Summer was a blessed time for weddings. I had a lot of clients. I continued to take English lessons, so now the phone conversations with Mike were more actual conversations than only his monologues.
In the evenings Natasha sometimes dropped by. We arranged girls’ get-togethers, discussing current events and news from America.
“Oh, Polina! Mark my words, your Mike will soon come to marry you. And then we will find a nice husband for me.”
“Sure, no problem. You are a good and kind-hearted woman, Natasha. Every man would be more than lucky to have such a wife. However, my marriage is still a big question. I have no idea what his plans are for our future.”
“Uh-oh, I see now. You don’t mind getting married, do you?”
“Yeah, I don’t mind. Why not? He is obviously a good and kind man. He never lies.”
Natasha knew my buzz-bug. Lies were unacceptable in any form. If I caught a man lying, that was a goodbye.
“How do you know he is not deceiving you? You haven’t been there, haven’t seen anything or anyone? How can you be sure?”
“Well, for example, I said to him once, You are such an interesting man, living alone for eighteen years. You must have had a lot of women.”
“And what did he say to you?” My girlfriend laughed. “I suppose, something like, ‘Oh, no you know, there were few or only one or something like that?’”
“No, he just said, ‘Yeah, thousands of them lined up.’
“Thousands?”
“I think here he fibbed a little, of course, but he did not pretend to be a saint, that’s for sure. Moreover, he even told me a joke.”
“A joke?”
“Yeah.”
“A man comes to the store to buy a postcard for Valentine’s Day, and asks, Do you have a card that says ‘For the only one’?
‘We do.
‘Give me twenty-five of those.’”
“For sure, a man with a sense of with humor,” Natasha said giggling. “And what did you reply?”
“Me? Nothing. What did it have to do with me?”
“Aren’t you nervous?”
“Why should I be scared? He is there? I’m here!”
“And if he proposes, what’s then?”
“Well, if he proposes, if he does that, then I’ll start being scared/nervous,” I replied, and we both laughed.