Uninvented Stories of Invented People

Svetlana Isaenko

“Yeah, yeah, it’s just I have forgotten your gift at home.”

“It’s fine, yet, in fact I was counting on the one from you. Anyways, on Tuesday, I will go to buy myself a present from all of you, guys. I’ve put an eye on such a purse in Symbol Boutique… It’s Gucci and it’s awesome. You’ll die of envy when you see it.”

“Of course, Al’,” I pronounce wearily and, sincerely, don’t understand what

I was doing there.

There is a great deal of people there, all beautiful, many go in pairs. I’ve greeted everyone. At the end of the table, I see a white shirt and a bald head and a bunch of young chicks in extremely short dresses around…

“Vova!”

I get up, hug him, we haven’t seen each other for three years. “Hi! So good to see you! How are you, my darling?”

“Ohhh,… Marie, hello dear. I’m cool and you don’t seem to be very well.

You’ve grown completely thin.” “I’m fine.”

“Wann’a shot of something?”

“Nope, I’m to drive home today. Can’t.”

“Come on, you are all out of face. You are not going to your Lyubomyrovka, drink one for Alevtina’s health, he leans over to me and adds in whisper: “Frankly, I don’t understand what I am doing here.”

“Vovka, frankly, neither do I,” I laugh.

Vova is a big shot. In his younger years he became the chief of the district police department. Quite a catch for any girl. He’s good-looking, tall, athletic, with blue eyes and money, unshaven, with a fancy car and stuff. Nevertheless, still no lady to be ‘the shape of his heart’. He smells of luxury life.

He pours whiskey into a glass, hands it to me and says: “Drink”. “Happy birthday, Alevtina. Whooha!”

We woke up in one and the same bed in the morning…

Chapter Seven

•Alevtina •

Alevtina came into my life when I was three years old. We were like sisters. She was a bright, eye-catching girl, but a 'victim' in the head. She needed to suffer, to be concerned about and literally needed men “to wipe their feet over her”. Yet, she dreamed of a prince charming, whom she would serve, since, in her opinion, a woman’s sex-role task should have been just like that. Coming over in the middle of the night “to save Oleg, because he was lonely and sad, and needed me” – easy. It didn’t matter that Oleg called her only at such moments, when he was bored of sitting alone in the kitchen, after a three-day alcohol marathon with chicks and drugs, when all the adequate ones had already been fed up with his post-weekend crap. Whereas, she considered it to be her vital necessity and a perseonal fulfillment of her woman’s nature.

In fact, Alevtina had issues with self-esteem. None of the crippled Alpha males was rescued and, as a result, there she was, a 30-year-old savior of married alco-drug twaddlers, anticipating her prince of Wales alone.

Lo and behold, one day he burst into her mortal life. Handsome as God (in her words), however, a bit limped and with one eye skew. Yet, he held all the virtues, the spirit and soul, the charisma, the fortune, with inexhaustible vital energy, which would extinct without a woman of his dream, since all the previous ones made him suffer. “He is the ONE!” stated Alevtina and naively threw herself into the overwhelming affair.

They met at a party of common friends. Our hero’s name was Simon and he was the owner of an advertising agency. He was thirty-eight. He was a tall, a bit askew and lame, curly blond. A spark of light flashed between them at the first glance. There was a restaurant, a night club, a karaoke and a breakfast, then the night club again and so it went on for three days in a row. Alevtina and Simon were a finger and a thumb. A noisy company was replaced by sitting down at his place. That was the way she found Him.

Alevtina lived in Kiev at that time and soon her smart phone reminded of the ticket back home.

“I have never had anything like this, give birth to my children,” muttered he waking up one morning.

Alevtina’s heart pulled back for a second and joyfully fluttered of such long-awaited words. In her mind, she had already quitted the job of an MP assistant and moved to nurse her three future kids into a mansion on the banks of Dnieper Bay in Koncha-Zaspa, acquired two seconds before in Alevtina’s imagination.

“Don’t rush me,” she whispered playfully, removing all the means of contraception from her lover. However, the plan conceived by the both was not destined to work out due to a number of reasons drank. That night he had a “false heart attack” (I quote the ambulance medic) and nightlong she was applying fomentations to his head, smearing his chest with tiger balm, stroking his feet and listening to the story of the tough life of his, where Alevtina “would be the most beautiful thing to happen, if I die.”

He recovered in the morning and took her to the railway station. Thousands of messages per week and then he came to visit her in Kiev. It was Spring. The air was fragrant of chestnut blossom. They were t^ete-`a-t^ete with Khreshchatyk street downtown.

It was his second cousin’s birthday. She had nothing to wear for that evening introduction to the future relatives. (Which was announced purely for bravado reasons, since Alevtina knew from clever books and close friends’ advice that: ‘a man’s appreciation is directly bound to the amount of money he spends on a woman, which, in turn, equivalently reflects the feminine energy balance of the latter’). They came to the Central Department Store, visited dozens of boutiques, tried dozens of dresses on, but tough was the luck, everything was “not worthy of her.” Even Jimmy Choo’s boots made her ‘look hideously chubby, in fact’, while discounted slippers fit incredibly well ‘the extremely beautiful leg for future vacation”.

What an incredible birthday it was: kisses, holding by hands, lots of wine. Then, there was Alevtina’s tale about her former boyfriends – big shots and sharks of business (well, she decorated the story a bit, but who wouldn’t), with his reaction of: “I’m probably not worthy of you.” Alevtina burst into tears (like I said – lots of wine). Then, were vows of undying love, hugs and a night of passion, when he finally made it to reveal himself as a man…

Railway station was followed up by tears again.