"Hi, Lolie! This is Andrew Saltikov. How are you? What's up? Are you living in Moscow (judging from your posts) or am I mistaken?"
"Yes, I'm living in Moscow." was the answer.
"Cool! Lolie, what is your real name?"
"Olive."
"Is this your real name?" Saltikov kept asking.
"No, it's fucking fictional!" Olive swore as she read his message. However, she decided not to be rude to him so far. "After all, I still have plenty of time to blow him off," she thought.
Saltikov kept on bombarding her with questions.
"Are you studying now?"
Olive answered patiently.
"In a university? What is your major? What year are you in?" he went on interrogating her.
"Is he compiling dossiers on me or what?" Olive thought involuntarily. Her virtual interlocutor's meticulous curiosity was becoming too excessive; she felt annoyed by it. Yet she named her university and major.
"So you are an engineer, too! Cool!" Saltikov replied, "You are a smart cookie, they say it's very hard to enter a uni and study in Moscow. What do you do for work?"
"Do I tell him the truth or a lie?" flitted through her mind, "Why... Guess I could lie... Who cares?"
"I work as a receptionist," she answered.
Meanwhile the receptionist was standing behind Olive's back and looking over her shoulder at her simple cell Siemens M50.
"Who on Earth are you texting to?"
Olive started and instinctively hid her phone.
"Just..." she mumbled reddening all over.
"You got a virtual boyfriend? You could have told me by the way. Aren't we best friends after all?" Yana pouted her peony lips.
"Oh, come on, he's not my boyfriend. What a strange idea! It's just some guy from Arkhangelsk, pretty cool to talk to."
Yana wrinkled her pretty little nose.
"From where?.."
Olive hated arrogance in people. She had to deal with arrogant people pretty often, for not only Yana was like that in her surroundings. Her classmates, fellow students, colleagues at work and even her own mother were infected with a disease that could also be defined as "Moscow syndrome". The syndrome implied contempt for everybody related to the world outside MRR, as though Moscow was the only civilized spot in the country, and the whole area beyond was a hillbilly territory with no electricity, bears walking around streets and simple-minded people playing balalaikas.
Olive didn't want to fight about it with Yana, but she didn't want to let her in the depth of her soul and reveal her feelings to her either. She didn't want her new found joy and happiness to be cruelly derided and snubbed disdainfully.
Her happiness seemed to have come out of nowhere, indeed. But Olive couldn't explain to Yana that since she had found that Arkhangelsk student forum on the Internet and met Saltikov on there who had been first to respond to her post and given her his phone number, for the first time in years she'd got a reason to wake up in the morning, and a little envelop in the corner of her cell-phone display awaiting her every morning inspired her and gave her strength for the whole working day no matter how hard it was.
The sms-correspondence with the guy she had never seen even in a photo made Olive feel strangely excited. Saltikov attracted her incredibly with his eloquence; he was eloquent beyond his years. He had a way with words; his language was so rich and fluent; besides his words implied so much openness, kind-heartiness and sincere concern that Olive involuntarily felt safe and confident around him. So she got carried away and opened to that actual stranger before she knew it. Not to the full extent, no; Olive couldn't be caught dead telling about being bullied by her classmates, her virginity at the age of nineteen, her tiny messenger's room with the tattered chair in it and her monthly salary of four thousand rubles. Yet she felt like complaining about her poor life. Especially to such an empathetic person, even though he was virtual.
"Oh you poor thing!" he would reply to her incessant gushing, "I wish I could help you at least somehow..."
On the one hand Olive was flattered by his sympathy and understanding. But this sympathy was... kind of superficial or something. However, Olive, still young and inexperienced, didn't know what superficiality was and the meaning of it, so she couldn't really tell to herself why that guy attracted her so much and repelled her at the same time. His concern for her felt both pleasant and unpleasant. His texts were always long and informative and simultaneously contained some kind of vulgarity. Saltikov never offered her phone sex or anything of that sort, but there was something tacky in his messages. Even in his seemingly innocent "goodnight, Olenka" texts had a subtle smack of something like chlorine in tap water. Olive couldn't explain it all but she could feel it, yet she kept on drinking the tap water of his texts, she drank it long and deep and there was no way to quench her thirst for it.
"To be honest, I don't think myself pretty," Olive replied to Saltikov's request for describing her appearance, "I'm short, and my legs are short, too. My hair?.. Plain-colored and straight, nothing special. My eyes?... Same, I guess: just grey. Also, I've got some freckles on my face... A snub nose, too, and irregular features... Actually, I don't really like the way I look..."
"Come on, it's not a big deal!" said Saltikov jokingly, "I'm short, too, shorter than everybody else in my group, and I am completely fine with it."
Saltikov, indeed, was completely happy with his looks. Despite his shortness and plainness of his features he really felt like a king in his surroundings. His Arkhangelsk mates, though, never thought of him as an ugly person, and only Olive when she had sneaked into Yana's reception room with a computer in it, at the risk of encountering her boss Elagin, dug up his picture from the photoforum - and got terrified.
The picture of Saltikov was taken in the Military Museum. He was wearing a helmet like a fascist; his hands behind his head, his mouth wide open in laughter as though he was saying "Huh!" His face was beet-red, his nose looked snub and shiny, his small shrimpy eyes were almost invisible behind his grimace. To cup it all, he had chipped, crooked teeth, and the gap between two front teeth was so large that he would probably find it easy to spit through it.
"Eww, how ugly you are, mate!" Olive shuddered, "A real Quasimodo! Poor guy... What sort of girlfriends could he have with such an appearance..."
"What are you viewing there?" Yana approached her from behind. "Goodness me, what an ugly guy!"
Olive blushed crimson. She felt ashamed and awkward for him, that Yana saw him too and considered him ugly as well. Saltikov had already become her closest friend, even though they had only been texting to each other.
"Is it that virtual friend of yours?" Yana remarked disparagingly, "Oh, man... You've dug up a real dreamboat for yourself, I must say!"
"He's not mine!" Olive said with a flush, "Just cool to talk to, that's all."
"Look at you, you are blushing! Somebody is in love, somebody is in love!"
"Stop it!"
"Why? Things happen, don't they..." Yana went on jeering, "What if he is your future husband... Or your first man... in bed..."
"Piss off, will you? Get out of here!" Olive flung an eraser at Yana and missed.
Yana jumped like a frog and poked Olive's sides. She gave a squeal. The girls got so carried away messing around that they missed Elagin come into the reception room.
"You get out of here! To your room, now!" he barked at Olive, "How many times did I tell you not to hang out at the reception? Don't let me catch you here again!"
Olive moused into her closet. Now she was glad to get out of sight - Saltikov's picture and Yana's comments embarrassed the hell out of her. Yana and her razor tongue! Now she had really put her foot in her mouth.
"What if he will really be your first man in bed... your husband..."
"Brrr!" Olive shook her head as if trying to get that absurd idea out of it, "Anything but! Sure, he's a cool guy, he's a very cool guy, no denying that... It's great talking to him... But to have sex with him - no, no, God forbid!"