of my old bungalow in California. But turns out it’s impossible to replicate the warmth of a Spanish villa inside the bad bones of a craftsman house tucked into the suburbs of Lincoln.
California, specifically Corona del Mar (sigh). That’s where I first met Painter. Where he recruited me, after he’d stopped being squirrelly and finally came clean about what he wanted. At our third dinner, at Rothschild’s, he told me this: “There’s a Russian we’re looking at, and he’s a big fan of yours.”
“A fan?” I said. Honestly, I think I literally gulped, as if I was swallowing the shame creeping in at his choice of words.
I was relatively new to OnlyFans back then, empowered by the potential to make absolute bank, but also kind of keeping it on the DL. I was ashamed, OK? Plus, it might as well have been a neon sign blaring “Natalie Perkins Has Failed”.
Author David McCloskey
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That November was rock bottom, and that’s when Painter found me. It was after NATALIE™, my line of hair accessory products — my shot at a business in real life — had failed to launch. After what I still only call The Shitstorm, when my fans revolted, my OCD spiked and I stayed inside for a week straight, watching in horror as my Instagram account shed more than two hundred thousand followers and engagement plummeted. You might assume Painter came with an offer of money, but he didn’t. He, the CIA, never paid me a dime for what I did. Most of my life I’ve gotten what I wanted by getting your attention. Instead, Painter gave me something I didn’t even know I wanted.
But, still. Back then I did need money.
So … OnlyFans. Jeremy claimed it was my idea but I swear it was his. Whatever. On the OF spectrum I was pretty vanilla. The content was classy. But … OnlyFans, you know? I had never wanted to be one of those creators who post thirst traps on Instagram to drive traffic there. I wanted Instagram to be a giant billboard for my NATALIE™ line of beauty and haircare products. I hadn’t told Mom and Dad about the OnlyFans, and I didn’t want Painter to know, so there you go. That’s how I felt about it.
“A Russian superfan,” Painter said, “This intel officer we’re looking at, Maxim Rotenberg. He’s all over your Instagram. Through cut-outs, of course. But it’s him. He’s interested in you.”
That dinner was on a weekday night last November, and it was early, only one other couple was in the dining room. I remember them because the guy looked a lot like my Jeremy. Painter was gorging on the garlic bread, and I remember worrying about nothing I should have actually been worrying about and more, like, what does that couple think is going on here? Because I looked cute, and Painter was not only old enough to be my dad, but he also looked pretty gross.
Eventually I worked up the nerve to ask if this was a normal thing for Painter, flying out to California to see if a girl with 2.4 million Instagram followers might help the CIA spy on some suss Russian?
And Painter said, with some sadness in his voice: “Twenty-seven years in the CIA. This is a first.”
That suss Russian Maxim Rotenberg is on today’s conversational menu, that’s for sure. And that makes me angry and confused. It’s also going to force me to lie to Painter, which I’ve been doing recently, but never to his face, never in person.
I lead Painter inside, hustling him through the living room and toward the kitchen. There’s Ikea and World Market pieces strategically placed in here (turns out the CIA’s furnishing budget is super inadequate) and though I suspect that he is incapable of noticing such things, I feel shame, like I want to hide all the furniture.
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When what I’m actually hiding from Painter and the CIA is a USB drive, which I keep in a spot that’s so secret I won’t even share it with you. Though here’s a hint: it’s in a waterproof case buried in a cornfield. And that won’t really help you, because around here, that’s everywhere.
Only Maxim knows about this.
That USB drive is password-protected and contains a virtual machine. The drive is plugged into my laptop, and once I’m booted into the operating system, I use a VPN called Mullvad. I mailed them cash with a requested account number. This, according to Maxim, allows me to communicate clandestinely, hides our traffic from Verizon and, ahem, “chunks our packets so Painter’s people or the FBI cannot use deep packet analysis to reverse engineer our content, assuming you have DAITA flipped on”. (In my mind this jargon plays in his rich, baritone Russian.) I’ve been instructed to select “North Macedonia” for the VPN’s location. Then, I use the TOR browser to navigate to the profiles Maxim set up. And presto…
I’m tethered into my true self. Is it the Russian in me? I worry about that. I figure the CIA is monitoring my phone, and the main laptop, but they definitely do not know about this virtual machine because if they did, Painter would be here with the FBI, and not just my usual babysitters here in Lincoln.
