Yarpen spent that night at his place in Sulphat and he couldn't get a wink of sleep. Olive and her obnoxious drunken behavior, her monstrous screams about him... He couldn't even bring himself to describe it all. He felt like he needed a drink real bad, too. To get drunk and forget that terrible nightmare. But he just couldn't forget it that easily.
"I need to talk to her," he decided at last, "I will not let her enjoy it. Let her know finally... I'll tell her everything."
After making this decision he went back to Sadovaya Street at the crack of dawn.
The door was opened to him by Daniel, sleepy and disheveled.
"Where have you been?" he said with a surprise, "I thought you were sleeping in the next bedroom."
"I need to talk to Olive," Yarpen said dryly.
Daniel looked at his face and stopped. He had never seen Yarpen like that before. With those pursed pale thin lips, that nervous tick in his cheek, the expression of Yarpen's thin face, so kind before, now looked surprisingly dry and unpleasant.
"Come on in," was all that Daniel could say, giving way to him.
Olive had already gotten up. Disheveled and untidy, her face swollen from tears and vodka, she was sitting over her cup of tea in the kitchen room, and, hunching her back, she was wrapping herself in a shawl like a miserable old woman. To say she was feeling bad was an understatement. A gray cold drizzle was sniveling outside the window; the kettle on the stove was whistling so quietly and pitifully tuning in with the drizzle, that those mournful sounds made Olive cry, feeling sorry for herself - and the kettle that was weeping just as bitterly as her, abandoned and not wanted by anyone.
"Olive, we need to talk," Yarpen declared without beating about the bush as he sat opposite her.
She looked up at him, but behind the curtain of her sorrow she couldn't see the change of his face.
"What's wrong?"
"I understand, you were drunk last night and didn't know what you were doing," Yarpen began dryly, "But now, when you are finally sober, we need to clear something up."
Olive flushed and averted her eyes.
"I can't remember what I was saying last night..."
"But I remember it clear. You were saying that I..." Yarpen found it hard, but steeled himself to continue, "That I was in love with you. Actually, I'm not."
"So what is the matter?" Olive murmured in her cup.
"There's something else," he continued angrily, insulted by Olive's indifferent reaction, "I hope you realize that after the last night's incident my good relations with you are over. And, furthermore," he got up from the table, "If ever you plan a sequel to your book, please, write the truth. Stop trying to pose as a superstar making people around you look like lovesick fools. I'm not one of them; you know, it's not like that."
"Not like what?" asked Olive.
"Not like that. You are not a superstar, and, just between us, not even really all that gifted a writer. Your whole book is no more than a hysterical reaction of a drama queen. You are just a mean little woman, pathetic and miserable, trying your utmost to get noticed. Last night I saw it as never before."
"Hm. You used to have quite a different opinion."
"No, I didn't. I was sorry for you, Liv, that's all. Even now I am sorry for you, but I am a lot sorrier for the time I have wasted on you."
"Have you said it all?" Olive interrupted him in an icy tone of her voice.
"Yes I have."
"Now then, turn around and go get the fuck out of here."
Yarpen remained standing there quite unperturbed.
"It's not your house," he remarked, "And it's not up to you either to tell me if I should go or not."
"I will go, then," she said and stormed out of the kitchen nearly knocking down Daniel.
"So are these talks," Yarpen muttered under his breath.
Daniel was out of sorts, too. He lingered by the stove with the kettle in his hand.
"Want some breakfast?" he asked him glumly.
"Not really," was the reply, "I gotta go."
"Wait, I'll go with you," Daniel said as he put the kettle back, "I have to go to work anyway. And--"
"And there's nothing for us to do here," Yarpen finished for him.