Александра Маринина - The Stylist

“I didn’t hear an answer, Solovyov. I still don’t know whether you want me to come back.”

“You don’t want to.”

He looked at her closely and tenderly with his incredibly warm eyes.

“Don’t kid yourself, Nastya. You don’t need me. I’m a cripple and you’re a young healthy woman with normal needs that I can’t satisfy. You don’t feel a thing when I embrace you. So what is this all about?”

“I told you that you haven’t grown up. Sex is still the most important thing for you. You were a stud and you still are.” She smiled and patted his hand. “And you haven’t understood. I’m going back to my honored husband, and you take some time to think about what I said. I’ll come back tomorrow, and we’ll talk. I hope your business associates won’t be in the way tomorrow. That’s all, Solovyov, I’m off. Don’t sec me out, I’ll leave quietly, so that I don’t have to say good-bye to your sharks of capitalism. Is there only one door out of here – to the living room?”

“No, that door leads to the hallway.”

“Until tomorrow, dear,” she said mockingly, at the door.

He nodded without taking his wary eyes from her.

Nastya slipped quietly into the hallway. The door to the living room was open, and the voices carried clearly. Nastya took a few steps in the other direction and peeked into the kitchen. Andrei was having a peaceful talk there with the long-mustached Zhenya Yakimov. That meant that only the publishers were in the living room.

She got her jacket carefully from the closet, trying not to make any noise, and listened to their conversation.

“The Gazelle is what you need for that business,” Avtayev the commercial director was saying. “We won’t be able to manage otherwise.”

“That’s too complicated,” Voronets replied uncertainly. “So much effort, and what if it’s in vain?”

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Esipov cut him off. “There it is, and it has to be done. At whatever cost.”

Easy to tell who’s the boss, thought Nastya, deftly unlocking the front door.

Alexei Chistyakov lay on the couch watching a mystery on TV. On the floor next to the couch was a tray with empty dishes and a cup with dregs of tea. Nastya could tell that her husband had been in front of the TV for a long time, since lunch.

“What’s the matter, Lyoshka?” she asked in concern “Are you sick?”

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head of red hair. “I’m on strike.”

“Why?”

“Those bastards at the college aren’t paying for my course. They said they would pay after exams. In other words, they want to see how I taught the course and what the students learned.”

“When are the exams?”

“May.”

“Great!” Nastya whistled. “We’ll be short again? That puts a damper on our anniversary trip.”

“Nice euphemism for coffin lid,” her husband commented.

They had gotten married last year on May 13. On the same day Nastya’s half-brother, her father’s son by a second marriage, got married too. Her brother was very happy, getting ready for a double wedding, and he made joking plans for joint celebrations of their first and all subsequent anniversaries. Alexander Kamensky insisted that all four of them go to Paris for the first anniversary, to Vienna for the second, and Rome for the third. Nastya paid no attention, knowing that she wouldn’t go anywhere on her brother’s money, and that they couldn’t afford such a trip on their own. Lyoshka could make a good salary if he accepted offers from universities abroad and signed contracts to work there. But he refused to move without Nastya, and Nastya refused to leave her job. And so they had to deal with holes in their budget almost every day.

“Are you going to have dinner?” Alexei asked, getting out from under the plaid blanket and feeling around with his feet for the slippers that always manage to escape.

“No thanks.”

“Where did you get fed? Didn’t you come straight from work?”

She no longer worried about whether she should lie or not when it came to her husband. The answer was always: don’t lie. First of all, Lyoshka had known her since she was fifteen, he knew her through and through, and he grew suspicious the moment she did anything out of character. Second, he was a truly gifted mathematician, a major scientist, and had a mind that was precise and unemotional, which made it very easy for him to see falsehood. And third, he knew what had happened between Nastya and Solovyov many years ago. He courageously hung on through it, but the suffering and fear he went through for a year and a half when it looked that he would lose the only woman he loved had left an ineradicable mark on his heart. With the slightest cause for suspicion, he became insanely jealous, everything inside him boiling and aching with the fear of losing the unpredictable, uncontrollable, and willful Anastasia, the only woman he needed in his life. Therefore Nastya knew that she could not give Lyoshka any cause for jealousy, because he would go crazy.

“I was at someone’s house.”

“During working hours?” He looked at her in surprise. Nastya didn’t do that. She never took care of personal things during work.

“It was for work. Lyoshka, I was at Solovyov’s.”

She didn’t need to ask if her husband remembered Vladimir Solovyov. She knew perfectly well that he did.

“Really?”

He tried to appear calm, and Nastya appreciated the effort.

“He lives where we are searching for criminals. I needed an excuse to be there. Moreover, I need an excuse to be there frequently until we clean up our case, and Solovyov is perfect for that. We had an affair which ended badly, but now he is a widower and it is quite natural for me to try to pick up where we left off. You do understand?”

“Yes, of course. It is completely natural. Shall I prepare for a divorce?”

“Lyoshka, shame on you!”

She sat down next to him on the couch, put her arms around his neck, and pressed her cheek on his shoulder.

“It’s work, Lyoshka. And nothing more. After so many years, Solovyov has no effect on me. I’m a big girl now. And I’m asking you – please, don’t worry about this. I could have hidden it from you, you know. You would have never learned. But I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you. Solovyov means nothing to me now. Not a thing. The owner of a house where I must be regularly.”

Alexei said nothing, gently caressing his wife’s head.

“What about him? Does he know that your visits are just work?”

He went to the heart of it. Nastya snuggled closer. Try fooling someone like him. Of course, if Chistyakov hadn’t been so smart, she would not have married him.

“No, sweetheart, he doesn’t know.”

“So, he sees you as a former lover?”

“Lyoshka!”

“Nastya, we’ve known each other for twenty years, so let’s not kid each other and pick our words when we’re discussing important things. How did you explain your re-appearance to Solovyov?”

“Just as you think. I said that I wanted to make sure that I was over him. It was his birthday. I used that as an excuse to visit.”

“And, are you sure?”

“I am. Lyoshka, please, stop tormenting yourself. I knew that Solovyov was nothing to me a few years ago. I certainly didn’t need to go to his house for that. But I needed an excuse.”

“Aren’t you worried that now that he isn’t married, he might explode with passion for you?”

“No, I’m not. If he couldn’t love me then, he can’t love me now. The world knows that the existence or absence of spouses has nothing to do with it. And then, I haven’t told you this yet. He’s an invalid. A cripple. He’s in a wheelchair.”