The Last Hiccup by Christopher Meades Page A

personally to perform their physicals. I even finished at the top of my class at Imperial Tomsk University’s medical school.” His voice built to a crescendo as he stated the year, month and day of his graduation.
    â€œDidn’t Doctor Afiniganov finish first in the class at Tomsk that year?” the woman said. “I was working for his father at that time and, if I correctly recall, Alexander finished with the highest accolades ever bestowed upon a graduate of the school . . .”
    â€œNonetheless, I assure you . . .”
    â€œ. . . there was even a ceremony in which he was given a plaque with his name and ‘First in Class’ on it. The plaque is on the wall in the doctor’s study . . .”
    â€œListen to me . . .”
    â€œ. . . I can get it for you if you like. It’s beautiful. And made of real gold.”
    â€œI don’t care about the damned plaque!” Sergei said. “Just tell me where Alexander is.”
    â€œHe’s attending a formal function at the Isirk Ballroom. It’s a black-tie affair . . .”
    â€œThank you.” Sergei slammed the phone down. In a fury, he knocked over a Romanian
blajini
carving, a prized heirloom from his mother’s side, and then fell to the floor. He held his head in his hands and curled up in the fetal position against the far wall. Sergei fought back tears. To the outside world, he was a powerful, successful man. The mothers of his patients swooned when he entered the room. The state paid him well. His life was filled with extravagance. He lived in an enormous house with two servants in a splendid neighborhood and could have any woman he desired. But his entire life, he’d lived in Alexander’s shadow. Were it not for Alexander, that gold plaque would be on Sergei’s wall. His divorce from Asenka had stripped him of his confidence and now he found himself a grown man, unable to cure a simple case of the hiccups, cradled in a ball on the floor wearing pajamas with a rip in the rear end while his rival dined with dignitaries at a ballroom to which Sergei had never been invited.
    Enough of this
.
    Sergei rose to his feet and marched down the hall to his bedroom. He tore off his pajamas, wiped his armpits with a wet rag and pulled his best blue suit from the closet. Sergei stood in front of the full-length mirror, completely naked, his pajamas in one hand, his suit in the other. “Tatiana!” he cried at the top of his lungs. “Tatiana! Come here!”
    From two flights down, Sergei’s maid heard his cries and came running. A homely creature with modest breasts and a large backside, Tatiana had long awaited this call. At the exact moment Sergei called out her name, she had been in the kitchen, drawing an inverted heart on a pad of paper, dreaming of Sergei and how she wished he would come to her at night and take her against the cold washbasin in her room. She’d long imagined what it would feel like to have her face forced against the frigid steel while he ravaged her from behind. Oh, the rapture of it all! She bounded up the stairs with delight, each step taking her closer to the man she’d loved from afar so very long. Her loins, warm and aching from years of solitude, yearned for Sergei as she reached the top floor. “Yes, Doctor?” She opened the door to her master’s bedroom. “Aieeee!”
    Tatiana shrieked out loud. She hadn’t expected Sergei’s naked body to be standing in front of her, holding a suit in one hand, his other hand plying open the hole in the buttocks of a pair of pajamas.
No, no, no, no!
she screamed in her mind. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
Sergei should be wearing a smoking jacket with a sash across his waist
.
    â€œDear God, child.” Sergei stepped back. Quickly he shielded his genitals with his suit.
    â€œI’m sorry, sir,” Tatiana said and covered her eyes.
    â€œOur protocol is to speak through the