The gate creaked at half past ten. A car stopped by the porch, and the first one to step out was Maria Petrovna, dressed in a white blouse as if she had come to a banquet, not to the countryside. “Well then, Olenka, welcome your guests! We came to see what kind of mess you’ve … Read more
“Do you even understand what you’re doing?” The frying pan didn’t fly across the kitchen. The salad bowl did. A heavy glass bowl filled with Olivier salad — the one I had chopped after work while his socks thumped around in the washing machine and the kettle cooled on the windowsill. It slammed into the … Read more
“Pasha, tell your wife to clear out that room as soon as possible. I need to move some things in there,” Valentina Nikolaevna said as she stepped into the hallway without even saying hello. Olga looked up from her laptop and stared at her mother-in-law. The woman was standing in the doorway wearing a new … Read more
The apartment was small, but cozy. It was a one-room flat on the third floor of a brick building from the nineties. Oksana had bought it herself several years before she got married. She had saved for it for a long time, stubbornly and patiently, denying herself many things. During the day she worked in … Read more
Olga met Pavel at a corporate party hosted by mutual friends. He was a quiet, calm man who did not enjoy loud gatherings or noisy celebrations. She liked that about him. After a previous relationship with someone hot-tempered and unpredictable, she wanted stability and peace more than anything. Pavel worked as an engineer at a … Read more
Anastasia bought her apartment when she was thirty-two. It was only a one-bedroom place, but it was hers. It stood on the edge of the city, in a newly built block where the smell of fresh paint and construction dust still lingered in the hallways. She had saved for five years, denying herself almost everything. … Read more
Alena had inherited the apartment on Sadovaya Street from her grandmother. It was a bright three-room apartment with windows overlooking a park, where young mothers walked with strollers in the evenings and elderly people fed pigeons in the mornings. Alena moved in right after university, when she was twenty-three. She renovated it herself, chose the … Read more
— Artem, are you serious? You forgot again? Lidia stood in the doorway of the apartment, heavy shopping bags in her hands, staring at her fiancé as he guiltily fiddled with the strap of his watch. She had just returned from the furniture store, where she had spent the entire day choosing a sofa for … Read more
“Natasha, did you buy crab?” Anton’s voice drifted from the living room, lazy and demanding, as if he were asking about stock prices on the Tokyo exchange instead of dinner paid for with my money. Without a word, I placed a package of frozen capelin on the counter. “What crab, Antosha?” I asked, wiping my … Read more
“Call your country bumpkin of a mother. Let’s give everyone something to laugh at!” Eleonora Genrikhovna adjusted the diamond brooch on the lapel of her jacket and looked me up and down with contempt. “Important people from the city will be at my anniversary celebration. They need a little contrast. Let them see the hopeless … Read more