The Lovers - стр. 28
“Do you smoke?” asked Konstantin Konstantinovich, taking out a cigarette.
“Sometimes,” said Dina.
He extended a packet of Capital cigarettes towards her. “Please.”
Without replying, Dina took a flat brown packet of imported ladies’ cigarettes from her handbag, took one out, and brought it to her lips.
Konstantin Konstantinovich, expressing admiration by kinking his eyebrow, lit a match for her.
Dina smoked by barely inhaling and releasing the smoke as an impressive thin trickle that drifted upwards.
Music started playing as the musicians returned to the stage after a break. They were all quite young, with slightly longer hair than what was allowed by the unwritten rules for Komsomol youth – and there was no other kind of youth in the country – but musicians were probably permitted these liberties, in order to create a stage image. Two of them had handlebar mustaches, with a pair of tinted Diplomat glasses perched on the nose of one, while one of the clean-shaven guys was wearing skin-tight, white, completely white, pants. Jeans were only starting to become fashionable and were a rarity, accessible only to the “golden youth,” who found money who knows where for foreign clothes and expensive restaurants. White jeans were exceedingly exotic.
“We hadn’t finished our conversation,” said Konstantin Konstantinovich when Dina looked away from the stage and began to extinguish her cigarette in the ashtray.
She glanced in surprise at her companion.
“Have you said everything that you wanted to say about my person?”
“Yes, everything,” Dina replied.
“Let me summarize. I am an idiot.”
“Stop, that’s not what I wanted to say.” Dina tried to interrupt Konstantin Konstantinovich.
“Wait, wait, wait!” he waved at her. “I am an idiot, but, luckily, not a complete idiot. I’m a womanizer. An incurable womanizer, it seems. On the other hand, I appear to have some rudiments of intellect and a good sense of humor. This is what surprised you the most.” He looked at Dina with a smile.
Dina lowered her eyes to her plate and inspected the green pea stuck on her fork: when and why did she do that?
“Why are you silent now? That’s exactly what you said to me.”
She looked at Konstantin Konstantinovich and said firmly, “All right. That’s exactly what I said.”
“Well, then,” he laughed. “Does that mean that I have grown a little in your eyes?”
“I suppose.”
“Excellent! From this moment on, I will do everything in my power to if not score more points, at least avoid losing the ones I’ve gained.” He picked up his glass. “Hmmm?”