“Coffee?” I ask.
Painter’s already inspecting the machine. It’s a Jura GIGA 10 that cost more than the rest of the appliances combined and there was a monster fight about it, which I won. I had this model back in Corona del Mar but Jeremy convinced me to sell it off for cash after the Shitstorm, when money was getting tight and over the course of a few manic mornings I went full garage sale with some of my nicer things. I make an americano for Painter, nothing for me — I’m already too tweaked — and we sit outside at the table in the courtyard.
Painter’s staring right through me when he says, “First off, thanks for calling me. I know it would have been easy to see a shrink here in Lincoln. Thanks for not doing that. And thanks for not bringing your parents into this. Not yet.”
I nod, now wondering if I might cry. But I don’t. I look off at a tree and suck in the sadness. “Where do we start?” I ask.
“Maybe just start with how you’re doing,” Painter says, “You went nuts when you called last week.”
I’m not proud of that phone call. I’d just shattered a glass of water on the floor and stomped out here to vape. It’s the kind of call a girl should make to her father, or a best friend, but instead it went to Painter who, depending on the day, can play either position.
“I haven’t been the same since I got back from Dubai,” I said. “And neither has he. The adjustment’s been … hard. It’s, like, good for me, you know? Not being so online. But…”
“Are you online at all?” Painter interjects, “We’ve talked about this. Under no circumstances are you to be online. No social media, Natalie. Nada. It’s for your safety. Even under a new name, it’s simple for the Russians to find — ”
“I’m not online,” I insist.
The @PerkyPerks Instagram account is closed and NATALIE™ is ashes and that’s OK, I think, all part of the plan…
Painter’s hand is up. “Fine. Dubai. Let’s start there. Dubai’s still messing with you. That makes sense. Dubai was messed up.”
Dubai makes me think of Maxim. I’d been sent there to help lure him into the open so the CIA could, in Painter’s words, “conduct a technical operation, determine his pattern of life, and evaluate his suitability for eventual recruitment”.
According to what Painter calls “the official cable traffic”, all of this went according to plan. I did so well that afterward I got to visit CIA Headquarters and the Director handed me an award, which I was not allowed to keep. What I treasure most, though, is how Painter looked at me just before we flew home.
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He was proud.
Everybody else thought I was some influencer ditz they could use. But look what I’d done. And Painter saw it — he’d seen my powers back in Corona del Mar. He‘d seen me. He knew what I could do and I’d fricking done it. I know Painter’s approval shouldn’t have mattered to me as much as it did — and does — but it means so much to me that even now, I hope he never knew about the OnlyFans, just like I hope he doesn’t know about my little secret.
I shut my eyes, some childish defence mechanism, like drawing the sheets over your head because monster claws obviously don’t slice through flannel. I think about how Maxim used me and how I like being used by him. How Painter used me too, which is why I shouldn’t feel so guilty about that forbidden USB drive and those secret messages Maxim taught me to send, and I can’t even think about those now because maybe Painter can read my thoughts, which quickly rebound to this: it’s the absolute worst to travel from the white-hot center of attention in Dubai back to the anonymity of Lincoln, to a husband dealing with his general misery by secretly gambling, down just shy of forty grand when we have nothing, nothing, I’m not an influencer any more, remember? We don’t live in LA…
“My God, I mean, we live in Nebraska now! Nebraska!” I shout at Painter. The name of the freaking state surges off my tongue with accusation, like I’ve just found it in bed with my husband.
Nebraska. In glorified witness protection. Now my head is cupped in my hands and it’s quiet except for Painter slurping down his americano. The silence makes me remember the panicked phone call that led Painter here today. That was five days ago and it could be five years.
I don’t know if I can do this, talk to Painter about how to patch it up, and that’s partly because I know I’m to blame, too. I played my part. I pull in some deep breaths and remember — tell myself, really — that Maxim is right, this way was for the best.
“Why do you want to work things out?” Painter asks. “You should go home. I’ve said this. I’m saying it again.”
“Because I’ve put him through hell.”
“His decision as much as yours,” Painter says.
“Nebraska, for God’s sake,” I murmur.
