Part Forty-Two: A Typical evening...

[matrixrefugee.livejournal.com]

Miss Meglomania: (At least we don't have "white Nights" in England...I went to Russia when I was 7 and the sun literally did not set. For months, I was told))
Matrixrefugee197: Yeah, and it stays dark in the winter, or so I've heard.
Miss Meglomania: The Contessa: "Four months of daylight, four of night. At least it's EVEN..."
Matrixrefugee197: Frank: "Man, that would mess me up big time, but my wife would love the winters."
Miss Meglomania: Nitika: (adolecent-annoyed voice> "Not OUR winter...have you ever been in the Ural Mountains in January?"
Matrixrefugee197: F: "Uh, I can't say that I have, though I've been to Russia a few times on foreign correspondence."
Miss Meglomania: Nitika: "You wake up and it's as dark as when you went to sleep. There's wind, loud whistling wind and it slams the snow against the windows and there's always that noise-- it's like gunfire. You go to bed wearing
coats and you must have a big fire in your toilet or you freeze when you step from the bathtub. You can't eat in the main dining room because the food is cold by the time it comes from the kitchen."
Matrixrefugee197: F: "Man, I used to live in Massachusetts, and I thought the winters were cold there! That makes a January day in Westhillston look warm!"
Miss Meglomania: Nitika: "There is a river underneath Sobor Volkov, it freezes solid in winter, so hard that they drive cars over it sometimes. Then when it's spring, the ice breaks up and you can hear it grinding against itself and
screaming and it's so loud, and the noise echoes off all the mountains and you can't get away from it."
Matrixrefugee197: F: "Oy."
Miss Meglomania: The Contessa: "The summers are mild, at least..."
Nitika: "Poor consolation, I think."
Matrixrefugee197: F: "Any small comfort is better than nothing, I say."
Miss Meglomania: Nitika: "I much prefer India. There you don't freeze stepping from the shower."
The Contessa: "No, you melt before you get into one. Have you forgotten that it's reached 123 degrees at times?"
Nitika: "That's better than -50..."
Matrixrefugee197: Le Meroveque: "The winters in the Pyranees can be frigid as well... 50-mile an hour winds, whiteout snowstorms.... but down in the valley, the most they get is a few inches of snow. The rest turns to rain to water the vines."
Matrixrefugee197: Gaston: "Weren't the windows for the Chateau custom-made because regular windows kept popping out during construction?"
Miss Meglomania: Ilia: "The region-- Pyranees? sounds nice...better than Russia, at least. I should visit sometime...I've already seen Versailles, after all. (non-commital 'pft' noise> It is all right, as palaces go."
Matrixrefugee197: LM: "The Pyranees... yes, *that* is a country of contrasts: lush green valleys and vinyards nestled between rocky mountains where only lichens grow..."
Miss Meglomania: The Contessa: (smile> "You know, Liyla, 200 years ago you would have been thrown in a gulag for that first sentence."
Ilia: "Sure, sure. How could they? I am not a Russian citizen, I can say what I want."
Miss Meglomania: Nitika: "The East is hosed, as far as climates go. You either burn or you freeze...very little inbetween. That's kinda why it's hard to control all of it...you can't make any general statements about who needs
what..."
Matrixrefugee197: Cecie: "Mm. Some need air-conditioning, some need heaters in every corner of the room."
Miss Meglomania: The Contessa smiles a little. "Hmm, in a minimal sense...it's mostly agriculture that is the problem, since nothing grows at the same time there cannot be a ready prediction about which country will require aide. It is
mostly guess work, and a lot of midnight oil."
Matrixrefugee197: C: "I was trying to joke anyway."
F: "You get an A for effort." (Cecie has been cranky lately: hormones.)
Miss Meglomania: The Contessa: "I'm sorry...a good sense of humour is not one of my better traits."
Nitika: "Or any..."
Matrixrefugee197: C: "I haven't had much of one lately, either, I'm afraid. The joys of being a woman having a change-of-life baby."
Miss Meglomania: Ilia: "Better you women than us men..."
Matrixrefugee197: C: "Careful, if there's any such thing as reincarnation, you might be spending your next life as a woman."
Miss Meglomania: Ilia (stretching languidly>: "Ah, do not get your-- what is it? Tit in a wringer. All I am saying is that if men had babies, population police would not have to worry about couples having more than one child. It is a
compliment."
Matrixrefugee197: F: "You're probably right, Ilia."
C: "What did I just say about my sense of humor being out of service lately?"
Miss Meglomania: Ilia (re: Cecie's comment> : "I have no idea, I was not listening."
Nitika: "Why do I get the feeling you don't listen to every third thing said?"
Ilia: "Pardon?"
Nitika: "Never mind..."
