“Are you going to go meet your nephew?” Maksim asked, patting me proudly on the back.

“You act like I popped the kid out rather than Millie,” I groused, shaking his affectionate hand off.

“Oh, be happy for once,” he chided as I followed him down the stairwell. I was happy once. “We’ll coo at the baby, smoke some cigars and get pissed on Smirnoff in celebration.”

“I don’t coo.”

“I’ll coo for you,” Maks offered. “I love babies.”

“Of course you do.”

“I can’t wait to have eight of my own,” he added, “maybe ten if we start right after the wedding.”

“Ingrid’s going to have to let you stick it in soon or you’ll be shit out of luck,” I taunted, lighting a fag while we plodded on snow-covered sidewalks toward the L.

“Lovemaking will commence on the fourteenth of June, my cousin,” he reminded me excitedly.

“Lovemaking,” I gagged. “Ugh. You’re off the cob.”

“When’s the last time you relished in the touch of a woman? I can tell from your crankier-than-usual attitude that’s it’s been too long.” Maks had no idea.

“Fuck off.”

“I’m not going to call it ‘making whoopee’ when it’s making love to my future wife,” Maks continued, “and hopefully making a baby. I don’t want my baby made with whoopee, I want him made with love.”

“Your non-existent child is already a boy?”

“I think so. It feels that way to me. I’ve been working on trying to listen to my inner voice and trust what it says.”

“Did it tell you that you’re a dingbat too? I think unless you can fact check its statements with shit you already know, you may not want to trust it completely.”

“It tells me you’re a jerk, so I think we can consider it trustworthy,” he laughed, giving my scarf a tug.

We rode the train the few stops to Igor and Millie’s Lakeshore Drive apartment. It was astounding how much Igor had changed over the last several years. I barely recognized my brother with his well-bred wife and corporate career. He’d gone from being a dingy tail-chaser to a husband and father right in front of my eyes, and I wondered how I had missed the signs that he’d been on the path to a traditional life for a very long time. Perhaps Igor never bought into my father’s motto the way I had because my brother hadn’t been looking for an excuse to shun women. Maybe my adherence to my father’s words was self-preservation rather than an attempt to please my old man. When it came down to it, I was the only idiot functioning under the ruse of not needing someone.