Alexander: Are you Mrs. Petrovsky yet?

Cecily: I am at the visa office. I will die here and they will find me buried under photocopies of my own expired passport, being prodded by seedy Indian men. I am not yet the Duchess Petrovsky.

Alexander: He’s really good in bed. And when I finished, I got dressed and said goodbye and dramatically swung my satchel over my shoulder as I left. Au secours.

Cecily: Satchel flipping. Welcome to the gay desert of the hyperreal mate.

Cecily: I think about reality and surrealism and hyperreality often, but I never question within which I am existing, if I do indeed exist in any humanly analysable state at all. If I am living in your imagination, thank you; there are so many colours and wonderful people and such good food in here, I do not think I will ever leave.

Alexander: So I’ve discovered through my recent sexcapades that I am a far more sentimental person than I care to admit…

Cecily: Sentiment is not for the weak my dear. It is for the noble. And those who eat Haagen Dazs after midnight.

Alexander: All the conversation has done thus far is make me think about Pierre and how much I want to curl up and sleep forever. And forget about the fact that he is seeing a very attractive gay man called Raphaël. I can’t compete with a Raphaël. What does one do when one’s object of affection is hooking up with a Raphaël?

Cecily: Rebrand as an Earnest.

Cecily: Sup, genetic other half? I’m reading Russian literature that I think you might enjoy. It goes like this:

‘One day Orlov stuffed himself with mashed peas and died. And Krylov, on finding out about this, also died. And Spiridonov died of his own accord. And Spiridonov’s wife fell off the sideboard and also died. And Spiridonov’s children drowned in the pond. And Spiridonov’s grandmother hit the bottle and took to the road. And Mikhailovich stopped combing his hair and went down with mange. And Kruglov sketched a woman with a whip in her hands and went out of his mind. And Perekhrestov received four hundred roubles by wire and put on such airs that he got chucked out of work. They are good people all — but they can’t keep their feet firmly on the ground.’

Delilah: Daniil Kharms, you sexy, sexy man. I think I’m in love. I feel the need to purchase a calabash pipe.

Cecily: I just met a Russian who smokes one. He’s a concert pianist doing his dissertation here.

Delilah: On what? And… does he in any way resemble Aragorn? And… if so, does he wear long cloaks and sit in the back of bars and smoke and brood?

Cecily: On Mahler. Yes. Yes.

Delilah: Jesus. You’re a venus fly trap for flying clichés.

Cecily: They creep up on me like algae, along with mixed metaphors and semicolons.

Delilah: Indeed. Like syphilis on an English restoration satirist.