Matrixrefugee197: F: (Coughing to keep from giggling)
Miss Meglomania: Ilia: "Selective amnesia, Lady Volkova...you should try it sometime. Keeps people from becoming insufferably dull."
The Contessa: "My daugter does not need any help in the art of tuning people out, Liyla...she is, after all, 13, and that's what girls her age do best."
Matrixrefugee197: LM: "Tell me about it..."
Marilyn: "Lambert, she listens to you more than she listens to me."
LM: "Please don't call me Lambert in front of everyone."
Miss Meglomania: Ilia: (grinning> "Lambert?!? Oh, please..."
Matrixrefugee197: LM: "Rrrrr...."
Matrixrefugee197: ((Mind you, Le Mero didn't choose that name for himself: its an old family name, and certain parties wanted him to preserve some of the traditional names...))
Miss Meglomania: Ilia laughs and reclines on his back, folding his hands behind his head. "Lambert, oh God, that is great..." casting a glance at him. "You DO realise I am going to call you that from now on, yes? Far too good to pass
up...Lambert."
Matrixrefugee197: LM: "Rrrrrrrnnnnnnnn......" (A hard-to-replicate growl)
Matrixrefugee197: ((It *is* a dumb name...))
Miss Meglomania: Ilia's eyes sparkle at him as if to say, "Oh, like you would expect anything else from me?"
Matrixrefugee197: Marilyn: "It's better than another name they wanted to call him: Clovis, I think..."
LM: "It was Norbert."
Miss Meglomania: Ilia bursts out laughing at this point. "NORBERT?? I think they gave me a shot of that when I had the flu last season! Oh, God, this is too much..." (dissolving into laughter>
Matrixrefugee197: LM: (rolls eyes, grinds teeth>
Matrixrefugee197: F: "Mind you, Marilyn calls him that only when she's mad at him or she's reprimanding him."
LM: "As if I were a kid..."
Miss Meglomania: The Contessa: "Well, I for one have never been fond of my own name. My father named me after a combination of his name, Navin, and my mother, Indira, to get 'Nadira'. I find it rather systematiclly plotted name."
Matrixrefugee197: F: "It's a beautiful name. ...I got named after my dad's uncle."
Matrixrefugee197: F: "Boring old run-of-the-mill Catholic boy's name..."
Miss Meglomania: The Contessa: (smiles> "Thank you."
Ilia: (rolling onto his stomach> "Ilia is an old Jewish name, it means 'Yaweh is God', and my family was very Jewish. My middle name, Lászlo, my mother got from 'Casablanca', I think."
Matrixrefugee197: F: "Oh yes, Viktor Laszlo, the Paul Henreid character... One of my favorite movies..."
Miss Meglomania: Ilia: "That is the one. I do not like it so much, very...I am not sure, adult. Solid. But it is named for a good person, and my mother thought to give it to me, so I cannot complain."
Matrixrefugee197: C: "I was named after my dad's two great-aunts who lived in France, but whom I never met."
Miss Meglomania: Nitika: "I dunnno who I was named after, or what. Probably had to do with my father, I dunno...maybe my mom thought it up, it means something like 'angel of the seven stones' in Hindi, which is so New-Age I wouldn't put it past her."
Matrixrefugee197: C: "That's beautiful..."
Miss Meglomania: Nitika shrugs. "I guess...doesn't really mean anything to me."
Matrixrefugee197: C: "Let's see... I know Cecilia means 'short-sighted', not that it fits me, and Katherine means 'reborn'... I took the name Herminie because I like the name, but I'm not sure what it means."
Matrixrefugee197: F: "And we're naming our son after a mutual friend of ours."
Miss Meglomania: The Contessa: " Nadira, at least according to my father, is old Hindi for 'unique'...which, I suppose, was fitting and...rather prophetic."
Nitika: (excitedly, with a touch of pride> "Volkova means 'wolf', that's the symbol on our crest. See, it was this branch of the Romanovs that hid in the mountains during the revolution, and..."
The Contessa: "Nitika, please...they can learn that in a history book."
Matrixrefugee197: C: "Sounds like the kind of history my mother loved: she was always reading up on all the royal families."
F: "If she were still alive, she'd be intrigued over her son-in-law's employers..."
Miss Meglomania: The Contessa laughs a little, looking down at Nitika with a smile. "Goodness! Who taught you such a story?"
Nitika: (happily> "Daddy did! He also said that..." her voice trails off a bit and she goes back to the book she's sorta-reading.
Matrixrefugee197: C: (all ears: her mother used to tell her some of the more romantic incidents in the histories of the royal families she was interested in....>
Miss Meglomania: The Contessa: "I think that's enough history for one day...besides, what good is there discussing the past when it is gone? The present is far more important."
