Boys, time to head home?” Alsou whispered breathlessly, her hot breath burning Pavel’s ear. “Shall we take a cab?”
Pavel stretched blissfully, hugged the young woman, and laughed.
“Time, time… sweet little… cannibal… Let me make some coffee and we’ll scatter for a week,” he said, abruptly getting off the bed with his toned body.
Pavel meticulously maintained himself in good physical shape—no one would guess he was well over forty.
And his sweet, high-cheekboned Tatar-mixed Alsou was beautiful by virtue of her youth and fortunate blood mix.
And she was far from stupid.
Well-read and educated. It was no accident that she held one of the leading positions in their company.
They had been seeing each other for so long that colleagues had stopped whispering behind their backs, accepting the office romance of the married forty-seven-year-old branch manager and his married assistant, who had just turned twenty-five.
Only at corporate parties, when Zina, the boss’s wife, occasionally appeared and he almost openly flirted with Alsou, throwing disdainful phrases at his wife, did colleagues still condemn Pavel.
“Listen, Pavel has such a good wife… modest… loves him… look how she looks at him. He’ll play too much someday… she’ll find out about Alsou and leave him, and he’ll be biting his elbows,” whispered a department economist, looking at Zina’s sad face.
“Such ones don’t leave. No wonder he calls her a hen. Look at her—messy! I would’ve packed my bags quickly if my man called me a clucking hen, and even publicly,” Zina retorted.
“Pash, let’s celebrate your birthday at home in a small circle, it’s not like it’s a milestone to organize a banquet in a restaurant,” Zina tried to dodge the unpleasant procedure. “We’ll invite only the closest, I’ll set the table, we’ll sit cozy at home…”
“Ah… Exactly! We’ll knock back a faceted shot, eat herring with onions, and snack with gut soup. And then sing along to the accordion and fight until bloody snot. Like that? And what, do you think I haven’t earned, as a decent person, to celebrate my birthday? Here you can meet your birthday in the kitchen with a friend, a hen like you. And for me, book a hall for… forty guests in a café.”
Zina sighed. She understood that she was to blame for her husband speaking so rudely to her.
It hadn’t always been like this.
In the first couple of years after their wedding, Pavel spoke sweet words to her.
Even the teasing “Zinochka-rezinochka,” which had hurt her to tears in school, sounded affectionate and even s.ex.u.al in his mouth.
Perhaps because her husband slightly pulled the real elastic on her panties.
The birth of their daughter somewhat cooled the husband’s ardor, but still, he treated her carefully. Cared, helped, and happily ran around the stores, checking the list she had written.
“Yes, ma’am,” he would say, receiving the list and, returning, loaded with packages, reported, “Mission accomplished, boss.”
But later, when their daughter was finishing school, something broke in their relationship.
It started, it seemed, with playful shoves, hands stretched by Zina to her husband, and refusal to communicate at dinner.
And over the falsely performed song by Vladimir Semyonovich, Zina laughed then.
“You, Zin, provoke rudeness, Everything, Zin, you try to offend! Here you tumble so much during the day… You come home—there you sit!…”
She even sang along to him then, laughing cheerfully:
“And you’ll come home, Ivan, You’ll eat—and straight to the sofa…”
But she laughed in vain.
It was later she learned that at that time her husband had started meeting a colleague—young Alsou.
By the way, she resembled a beautiful singer not only by name but also in appearance.
Zina knew well that Pavel wasn’t going fishing on weekends or being sent on “business trips”—he was meeting with his young mistress, using classic excuses.
How Alsou managed with her husband, Zina was not interested.
A couple of times she wanted to find out the rival husband’s phone number and open his eyes. But she stopped, not seeing the point in it.
“Well, if my husband leaves Alsou, then there will be Gyulchitay, or Marusya, or Natasha… And yet there could be an even worse option—he might ask for a divorce, and I really don’t want to get divorced. What’s the point of this divorce? Why? Pasha is the lawful husband and father of the daughter. And soon he’ll become a grandfather.”
Zina endured humiliations and infidelity from her husband for another reason.
She had her own secret.
And the supposed “fishing trips” and “business trips” of her husband were only convenient for her.
She had Stefan… Her own, beloved, and…the only one.
She loved him with all her soul and heart, but she didn’t yet understand what to do with it.
Stefan had already visited her several times on days when Pavel wasn’t home.
Zina understood that this couldn’t go on for long, that a decision needed to be made.
But what decision, she didn’t yet know.
The meeting had been too unexpected.
Pavel
As for Pavel, he really liked his life.
What’s wrong? A family, as proper for normal men. An apartment, a dacha, and a non-economy class car.
