The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - Сергей Николаевич Огольцов

taking the catch directly to Veerich’s was not correct. So, I asked Eera to keep my briefcase at home for a couple of days, she was on a sick leave at the moment.

Then, like an exemplary student, I attended the classes and, already after the canteen, climbed up to the third floor in the Hosty where I was met by a noisy commotion in the corridor, the Lipes' digs had been broken in!

I approached his room and saw that, yes, the door was indeed in need of repair. Dirty bastards! And what's missing?

Ilya never responded and only kept tut-tutting in bitter frustration…

~ ~ ~

But then I decided to finally break up with Eera because I was fed up with all that heartbreaking harrowing… Moreover, because she absolutely didn't trust me and that’s for sure.

The watchwoman in the Hosty’s lobby passed me a letter:

"Sehrguey,

I have been fascinated by you for so long, but I dared not say it.

Today I'll be waiting for you at 19.00 near the Old Building.

Lyouba"

That evening, as usual, I escorted Eera to the staircase-entrance vestibule in her apartment block, and there she unexpectedly caught some fire of unrestrained passion, “Do not go, hang on a little more, please!" I looked at the watch it was ten to seven, "Well, the guys are waiting at the Hosty. We're fixin' to draw a pool at Pref."

"They can wait. Don't go!"

I hardly managed to leave… When I neared the Old Building it was exactly seven because I had checked the time under a street lamp on the way. And on the square in front of the Old Building, there was no one. But I did not tarry there smoking, waiting, looking around; not at all.

I crossed the empty square without ever stopping; maybe in a bit slower tempo than my usual. But then, after all, I had all the right to admire the nature of the winter night, had I? That Pine tree by the corner looks like a Cedar; could it really be it? In the thicket of close-set branches lives an owl, there, midst them, it's always dark and quiet even at day-time. Look at the snowdrift under the Pine-Cedar, at scattered offals from his feasts, shreds of small rodents; one of the nature sanitizing care-takers…

And, by the by, I didn't lie at all. The moment I entered Room 72, Slavic and Twoic followed me, "Well, will we draw a pool, or will we?"

The letter, as it soon turned out, was written by Eera's girlfriend whose name was not "Lyouba", Eera invented it while dictating to the girl. Everyone may get attracted by the novelty, but it takes a driveling chump to be caught out…

Well, and besides, there appeared Maria, a brunette of the age so ardently canvassed for by the once popular French writer Balzac.

When she smiled at me on the sidewalk, I did not immediately snap in. As it turned out, she happened to drop for a minute to that she-ox's birthday, only I did not notice when. So, in general, she told me what apartment-block she lived in and her apartment number – 42.

Although having a rather busy next day I still slotted a visit to the new acquaintance and also found money for a bottle of vodka which I carried using Alimosha’s trick – in the sleeve; it made for such a hard bicep. So I came to the said address, the fourth floor, the door to the left. She opened.

We had a little snack and landed on the sofa… I do hate coming on entering or almost so which happens at times, the scorch-hot trickle's bored thru, the floodgate burst, your standard pleasure quota past salvage. Fuck!

"Sorry," says I, " In a dreadful hurry. There's a concert at five."

Which concert? Where?. In short, she also came to the Old Building Assembly Hall and was sitting in the second row, when from the stage, and already playing the bass guitar, and already as the leading vocalist, I was screaming,

"Do you remember those two sta-a-rs?!That disappeared from the sky?!.."

A third-year student, Vitya Kononevich, played the rhythm guitar and sang along, backing with a third; and on the drums some, well, Lyosha, it seems, also from that course, a local guy he was.

After the concert, Maria and I had a walk. She led me to a friend of hers. The woman brought a mug of medicinal alcohol out to the staircase landing, and a piece of fish for a snack. It was 96 percent medicinal alcohol because my tongue at once stuck to the palate. But since then our go-rounds with Maria in their duration were not inferior to the acts in Shakespeare’s plays…

She had a son, sixth-grader, who I never met in her one-room apartment. Apart from the sofa, there was a double bed and a radio receiver on the nightstand next to it. All night long it was playing softly to itself in the middle waves ranges, glowing with its small yellow eyelet.

And she cum in really grand style, "More! More! A! I wanna.. Mo-o-ore! A!." Maybe it was her worked out coda, but still a cool one. She didn’t condone the semen smell and asked me to go to the bathroom right away. I did not mind, she was worth it. For my willingness, she rewarded me with a massage, so was her profession. I couldn't get it why they were so crazy about it. Oh, massage!. But I did not contradict even on that point…

Sometimes, even way too late at night, the doorbell rang. She rose from the bed, threw on her long gown and went out to the landing to have a word with the untimely visitor. I was not quibbling, I understood that a nurse, even a masseuse, had somehow to survive in this world. She had a beautiful body, like in black-and-white pics of Soviet amateur pornography against the backdrop of filled up ash-trays and empty bottles on the kitchen windowsill, and she herself was good-looking too, in that