The weather was dank. It was late autumn. The puddles were covered with thin ice crust. Leaves had already flown around and, blackened, stuck to the marble of the gravestones. Alex came earlier than agreed. His shoes were getting wet and his feet were freezing. In order not to kill finally, he walked along the graves: famous singers, political and odious figures, heroes who fell for their homeland, and unknown rich people. The bald man with a round, well-fed face looked at him from the granite slab: "Innocently killed in a watermelon, insidiously imprisoned poison, you will always remain in our hearts. Rest in peace. Alex smiled either at the stupidity of what he had written or at the cold.
Soon Anita appeared in a black shawl and in her favorite fur coat in the cemetery alley. She walked past the pompous gravestones with a model gait, as if on a podium, and it made Alex feel even more desirable. Alex stopped freezing.
When Anita approached him, she crossed over and said: "The kingdom of heaven for you. She took out a bottle of vodka and a piece of black bread from her lacquer bag:
- So... what do you say we mark the watermelon that was innocently murdered by the insidious flesh of a watermelon?
And without waiting for an answer, I got bread out of my throat. At the same time, she embraced the throat of the bottle with her red lips like a watermelon so voluptuously that Alex also wanted to remember the deceased. Anita handed him the bottle.
There was a fresh hill and a deep pit next to the grave - the deceased had not yet been brought in, but they were waiting for him to arrive. While chewing a piece of black bread as if it were Swiss chocolate, Anita started talking:
- The deceased was not a bad person. He still provided me with an apartment in Moscow. And, thank God, he died in time. Watermelon and damn vodka destroyed his gut.
She started laughing. Alex looked at her red sweet lips, smiled and said:
- Sometimes death is more important than life. The last photo is of great importance. The most important thing is how we die. As heroes or...
- Tell me what you mean, she stopped laughing and got tired again.
- I love you very much. I've been losing sleep and peace lately, as if I'm running out of air.
- Lately? That's after you saw me at the top management banquet at your agency?
- What does it matter? You understand... I can't live without you.
- Do you understand? You and I have no future. You're just a photographer. Nobody knows you. What are your prospects?
- Well, then! We will work. And God will not leave us in need and trouble.
Anita smiled smiling smiling smugly and smiling.
- I do not believe in miracles! I was already working. And now I need perspectives and a stable and secure life. You are a poor impressionist, how do you know! What can you even understand about prospects?
Alex was white, and the vodka was no longer warm. He got cold again. Anita put the underwent bottle on the tombstone, covered it with an under-eaten piece of bread. In an impulse of despair, Alex rushed to her and grabbed her hands, as is usually done in romantic dramas:
- Look! I couldn't do otherwise then. I had to get a hold of myself.
But Anita didn't support Alex's pathos and pushed him away with a force so unexpected from such a fragile young woman. Alex slipped on the wet clay, lost his balance and threw himself over the hill into the next freshly dug grave. Anita laughed with surprise and looked into the pit. Her triumph was complete.
- I told you not to cause me any trouble! - She said it sarcastically. - It would be better if you stopped calling me at all. Remember? I think that's how you answered me then?
When he got out of the pit and got to the office, the head of the department called him in:
- You are being sent on a business trip. Triple salary.
Alex was surprised by his guilty tone of voice. He wanted to catch the gaze of the man he was talking to, but unsuccessfully, he looked past and kept changing his focus.
- Triple salary is good news," Alex tried to joke, "and where are we going?
- To Syria," the head of department tried to give his voice a serene tone.
- Is there a war there?
- Well, what to do? We are journalists, we have to be in the middle of events - and laughed foolishly.
Having squeezed out Alex's confirmation of his agreement to go and already escorted him out the door of his office, he suddenly added impulsively:
- Maybe, he will carry it. Then the triple salary!
Alex was buried like a hero. He had a pleasant smile and a cheerful look at the portrait. This was his last photo taken in Syria. Officially, the director of the news agency where Alex worked paid tribute to the memory of the journalist who had been killed by the guerrillas. He gave interviews, said that it was a great loss for journalism and his personal drama, and received condolences. The agency's ratings have grown, and they have become more and more interested in them all over the world. Alex's death was not in vain.
The new wife of the agency's director also came, but later, when no one was at the cemetery. Anita looked into Alex's radiant eyes on the portrait, smiling with her red, watermelon-like poisonous lips.
- Apparently, it was not for nothing that you fell into this hole, then? - she said, chewing a piece of black bread, and winked at the bald man from the next tombstone.