Finally, Lyosha found himself at a birthday party where Sasha was also a guest, and someone introduced them to each other. Sasha asked Lyosha specific questions about his studies and a recent trip Lyosha had taken to a conference in Moscow: Sasha had clearly done as much research on Lyosha as Lyosha had done on him. Lyosha, for his part, already knew that Sasha came from a struggling family, that his parents drank and he had a half-dozen siblings, and that he had tried and failed two or three times to get into Perm Polytechnic. They were, by now, a couple of years into their strange courtship.
This is an amazing meet-cute.
