The Days of Our Lives, Sans That Has-Been Evgeny

I am Pasha. Remember me?

Maybe you have forgotten because I haven’t written since Nagano, on the day before my partner, Evgeny Platov, and I won our second ice dance gold medal. No one ever did that before, not even Torvill and Dean. Can you imagine?

I have been very busy since. There was the move to Los Angeles, my breakup with Evgeny and, of course, the fire at my apartment. I know what you must be thinking, but it wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t even there when the seven fire trucks came.

I’m tired of everything being blamed on me, like that night at Spago. That was--what?--six years ago and these nosy journalists are still writing about my affair with another Russian ice dancer, Sasha Zhulin, and how his wife and skating partner, Maia Usova, attacked me while I was drinking a margarita at the bar.

What they don’t write is that Maia came to my hotel room the next day, got down on her knees and begged me to forgive her. Now we are friends.

Evgeny? That’s a different story. I suspected there were problems, like the time he hit me with a hockey stick. But I thought we would be a team forever. Then he dumped me this summer with no explanation. Maybe it’s like he used to say, that I am half crazy and that I drive him full crazy.

You want to hear something funny?

He’s skating with Maia now.

You want to hear something funnier?

I’m skating with Sasha. Can you imagine?

I have to tell you that we are very good together. You will see when we--Pasha and Sasha!--skate in a couple of weeks in our first pro competition, the Legends of Figure Skating, in South Carolina. I don’t know if Maia and Evgeny will be there. I hear maybe they’re not so good together yet. I wish them luck.

Naturally, you want to know about Sasha and me.

First, I have to say how sorry I am about what happened before. I am still surprised it created such a shock all over the world. Maybe we should have tried to hide it more. Maybe I shouldn’t have worn his wedding ring around my neck in the 1992 Olympics. My publicist, Phil Lobel, says if everyone was as open and regretful about these things as we were, there wouldn’t be this trouble now in Washington.

Sasha and I are just friends now. He has a girlfriend, a Russian ice dancer, in Delaware. I go there to train with him for two weeks, then he comes here to train with me for two weeks.

I moved here, to Westwood, for the weather. Doesn’t everyone? I also want to be in movies. Doesn’t everyone? You might remember that John Frankenheimer wrote a part for me in “Ronin” with my favorite actor, Robert DeNiro. But I couldn’t accept it because they were filming while I was at the Olympics.

Katarina Witt got the part. Some journalists wrote when we were in Nagano that I said mean things about Katarina. That wasn’t true. She is my idol in skating. I went to see the movie and she was wonderful.

Friends say I have mellowed. Maybe it’s because I moved to Los Angeles. I love sitting on the beach and watching the white birds with the long noses. What do you call them? Sea gulls?

I was born in Odessa, by the Black Sea, and moved to Moscow when I was 12. But I think maybe I am a California girl now. Everyone is so nice here. People tell me I remind them of Sharon Stone. Can you imagine?

From Pasha, With Love

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Remember when the Dodgers’ changing managers was big news? . . .

Glenn Hoffman’s demise was the lead story in the sports section of only one area newspaper Wednesday. . . .

That says less about Hoffman than it does the franchise. . . .

He’ll be a good manager some day, but he wasn’t ready for the new Dodgers. . . .

Who is? . . .

What’s wrong with this paragraph in a recent Associated Press story? “The MetroStars, playing for the first time under Coach Bora Milutinovic, ended a six-game losing streak to finish the season 15-17. They open the playoffs Wednesday at Columbus.” . . .

Moments after sports-talk-jockey Joe McDonnell wished jockey Chris McCarron luck in next month’s Breeders’ Cup, an unidentified listener sent a fax to the station declaring that the Breeders’ Cup is over for this year. Evander Holyfield already clinched it.

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While wondering if perhaps the Dodgers could put together a team of Kevin Malone, Kevin Kennedy and Kevin Brown, I was thinking: Now we know the reason Joe Brinkman isn’t the most respected umpire in baseball, now we know how much the Indians need Mike Hargrove, today would be a good time for Sammy Sosa to rediscover his home run swing.