He educated his daughter and married her off to a sensible son-in-law.
In his mind, no one was to blame for him no longer valuing his hen-wife.
It’s a classic called “family.”
“Every man eventually loses interest in aging spouses next to them. And sooner or later, everyone gets their own ‘Alsous’,” he shared with a friend.
“No, bro, you’re wrong. For instance, I don’t need anyone but my Alka. Doesn’t pull me. Especially not to the young ones. Well, maybe to visually assess the figure, but no more.”
“Then you’re not ripe yet,” Pavel sealed. “But even I don’t need anyone but my ‘hen’… I’m not going to leave her—not a f.o.o.l. Start from scratch with someone? Well, no… I’m not young enough to jump out of the rut.”
Pavel believed that everything in his life was wonderful—a calm, cozy Zina at home, an adult, married daughter with an education, and a successful career at work.
And as a bonus to it all—a young, demanding nothing but intimate meetings, mistress.
He didn’t even notice the tears in his wife’s eyes when he called her a hen, chicken, turtle, or even a stubborn donkey.
But direct humiliating nicknames were nothing compared to his, which had become habitual, way of talking to his wife mockingly-condescendingly, inserting stinging barbs for not such a hairstyle, not such a word, not such clothes, and not such food.
Pavel did not notice the obvious change that had happened with his wife recently.
He didn’t notice.
But then the old ladies on the bench suggested that a young handsome man visits his modest (ha-ha!) wife.
“As soon as you step out with fishing rods or a little suitcase, that Leonardo with a bouquet of roses comes to your apartment…” said Svetlana Petrovna. “I don’t know his name; I called him Leonardo because he looks like that actor, you know…from ‘Titanic’.”
“And I once saw how your wife sent him off… She came out here… and right before my eyes hugged him… No shame, no conscience…”
Pavel, of course, was upset after the snitching of the old ladies, but could not believe this nonsense.
“Zinka? My hen got a young lover?! That’s nonsense!” he convinced himself, but then he remembered the proverb about “still waters run deep,” and thought. “Maybe hire a private detective? But why? So I find out my quiet one is cheating, and then what? Scandal, divorce, and maiden name? No. I don’t want to. Break such a cozy and comfortable life? Well, no! If so, which is unlikely, then let her have fun for the last time… The young one won’t last long, he’ll realize that the apartment and accounts are in my hands, and he’ll back off.”
With these thoughts, Pavel waited for his wife from work and looked at her attentively.
“Zin… And who is this young man who comes to you with flowers? Our vigilant pensioners spotted you. Did you take out a loan to order yourself a boy?” Pavel spoke to his wife in the usual manner, as he did not believe that anyone, especially a young and handsome one, would fall for her, so faded and extinguished.
“What?!” flared up Zina and said almost the truth. “Don’t talk nonsense; my head is already spinning.”
“Actually spinning. What to do?! Now even my husband has been informed.” carefully soaping her hands, she thought.
But Pavel, meanwhile, was reassured and convinced by his wife’s answer.
Zina
“Stefan… What a beautiful name you have… Well, as beautiful as you are, and as your father was…” Zina cautiously touched the cheek of the young handsome man.
“Yes… thank you… Everyone says I look like him… But you too…, I mean, sorry, you… are also very beautiful… Why do you let your husband treat you this way…”
“How do you know?” Zina blushed with shame. “I mean my personal life shouldn’t concern you. I’ll figure it out myself.”
“Sorry, but I’m very sorry for how that, sorry, jerk, treats you. Doesn’t appreciate you… Humiliates. And why do you endure? Don’t you realize that he has another?”
“Stefan! Don’t dare speak offensively about my husband. I’m not guessing about the other; I know about her. And let’s close this unpleasant topic. It doesn’t concern you at all.” Zina got angry at the young man.
“But why?!!! My father still loves you… You could have been happy with him, at least now…” Stefan looked seriously and demandingly into his mother’s eyes. “You know, I wanted to see you, but mostly I was looking for you because of my father… And he, it turns out, has known where you were all his life…”
“No, no… Stefan, I’m ashamed to look him in the eyes, because I… betrayed everyone when I left you in the maternity hospital and disappeared. I’m ashamed before you, son, first of all.”
“Mom, it wasn’t easy for me to forgive you either. But I saw… talked… and forgave. After all, when I was born, you were almost a child yourself… And it wasn’t you who made the decision, but your parents… And then… mistakes can be fixed. Dad loves you very much, but he thinks it’s wrong to break up your family. And I found out how you live and think that there’s nothing to break.” The young man looked straight into his mother’s soul. “Mom, tell me, did you… did you love my father?”
