#pervoprestolnaya

dearest readers

Alexei still isn’t sure why Maya wanted him to take her out to lunch. A part of him worries they will be mistaken for a couple. This is the last thing he wants. They look like the perfect pair of Edwardian siblings, though, to all onlookers, of course, with Maya in her large-brimmed sunhat and Alexei with his frock coat and cravat.

He orders nothing but some kvass and a bowl of fish solyanka. Maya stares.

“You’re never going to gain any weight living off of soup, you know that?”

Alexei rolls his eyes and sips his kvass.

“I am not that thin. And even if I were, would it be your place to say anything? I thought not. Besides. Plenty of girls rather like the way I look, you know that? If I really wanted to, I could find a wife.”

Maya laughs.

“You? Find a wife? Alyosha, you’re more delusional than I thought! Girls don’t marry poets. They don’t marry invalids either. They especially don’t marry invalid poets.”

She ignores the obvious- that they are personifications, not normal people, and that marriage would be out of the question anyways, and of course, this is to throw off suspicion, but Alexei still crosses his arms over his chest and frowns.

“Well, men don’t marry she-devils either, you know! And I am no invalid!”

And again, Maya laughs. Perhaps ‘cackles’ would be a better word, now that Alexei thinks about it.

“Oh, but they do, Lyoshka! If they’re pretty. But no girl wants to marry poet and other intellectual types like yourself. Even if they are pretty. Sure, they have affairs with them, but never marry. Do you know why? Because people like you are whiny. And waifish. It's 1911. No one is interested in fainting poet dandies anymore. Girls want real men. With mustaches. You can’t grow a mustache.”

Alexei lets out an annoyed sort of quiet groan.

“I am not a dandy! And as for- I could grow one if I wanted to!”

“Really now? Could you? Let’s make a deal, brother. If you can grow a mustache within two weeks, I’ll take you out to lunch again. And this time, I’ll pay.”

I couldn’t agree more. Now only if he understood this.

My only question is how your sister found out about it.

Bună seara to you also, Mayushka.  As to how she found out - I hit a low mood at the end of the night, and felt bad. Inna will be canonised someday if that house could have their way, and I knew the Romanians would find out sooner rather than later. That, and I was shit-faced.