In direct contrast to the weird debauchery of their previous party, the girls were hosting Thanksgiving dinner, complete with pie and cranberry sauce. Jeff was in Moscow for the weekend and I'd even made a coffee cake. It was a bleak November day but the pink kitchen was cozy and bright. Everyone was fussing around, putting dishes together, getting everything ready for the guests to arrive. Jeff made eggnog, Jenny and I fixed deviled eggs, Caroline cooked mashed potatoes. I hadn't seen much of them since the end of the internship, so we had a lot of catching up to do.
At 8 PM we laid out the spread and people started showing up, mostly Russian friends, who all refused to touch the dinner until somebody had gone out to a produkti and procured vodka for them to drink with it. It was a lovely meal, albeit culturally divided by those who understood green bean casserole and those who did not, never mind the grisly meat gelatin and cheesy mayonnaise ham rolls that Grisha provided.
After dinner, Oleg brought out his electric guitar and everybody sat around in the living room, listening as he and Jenny sang English pop songs. A little later on, Lindsay and Ayden showed up, and it wore on as really the nicest and most mellow kind of evening. Except for a glass of eggnog, I didn't drink much; I just wasn't in the mood. The Russians, of course, drank steadily, at one point going out in search bigger plastic cups and more bottles.
3 o'clock in the morning found the men in the living room, singing a wobbly rendition of 'Yesterday.' That song always makes me sad, so I went out to the kitchen, where I found Jeff, Heather, and Lindsay sitting on the floor (the chairs had all been taken out to the party room). Jeff was teaching them to count in Chinese. I joined them by the table, and as we talked, people retreated to sleep, the Russians departed, and the night went gently away.
Noon next day found us fixing tea, helping the girls clean up, making plans to meet up later at Mayakovskaya downtown. Since it was my birthday, we were going to revisit the English bookstore and then have a celebratory coffee at the Starlite diner.
I left with Lindsay and Ayden and again we ended up in a kitchen, Ayden's this time, sitting dreamily around the table eating rice and listening to a Shostakovich concerto. It was another gray twilight, hooded crows cawing in the trees outside, lights blinking on across the alley. We got so lost that the whole evening might have disappeared that way, except for Jeff and the girls waiting downtown. So we ventured out again.
Mayakovskaya, the theatre district, was crowded with people strolling in their beautiful evening clothes. The Starlite diner was full of milkshakes and expats, and I bought a visual Russian-English dictionary at the Anglia shop. A nice night out in Moscow. But if I think about this weekend, I have to say that at its heart it was a kitchen weekend.
And really, what more can you ask on Thanksgiving?
