The doorbell rang with the kind of brazen insistence you usually get from debt collectors—or from relatives who’ve decided to “do you a favor” at maximum volume. I wasn’t expecting anyone. Well, technically I was waiting for a pizza delivery, but pizza couriers don’t try to rip the doorbell off the wall. They’re generally polite people.
On the threshold stood Stas. My ex-husband. A walking party, a one-man band, and—on the side—a natural disaster. Behind him, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, hovered his mother, Antonina Fyodorovna, her face frozen into an expression of eternal grief for all the opportunities the universe had supposedly stolen from her.
“Irishka!” Stas spread his arms as if he meant to embrace the whole world, then settled for my doorframe instead. “We were in the neighborhood! I thought, why not pop in and wish my former little wifey a happy birthday! We’re not strangers, right?”
Over his shoulder, Antonina Fyodorovna was already scanning my entryway with her signature X-ray stare, searching for dust, sins, and any new men.
“Hello, Ira,” she pressed out. “We thought you were sitting here alone, wasting away.”
Then she broke off.
In the living room, at a table already set, sat my theater colleagues: Bella Lvovna—our prima donna, a woman with an empress’s posture—and Viktor, the head of the stage crew.
Viktor deserves his own ballad. A big, solid man with a bear’s presence. His hands looked like excavator buckets, and his beard could’ve sheltered a small partisan squad.
My dog—Django, a giant schnauzer—who’d been sitting at Viktor’s feet, lifted his head. Django came from three generations of refined intellectuals, but he couldn’t stand my former in-laws on a genetic level. He made a sound like a humming transformer—low, vibrating, unmistakably a warning.
“Django, hush,” I said lazily. “It’s family. In a way.”
Stas didn’t bother waiting to be invited. He headed straight for the table. He always acted as if the world was a buffet laid out specifically for him.
“Oh, company!” He grabbed a chair, spun it around, and straddled it backward. “Stanislav. Entrepreneur. Visionary.”
Viktor slowly chewed an olive, looked at Stas with a gaze as heavy as a cast-iron stage curtain, and rumbled in his deep bass:
“Viktor. I just make sure the scenery doesn’t fall on visionaries like you.”
Meanwhile Antonina Fyodorovna was already conducting her inspection of the spread.
“Irochka… store-bought salads?” she asked mournfully. “A woman of thirty-eight should have time to make homemade mayonnaise.”
“A woman of thirty-eight should have time to live, Antonina Fyodorovna,” I smiled, pouring myself some juice. “Let mayonnaise be made by specially trained professionals.”
Stas was already serving himself the roast, ignoring the fact that there were exactly three place settings on the table.
“Anyway, Ir,” he said, chewing a piece of meat without even flinching at the fact he’d cut Bella Lvovna off mid-thought, “we’ve got business. Mom and I talked it over… and decided, so to speak, to do your budget a favor.”
I felt that familiar chill. Every time Stas wanted to “do me a favor,” it ended with a loan I was the one repaying.
“And what, exactly, does this act of mercy involve?” I asked, leaning back in my chair.
“My project is on fire. A bombshell!” Stas’s eyes lit up with that fanatic sparkle you see in people about to join a pyramid scheme. “Premium iguana feed. Elite stuff. The market is empty! I just need a tiny amount—one hundred fifty thousand. For a month. I’ll pay you back with interest!”
Silence fell—not library silence, but the kind of silence you get in a theater right before the villain enters.
I remembered how, five years earlier, when we were still married, I asked him for money for winter boots. Stas gave me a whole lecture about how I couldn’t manage a budget—and then bought himself a new gaming console because “a man needs to relax.” And now here he was in my apartment, eating my roast, asking for my money.
“Stas,” I said softly, clearly. “Do you remember what you told me during the divorce? That I was ‘ballast dragging your brilliant ship to the bottom.’”
“Oh, come on—what’s past is past,” he waved it off, pouring himself some wine. “That was emotions. This is business. We’re family! I wish you well—I want you to share in my success.”
Viktor suddenly snorted. He set down his fork and, staring somewhere toward the ceiling, said:
“I knew a guy in a village once. Decided to make his neighbor happy by force. Brought a bucket of manure to the neighbor’s door. Says, ‘Here you go, Petrovich—fertilizer, from the bottom of my heart.’ Petrovich opens the door, sees the manure, sighs, and brings him back a bucket of apples. The first guy’s shocked: ‘I bring you crap and you bring me apples?’ And Petrovich says, ‘People give what they’re rich in.’”
Bella Lvovna delicately covered her mouth with her napkin, hiding a smile. Stas went crimson, but pretended he didn’t get the hint.
“What are you getting at, old man?” he snapped.
“That,” Viktor replied calmly, “you came here to ask—yet you’re acting like you showed up bearing gifts.”
Antonina Fyodorovna threw up her hands.
“Shame on you! A man with an open soul, with a business plan! Ira, you know Stasik always pays back. Well… almost always.”
