Libertionne. Anna Tishchenko
loud monologue with great interest, after which, glancing with admiration at Tiberius, told Moopechka with poorly disguised jealousy:
“You really struck it lucky, man!
Tiberius, grabbing the bottle and glass, returned to the table, leaving Moopechka to pour out his grief to the grateful listener. But there he found no peace.
“Tiberius, meet Melissa!”
Colin was dragging by the arm a rather extravagant woman. Tiberius understood immediately – a bohemian. The woman of art can be seen from a mile away – frequently, instead of attracting attention with their creativity, they attract it with their external appearance. With Melissa, the second one was true. She looked as if she had jumped out of an anime cartoon: hair colored candy-red, striped stockings, a dress suggesting a fairy-tale princess, but even for a fairy-tale princess it was too short. “Fantastic manicure, means she isn’t a writer or an artist. She’s either a designer or a photographer,” thought Tiberius. “Probably a photographer; designers sometimes have to do business with clients, and so they have a slightly different approach to their image.” His guess turned out to be true; no sooner had they met, than Tiberius was forcibly seated in order to view Melissa’s photo album. This masterpiece was called “Dreams about the fantastical” and amounted to a series of photos of languid, half-nude boys and girls, their faces made up in all sorts of ways, and draped in transparent and half-transparent fabric. Tiberius was immediately offered the chance to pose for the next photo shoot as a romantic knight: “You, against a backdrop of wild cliffs, unsheathe your large sword…” Tiberius was saved from following description of his deplorable fate by the appearance of a new member of the group, a girl named Evelyn Young. She turned out to be an employee at a human rights organization, and a ferocious supporter of a society for the protection of animals. Things started to heat up at the table. Melissa “number one” was compelled to prove that her mink coat was fake, and Melissa “number two” apologized for the leather purse, professing her innocence – it was a gift from a female fan! Then, finally, the food that was ordered an hour ago was served. Evelyn succumbed to a critical evaluation of everyone’s plates. Everyone froze before their desserts and salads, while Tiberius unabashedly turned his attention to his bloody steak. Retribution did not take long to crash down upon his rebellious head.
“How can you eat the flesh of a slaughtered animal! Allow me to close my eyes and not look at this!” Evelyn dramatically covered her eyes with one hand and turned away.
Tiberius did not react at all. Sprinkling freshly-ground black pepper on the steaming piece of meat, he was about to tuck into his meal with pleasure. But it wasn’t to be. Evelyn did not abide by her own words – not only could she not keep her eyes shut, but her mouth as well. Furiously raising a plate of sliced apples, she returned to her sermon:
“This is monstrous! I can’t watch this in silence!”
“Why not?” politely asked Tiberius.
“I’m – a fruitarian!”
“What?”
“I don’t eat the flesh of slaughtered animals! That poor bull wanted to live, and because of you… because of you they killed him! Fruitarians eat only fruit that falls to the ground, we don’t tolerate any violence, we eat only that which is natural from the point of view of nature. But this – this is corpse-eating!”
With a picturesque loathing she squinted at Tiberius’s plate, and he, without any embarrassment, began to eat.
“But…” he said, thoughtfully pouring sauce on his meat, “if we’re talking about fruit. Have you ever wondered why they fell on the ground? That’s right, so that their seeds would end up in the soil, that is, to continue the reproductive process. That is, right now you are eating pregnant women. And by the way,” Tiberius added, humorously looking at Eve, who had gone slightly pale, “I would hasten to assure you that if these apples truly fell on the ground, then they were not sent to the store by a respectable supplier.”
At that moment the waiter approached them, wobbling on skinny high heels, carrying a tray laden with glasses. Young and wicked-looking, he surveyed the entire company at the table with an exacting look, and flashed a dazzling smile at Tiberius. Heaving onto the table the wine ordered by Moopechka, he needlessly adjusted Tiberius’s napkin and, throwing him an expressive look, departed. Under the napkin a few minutes later he found a business card with a phone number and an urgent appeal to call. Thinking for a bit, Tiberius quietly placed it into Evelyn’s handbag.
“Colin, enlighten me – you said that the formula is absolutely the same, and only the aromatizer determines whether the wine will be a prestigious brand or a cheap table wine. Then why, despite the identical production cost, a bottle of fake Chateau Petrus, like a hundred years ago, costs an entire fortune?”
“Well, this is obvious,” Colin smiled his professional sales manager smile, that is, paternally condescending, “if someone has the money, they will want to buy the most expensive wine.”
“But why? It’s one and the same garb… I mean healthy beverage.”
“You’re forgetting the most important thing – prestige. Look at how those young men at the next table is watching us, sitting there with his common, cheap Chablis.
Tiberius was not convinced that it was worth throwing away a hundred dollars for an envious look from a bunch of young men, but since he had firmly decided to try to be good today, he didn’t protest. Understanding that Moopechka was not impressed by the Russian classic novel, he secretly ordered something more substantial and traditional – a teddy bear and a bouquet of flowers, which was called “Pride of the Queens.” He didn’t have to be very secretive about it. When a group of friends gets together for a meal, it’s completely natural that everyone sits at the table poking at their smartphones, and they eat with their free hand, not looking at anything else.
Since Tiberius made purchases like a typical man, that is, in a hurry and without reading, the result surprised him a little. And he wasn’t alone. When the glass doors opened silently, letting in the courier, whose thin legs trembled and bent under the weight of a gigantic, scary-looking bear, mentioned in the catalog as a “cute little surprise’, everyone was dumbstruck. The “Pride of the Queens” was also surprising, but in the opposite sense. Before presenting it to Paul, Tiberius snickered as he held in his hand something that looked more like a corsage than the luxurious bouquet in the photograph. Either the florist had a weird sense of humor when naming his creation, or else he had a equally small opinion of the honor and dignity of the above-mentioned persons, God only knew. But Moopechka was completely ecstatic, and Tiberius noticed with an involuntary smile how he was circling in an improvised dance with the horrible bear as a partner. In short, an aging Christopher Robin. Finally he got tired and flopped down at the table, setting the bear between Tiberius and himself.
“He’s so… big,” smiled Melissa.
“Everything about Tibby is rather big,” Moopechka giggled.
Tiberius choked on his “fake Merlot.” And then he turned sharply, because the sound he heard behind his back could have been made only by a person who had just experienced a serious attack of asthma. It turned out that medical attention wasn’t required; while Michael could have perhaps rendered some assistance in this situation, but he himself told Tiberius that there are cases where medicine is powerless to help. Moopechka, both Melissas and Colin were acting like members of an Amazonian tribe who were seeing an airplane land for the first time. Evelyn Young, to her credit, did not change her expression, fully occupied with apples and the censure of the despicable flesh-eaters, this time in her Bodybook app, since Tiberius was not scared.
“It’s Don Largo!” Colin whispered, not looking away from the monitor. “He came to our club, and now we’re going to see him for real!”
His excitement caused him to put his napkin, instead of a piece of lettuce, into