“I feel like you are being unfair to Nebraska,” Painter says, “Wide open spaces. Chimney Rock. Warren Buffett. Come on. Lots to love.”
Painter’s aiming for levity and missing wide. I want to slap him and blame it on my rickety impulse control. But instead I just shout at him, and then it’s Painter’s turn to slide into his Russian, fruit of those twenty-seven years at the CIA, all spent with Russians who love Russia so dearly they betray Russia with the CIA. And as he’s scolding me for being impulsive, we might as well be back at my parents’ home in Sheepshead Bay, Dad chewing me out for sneaking in past curfew.
During this tirade Painter’s using my given name and patronymic, Natalya Romanovna. My real last name is Polyakova, by the way. I use “Perkins” online because, well, it was easier. And I’m screaming right back at him in Russian too, saying you’ve got no right, absolutely no right. I’m here because of me, but also because of you, Painter. “You’re the influencer,” I shout. “I sold people a fantasy. You sold me something all too fricking real. You’d have been the fricking Instagram queen, if you weren’t so gross.”
“I sold you nothing,” Painter says, a smile rising through his eyes, “Natalya Romanovna, come now. See reason. You volunteered.”
I’ve thought about this and I’ve decided that, yes, I volunteered. But I volunteered in the same sense that some poor guy signs up for the army and then comes home from Iraq or wherever, and a dropped can in a grocery store sends him ducking for cover in the cereal aisle.
Eventually I say to Painter: “He gambled away forty thousand bucks and wouldn’t even see you today. What should I do? How can I fix this?”
I know that the answer to this really depends on how far into the mess I want to travel, but the path I walk that day is to talk with Painter for another hour, alternating between blame and forgiveness, before he says he feels like this is progress, and we schedule a call for next week.
He gives me a big hug before he jumps into the rental car. Into my ear he whispers, “These relocation situations are hard. A few years back we sent a Russian guy to Florida. He’d been a big man in Moscow, but in Miami he was a nobody. Wound up spending his time getting plastered, having fun driving down to the Red Lobster, instigating fistfights. Cops got involved.”
“And he eventually figured it out?” I ask.
“Oh no,” Painter says, “He’s dead.”
I look at him like what the actual f*** and later realise this was my chance to slap him. But I just stand there, looking stupid.
“What I’m saying,” Painter says, “Is take care of yourself.”
That evening I take a walk and stop off at the cornfield, the one I’m not going to say more about. When I emerge I’m holding the case with the USB drive.
Back home, on the patio, I crank up a Pink Floyd playlist and open a bottle of Sauv Blanc, intending to make a serious dent in it.
I’ve just started vaping when Maxim walks outside.
I’d not heard him come home.
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He’s sweat-soaked from the gym. Maxim looks good when he’s sweaty. When I pick up his scent as he plants a kiss on my forehead, the pheromones or whatever make me feel unhinged, even though I hate him for losing forty grand betting on Premier League soccer. And this dynamic — something I never had with my now ex, Jeremy, back in California — explains a lot of this whole Nebraska sitch, if we’re being honest. I try to ignore Maxim, but soon he’s telling me how sorry he is, and then we’re talking about everything and nothing, losing ourselves in each other, just like we did in Dubai. I worry the magic will wear off soon, and dread what’s coming for us when it does.
After a while I say: “Maxim, do you think we made a mistake?”
There are, after all, lots to choose from. Here’s number one: Maxim trying to recruit me over Instagram. Two: me volunteering (or whatever) to help the CIA get close to Maxim in Dubai. Three: Maxim’s defection. Four: Us. Which is what I’m really asking about. The two of us are pros at pushing fantasy and sometimes I wonder if that’s what we’re doing to each other.
“Mistake…” Maxim is frowning. “You know who made the mistake? Painter. I mean, Nebraska, holy shit. I know a guy who defected three, four years back. The CIA sent him to Miami.”
When Maxim heads upstairs to shower, I flip open the laptop, plug in the USB, and soon enough … I’m there.
I feel my neck flush. My heartbeat’s ticking faster. I scan over the comments, the messages. I check the numbers. Three thousand and counting. Not millions, not yet. But it’s a start.
Instagram’s a rush, it really is.
And so is hiding it from Painter.
David McCloskey’s new novel The Persian is published by Swift Press on January 29, 2026