I looked at them—at those faces so certain the world owed them simply because they existed. And something in me woke up: the actress. Or the director. Or just an angry woman who was tired of being polite.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll give you the money.”
Viktor raised his eyebrows. Stas nearly choked on a piece of bread.
“Seriously? Irishka, you’re the best! I knew it!”
“But,” I lifted a finger, “I have a condition. I’ve got cash set aside for… props. But since it’s urgent… I want guarantees.”
“A written IOU? Easy!” Stas was already rubbing his hands.
“No. Not an IOU. I want a toast. Public. You’re going to stand up right now and say—looking me in the eyes—that I was the best wife you ever had, that you were an idiot to leave me, and that every bit of your success rests on your talent for asking women for help at exactly the right moment.”
Stas grimaced. His ego—bloated like a zeppelin—didn’t fit through that doorway. But greed is a powerful motivator. One hundred fifty thousand was very close.
“Uh… well…” he hesitated, glancing at his mother. Antonina Fyodorovna nodded, as if to say: go on, son, money doesn’t smell.
Stas stood. He tugged down his fashionable blazer, took a breath, and staring somewhere around the bridge of my nose, began:
“Ira… you were… well, an okay wife. And maybe I was wrong in places. And thanks for helping out.”
“I don’t believe it!” Viktor barked so loudly the crystal in the cabinet rang. “No drama! No sincerity! Where’s the remorse?”
Stas shot Viktor a murderous look, but continued, louder:
“I was a complete idiot for leaving! You’re smart, beautiful, successful! And I… I’m just searching for myself! Without your help, I’m nothing!”
“There we go!” I clapped my hands. “See? You can do it when you try.”
I stood and walked to the dresser. A thick stack of banknotes lay there, held with a rubber band. It was theater money—props for a show called Mad Money. High-quality printing, but if you looked closely, instead of “Bank of Russia Ticket,” it said “Bank of Jokes Ticket.”
I handed the bundle to Stas.
“Here. Exactly one hundred fifty. For iguana development.”
Stas snatched it with a predator’s reflex. He didn’t even count it—just shoved it into his inner pocket, like he was afraid I’d change my mind.
“Well, thanks! You saved me!” His tone instantly flipped from pleading to brisk and businesslike. “All right, we’ve got to run. Time is money, you know. Mom, let’s go.”
They sprang up. Antonina Fyodorovna even managed to discreetly (or so she thought) swipe a couple of candies into her purse.
“See you!” Stas tossed over his shoulder from the hallway.
The door slammed.
Bella Lvovna stared at me in horror.
“Irochka, have you lost your mind? That’s your bonus!”
I silently poured myself some wine and smiled.
“Relax. Viktor, could you help me write off some props tomorrow?”
Viktor—who’d already understood everything—started shaking with silent laughter. His massive shoulders bounced.
“Props?” he echoed, wiping away a tear. “The ones from scene three where the merchant pays off a debt with counterfeit notes?”
“Exactly,” I nodded. “And every bill has tiny print that says: ‘Not legal tender. Used to create illusions.’ Just like my ex-husband’s entire life.”
We pictured Stas walking up to his “suppliers,” pulling out that bundle, and the look on his face as he read the line about illusions.
But the payoff came faster than we expected.
About five minutes later, the doorbell rang again—this time hysterical, nonstop.
“Open up!” Stas screamed from the other side. “What did you give me?! You humiliated me! I tried to break it to a taxi driver!”
I went to the door, but didn’t open it. Django padded over, put his heavy paw on the door handle, and rumbled softly.
“Stas,” I called through the door, “the money isn’t fake. Your conscience just materialized. Consider it payment for an acting masterclass. You just played a decent human being so convincingly.”
“I’m calling the police! Fraud!” Antonina Fyodorovna shrieked.
Viktor walked up to the door, leaned toward the peephole, and in a bass so deep it felt like the concrete itself vibrated, said:
“Citizens—did the circus leave and the clowns stay behind? I’ll send the dog down. And I’ll send myself down. I run faster than the dog, and I bite harder.”
The kind of silence that followed was the kind where you can practically hear neural connections burning out. Then came footsteps retreating at the speed of sound, and something like curses about “scammers” and “theater people.”
We went back to the table.
“You know, Ira,” Viktor said thoughtfully as he poured tea, “there’s a saying: ‘Don’t dig a pit for someone else—let him dig it himself. You just hand him the shovel.’ You didn’t just hand him a shovel. You delivered an excavator.”
I looked at Django, who, with a profound sense of duty fulfilled, was chewing the rubber bone Viktor had given him. The apartment felt warm, cozy, and—most importantly—clean. Clean of the past, which had finally been thrown out the door along with its fake hopes.
Life, like theater, doesn’t tolerate bad acting. And respect is the only currency that can’t be counterfeited—no matter how badly someone wants to.