Matrixrefugee197: LM: "I was always told: 'Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it'. Untill now, I ignored that lesson."
Miss Meglomania: Ilia: "Such is the process...you learn that with age."
Nitika: "What do you know about learning from history? You're, like, my age."
Ilia: "I am older than you, right? Shut up."
Miss Meglomania: Nitika: "MOM! Your boyfriend just told me to shut up!"
Ilia: "I am NOT her 'boyfriend'!"
The Contessa: "Oh, please, both of you...you'll set off my miagrain..."
Matrixrefugee197: LM: (shaking his head over this: it reminds him of similar squabbles involving Astarte and Julien>
Miss Meglomania: (LOl...just TRY to verbally compare Ilia to Julien...the Contessa's headache would reach epic proportions!)
Matrixrefugee197: (I know, Julien is so fussy with words...)
Miss Meglomania: (Ilia: "What? WHAT?!? Look at him, for one thing-- he must be 100 pounds heavier than myself! What, you are saying I am fat? You are calling me FAT? Asshole!")
Matrixrefugee197: (For the record, Julien weighs about 145 lbs, but when you're only 5-foot-three, it's a little more than you should.)
Miss Meglomania: (Ilia, if he's been eating, weighs about 130ish...he has bouts of anorexia, tho, so that fluxuates)
Matrixrefugee197: (And while I'm on the subject of mechanical statistics, the Twins, Castor and Pollux are both five-foot-five and weigh 140 and 139 lbs respectively... we don't know why Pollux is lighter: the same amount of materials were used to build them...)
Miss Meglomania: The Contessa is 5'7'' and Nitika 5'2 3/4th (she claims 5'3'', tho), and while they could, if they wanted to, make themselves shorter, there isn't enough material in their composition to make them taller without serious structural damage...
Ilia doens't like it that when the Contessa wears heels, she's taller than he is...he's 5'8'' by the skin of his teeth, lol
Matrixrefugee197: (Hey, I say I'm five-foot-seven, though I'm really five-foot-six and three-quarters... but the computer would only take whole numbers when I got my driver's permit.)
Miss Meglomania: (5'2'' flat over here, lol...)
Miss Meglomania: (Ilia: "See? I am taller than HER...anyway, Baryshnikov was only 5'7'', so I beat him.")
Matrixrefugee197: Meroveque 2.5: "Any room in here for a French giant?"
Miss Meglomania: (Ilia: (looking UP> "Ah...yeaah, about that...")
Matrixrefugee197: Le Meroveque (the five-foot even one): "Go away, you're not due for another 70 years!"
Matrixrefugee197: M 2.5: "But I just got here."
Matrixrefugee197: F: "I don't think you should argue with someone *that* tall, Hal."
Miss Meglomania: (Nitika: "70 years? Well, at least we've got some time to relax...I don't know what YOUR problem is, Liyla, you've got a heartbeat..."
Ilia: "Perhaps, but if you tthink I am shuffling off this mortal coil so soon, you have another thing coming.")
Ilia: (propping himself on his elbow and looking at Mero> "Out of curiosity, Meroveque...do you know who is artistic director of the Paris Opera House at this time?"
Matrixrefugee197: LM: "Not personally...."
Marilyn: "That would be Mdme. Helene Rimbaud: I know her well since an old friend of mine sings at the Paris Opera."
Miss Meglomania: Ilia: "Really...tell me, who appoints that job? I know that in many monarchies, and Russia, the heads of cultural venues and such are made in part by the ruling family. Is that how it works in France?"
Matrixrefugee197: Marilyn: "Mdme. Helene received her appointment from the Ministry of Culture twelve years ago, just before the coup d'etat that reinstated the monarchy."
Miss Meglomania: Ilia: "Hmm. Interesting." There's a bit of a something behind that 'hmm', but it's subtle...
Matrixrefugee197: M: "However, she was serving so well, there was no point in removing her merely because the regime changed from a failing republic to a monarchy."
Matrixrefugee197: LM: (trying to read Ilia's 'Hmm.">
Miss Meglomania: Ilia: "So...you could change it? I am only asking...obviously cultural things interest me."
Matrixrefugee197: M: "We could, but it would be needless: don't fix what isn't broken, as the saying goes."
Miss Meglomania: Ilia: "So I see. Thank you very much." Stretches. "If you will excuse me, it is time for my afternoon practice. Good day." Graceful bow, then exits
Matrixrefugee197: LM: "He got thoughtful of a sudden... what on earth does that mean?"
Matrixrefugee197: LM: "Or maybe I am merely misinterpreting his behavior..."
Miss Meglomania: The Contessa shakes her head. "I...could not tell you. I have known him two years and each moment he is an enigma to me. Whatever it is, he will let someone know in time."