But I didn’t want him to stop.
“Who, then?”
“A friend. How long have you and Elena known each other?”
Why was he constantly asking about her?
“Since we were very young,” I said. “You know Elena?”
“We have friends in common.”
Odd, because Elena didn’t knowhim.
“She does have a lot of friends,” I mumbled. “Tell me something about yourself. Do you like your job?”
“It has its good days. Gives me the freedom to pursue my interests.” He paused, taking a sparing sip. “Lots of downtime.”
“Which are?”
“A bit of everything. I like to learn. What is it that you do in your free time, Katya?”
“I read a lot. Unfortunately, there isn’t much time for anything else between work and Mama. Maybe when Maxim gets older, he can take some things over, but right now it’s just me.”
“What would you do then?”
I grinned. “Write, I think. I enjoyed it in primary school. But it’s one of those things that doesn’t make it into adulthood unless you can make some money off of it.”
“So you don’t write at all?”
“Well… here and there, I suppose. I can’t help it. I’ll read one of the greats, like Chekhov, and I get these ideas, but there is never time for more than a short story.”
“Chekhov,” he repeated, sounding it out. “I am not a reader, but I am familiar with‘the Black Monk.’ I can’t say I know any other of his works.”
An entirely new person walked beside me. This wasn’t the same man I met days ago who gave me bits and pieces of a conversation like ransom notes cut out of magazines.
“And what did you think of that one?” I asked.
“I like the idea that things are not black and white. Kovrin understood himself, even if he was maddened. It was the world that didn’t understand him.”
“Maddened? He was completely insane.”
“And those around him thought it best that he be cured. Which in turn led to his death.”
I smiled to myself, because his one story was my least read and I couldn’t remember who I sided with when I read it. All I had in mind was the man pacing and yelling at a chair throughout the whole thing until his wife got sick of it.
“What else interests you?” he asked, catching me off guard.
I took a second to answer, because these questions brought on whimsical thoughts that I wasn’t sure I liked to share with people. Talking about dreams was wonderful, but every dream I had was from a time I was free to pursue them, and didn’t. I might have been young still, but it wasn’t about me. It was about the world around me, and all the opportunity I would never have.
“I enjoyed ballet,” I said, then quickly added, “Enjoy, that is. I like to take Mama sometimes and watch it on TV.”
“What do you like about it?”
“It takes strength to create something beautiful.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “It does. You danced?”
I chuckled. “I did, for a while. I trained constantly. I liked that it wasn’t easy—it took sacrifice. You should have seen how beat up I was afterwards. There was no time my feet didn’t hurt, but it was a good hurt.” Before he could ask more questions about me and avoid answering his own, I added, “What is it that you like to learn about, if you don’t read?”
