Spoke with Mother Russia yesterday as we walked to the Borders opposite Trinity Church. Odd shop. Exists in the hollowed shell of an former bank, one of the opulent money temples Gilded Aged New Yorker built, one of a series of lavish bulwarks against memories of fratricide and the sneaking suspicion that financial growth coincided necessarily with moral atrophy. Inside, most of the shop has the light wood panel, tan and light green, universal-Border's design. However, in the middle of the shop, rising up through the three levels of well-organized, consumer-oriented, pro-shopping "enviroperience," are four massive columns. Red marble at the bottom, rising through ornate gold-leaf design, switching black marble, holding up a roof of rich, dark wood and giant, sunflowers of gold. Absurd details, an explosion of elaborate late-1800s decadence. Who were these men, that conducted business in temples that looked like a cross between a Greek palace and a Beardsley sketch? Who are we that we conduct our business in areas designed to cube dominated surroundings meant to look like the impossible combination of a laboratory clean-room and food processing factory?

    Mother Russia said her first job in the States was as a bookseller. It is how she met her college sweetheart. "My first love," she says.
    "I knew the language. Not too well, but I knew to get by."
    Remembers they gave her a general literature knowledge test - this was a fairly small store in a college town and not one of the superchain deals - and she tried to remember on of the questions they asked. "Who was the Nobel Prize winning, um, poet, from Poland . . . in 1931 . . . with red hair, who said the famous . . . They were all like that. Very hard. I must have not answered one right."
    Still, she got the job.
    One of the regulars was a young man. Art student. Pencils, inks, paints. Frequently wore stained shirts. Had paint under his nails. He was friends with many of the shop's clerks - more than a few were students as well. Mother Russia, however, tried to avoid him as his easy way of speaking and his tendency to allow his conversation to flow into this jazzy, freeform, monologue stream-of-self-consciousness thing was intimidating given her limited ELA skills.
    One day, he approached her as she was shelving. "I'm looking for something Russian."
    "What Russian?"
    "Something smart and adorable."
    "There's Dostoyevsky." Mother Russia's favorite author.
    "He's not really adorable. Besides, I'm looking for something shorter."
    "There Chekhov. He has short stories for you."
    "Anything more feminine? What I'm really looking for is a woman."
    "Classic Russian, in translation, no luck for you. Not so many women."
    "Okay, I think I just might have gotten shut down, but I don't know, because I'm not sure you know what I'm talking about."
    Mother Russia says she was confused and a little bit worried that she might have been insulted and not have known it. "What are you talking about?"
    "Russian, smart, adorable, short, feminine. I'm talking about you. You're what I'm looking for."
    "I'm not that short."
    "Shorter than me."

    She said they dated for three years. Still good friends.

    Had dinner with Loren and his wife. Italian place just south of Washington Square. They're doing well.

    Even with dinner plans, I made it home hours before May. Read some more of "Dodsworth." Went to bed. May didn't get home until I was asleep.

    I'm living with the woman and I miss her all the time now.