* * * * *
Oleg impressed Lana as no one had before, and next day she decided to meet Vera Grach.
«I have to talk to her’, she was thinking. «Interesting, did he tell me the truth? I have to find out.»
She parked her car near the apartment building, and knocked on the door. Vera opened it, and smiled. «Did you come to buy a picture?»
Surprised, Lana nodded. «Phew, I don’t have to explain my visit.» She silently went in.
Lana did not understand art. So she just pointed to two pictures, and Vera started packing them. Lana glanced around. «What should I ask?»
«Strange,» she said surprisingly. «Why didn’t you paint your husband?»
«I draw only things that impress me,» Vera answered calmly.
«I thought if you loved someone it means he impresses you.»
«Girl,» Vera shrugged her shoulders. «It’s very difficult to love a man who doesn’t care about the family budget.»
«Money doesn’t make happiness,» Lana said with irritation in her voice. «When dad passes away I’ll give all his money to some charity organization.»
«I’m sorry, Miss…?» Vera looked questionably at Lana.
«Limpson.»
«I’m sorry, Miss Limpson, but you’re too young for such discourses. Your father spent all his life to make this money, and you want to waste it? It would be a stupid and dishonest act.»
«Oleg is right,» Lana thought, feeling angry. «She’s just a miser.»
«As I know,» she addressed Vera. «Your husband is making good money in Russia. You have to love him very much, don’t you?»
«I think it’s too personal to discuss.» Vera looked at Lana with surprise, but she thought the girl needed some advice, and she relented. «Life is not as easy as we wish,» she tried to explain.
It was the same phrase that Oleg had said to Lana when she had asked him why he did not divorce Vera if they did not love each other. «Life is not so easy.» He sighed, and a tender compassion for this Russian man rising in her heart.
«Once Oleg came home with his coat so dirty that I was amazed,» Vera continued. «I’m sure he got plastered and fell into some puddle. Like a pig. And I have to love such a man?»
Lana recalled the episode with the wolf-skin coat, and her feelings for Oleg became much stronger. But this phrase made her worry.
«Does he drink a lot?» she asked, trying not to show her concern.
«Honestly, I’ve never seen Oleg drunk,» Vera confessed, sighing. «But that evening he was so strange, I have no other explanation.»
«Oleg loves me!» thought Lana, melting with that feeling. «He loves me! He surely loves me! Stupid woman, how could she not appreciate him?»
Lana took the pictures and gave the money to Vera.
«If you don’t love him,» asked Lana carefully, «why don’t you rent another apartment?»
«It’s okay with me,» Vera answered calmly. «But to rent a separate apartment would be a pointless waste of money.»
Lana shuddered and left without saying goodbye.
