no more in the wrong place, no more at the wrong time
October, 2005
In contrast to past visits to Rybinsk, when Konrad had spent most of his time in the Artistic Flying School in the stadium stands for gala performances, Konrad thought he had spent the most time on
this visit directly outside of the school, playing with his dog or smoking or loafing or whittling or finding some other way to entertain himself while he waited for Zhenya to finish training (he never seemed to judge his timing right, and once he had arrived at the school he always figured he may as well stay and wait -- though some days he waited quite a while before she would come.) At times he thought about going inside and seeing, but he didn't want to see or interact with the trainers, whom he was sure he would not like (and whom he was sure would not like
him.)
It worked well with his own schedule at the hotel, and left them much of the afternoon to themselves, little though they used it most of the time. Konrad had gotten used to the (lack of) schedule he had developed through his first year of adulthood; he liked having long stretches of time to himself, smoking at the riverbank or wandering through the thick surrounding woods with his dog or playing his radio in his room, and he suspected Zhenya liked seeing him only occasionally, because he did not think her family liked him very much. But he also liked seeing Zhenya and suspected Zhenya liked seeing him; they could talk over cards or lunch or on walks. (If they talked; sometimes they weren't in the mood, in one way or another.)
Today he was leaning against the wall by the front door of the flying school; Zhenya had been later than normal, which she had told him once meant she was probably working on a new program, but Konrad was in no hurry; he was smoking and whittling a bit of scrap wood with a sharp knife into a hollow spiral; he had nicked one of his thumbs and so the wood was slightly stained with awkward fingerprints, but he had stuck his thumb in his mouth until it was no longer bleeding and carried on. Konrad was no whittling artiste, but had spent quite a lot of time in his life bored out of his skull with a knife in his pocket and access to sticks, so he was not bad at it.
When he spotted the woman -- she was not Zhenya's mother, but perhaps she was an aunt or an older cousin or a grandmother -- his first impulse was to drop his cigarette and stamp it out; even when he had been old enough for it his parents would always have taken more umbrage to his smoking than to tooling around with a knife. It was only a moment later that Konrad remembered where he was and, more importantly, everything else that had been happening here for months -- just a few weeks ago he had finally made the acquaintance of Afanasiy Kirillovich, and honestly he had expected it long before. Even more hastily, he folded his army knife and shoved it into his pocket, standing up straight.
@Alyona Tikhomirova 
