The Russian mafia.

Feb. 17, McAllen, TX.
Fridman's friends from Tarzan Zerbini arrived late last night from Florida. We call them "the Russians," but that's not strictly true: Genia (Evgueni) and his two sons, Alexandre and Vilen, are Russian all right, but his wife Bérengere is French like me.
She talks about Alex and Vilen as "les enfants," the children. Sounds funny when Sasha (diminutive for Alexandre in Russian,) is 20 and Vilen 26, and she's only 35, looking 28. Fridman is happy that they're here; he's good friends with Alex. We invited them for lunch at a Chinese buffet and took Dylan in the stroller. He kept laughing and kicking his feet. Little Fridman, Genia calls him.
Some come, some go. Donald left early this morning; we invited him and Saul for a late dinner over at the Denny's next door last night. The Chinese troupe left on Thursday too, replaced by a much younger group: they are fresh out of school and look even younger than that. None of them speaks any English, but in keeping with the Chinese's reputation as the Italians of Asia, they are louder than even the loudest gringos.
With so many changes I don't know if I'll ever be able to paint a definite picture of the circus this year. The stability of the Chimal family is long gone. And I still haven't started on the project at all, save for the occasional picture, and still haven't decided exactly what style of picture to adopt either, or what format for the whole project. I'm also realizing that it might be close to impossible to do with Dylan so young. If I can just get some good pictures out of this I'll be happy.