Zina was silent, remembering how she not just loved, but was consumed by that feeling when she was fifteen and he, Ivan, was seventeen.
How at sixteen she learned she was pregnant and her beloved spun her around in his arms, assuring that he would work and everything would be fine for them.
She remembered how her father called her a filthy word and slapped her on the cheek, and her mother persuaded her to write a refusal so that right after giving birth, they could send her away from the shame to her aunt in a Siberian town.
She knew that Ivan had taken the son, named him after his grandfather Stefan, and raised him with the help of his parents.
And she… the mother of such a boy, such a handsome man, only bit her elbows, remembering them.
But she did not dare to show up and meet Ivan and her son.
Did she love Ivan?
Very much so!
She never felt a fraction of that feeling for her husband. Especially now, when he wipes his feet on her.
“Yes… Son. I loved your father very much. And now…”
“Let’s meet him… I can imagine how great it would be for us three to live together! Well… for now…” Stefan blushed. “Until I get married and leave you.”
“No… I don’t know… I’m not ready…”
“Just meet… Dad really wants this. Please?”
“I’ll think about it,” Zina smiled.
“Think.” The boy’s eyes sparkled with joy. “And just in case, write down Dad’s phone number… Are you writing? Plus seven… nine hundred fifteen……thirty-five seven-seven. Beloved.”
“What?!!!” Zina laughed. “Beloved?”
“Well, of course. You said it yourself.”
Zina didn’t want to go to this corporate event.
Her heart was heavy. Not calm.
“Everyone will be with their wives.” Pavel hissed into the phone. “So don’t bail out, come to ‘Provence’ by six. Don’t be late.”
“But… I work until six.”
“Take time off,” Pavel grumbled.
It didn’t work out to take time off—moreover—she sat with a client until half-past six and approached the restaurant when the party was in full swing.
To her shame, Pavel, having had too much to drink, behaved uninhibitedly—he interrupted everyone, taunted, and threw sleazy glances at Alsou, who in turn calmed her also drunk husband, about to punch the old goat, even if he was the boss, for hitting on his wife.
“A-a-a-a… Look…. here comes my hen, finally…. Ha-ha-ha… Barely dragging her legs… And you know why?” all the guests fell silent, listening to the brewing scandal. “Well, because my chicken got a young f.u.c.k.er… From ship to ball…”
“Shut up…” whispered Zina, wishing she could sink through the floor from shame.
“And don’t you shush me….” Pavel started, but then the host took the microphone and started a game to drown out the scandal.
Subordinates cast their eyes down—everyone was disgusted to listen to the unruly Pavel.
But no one dared to interrupt him—he was still the boss, even with quirks.
Zina stepped into the vestibule and pulled out her phone.
“S-o-o-o….” she scrolled through her phone book. “There he is… Beloved… Well, I’ll be… Bel-oved…”
Zina held her breath, ready to hang up, not knowing how to start the conversation.
But Ivan started the conversation.
“Zina?… I was waiting…” a familiar voice came after the third beep.
“How do you know it’s me?”
“I’ve had your number saved for a long time… You know under what nickname?”
“Beloved????”
“Of course, how else?”
“Ivan, can you come pick me up?”
“Of course. Where?”
“And now I propose to congratulate your boss with a governmental award,” the host moved on to the next stage of the party. “But the success of any man is ensured by his rear. And, right next to PalPalych is his reliable rear—beloved wife Zinaida. Zinochka, do you have something to say?”
“Yes, I do!” Zina took the microphone handed to her and staggered, seeing the matured and grown-up Ivan, who looked her straight in the eyes. “Yes, I do. And I will say. The fact is, I’m happy about PalPalych’s successes, but you know what? It turns out I’ve lived my whole life with an unloved man, throwing overboard my true love.”
The hall fell silent. Some guests opened their mouths in astonishment—always such calm, modest “hen” suddenly revealed such a thing!
“What?!!!” her husband roared. “What are you babbling about, chicken?! Love-don’t love. Who do you think you are? A girl waiting to be given away? Have you looked at yourself in the mirror? Who needs you besides me?!”
“I need her. And not a chicken, but a beloved woman.” a tall middle-aged man stepped into the hall, boldly looking Pavel in the eye.
After which he turned to Zina and extended his hand: “Are you with me?”
Zina raised her eyes and everything around her ceased to exist for her.
Those were the same beloved eyes she had drowned in twenty-five years ago.
“Yes. With you.” Zina confidently placed her hand in Ivan’s warm palm and they left without looking back.