Andrey Titov - Seaside tales

© Andrey Titov, 2018

ISBN 978-5-4490-2001-7

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

In early childhood, I did not go to the sea, but I saw a lot of programs and films about it. I was reading different books about it. I was dreaming about this great miracle of nature; the boundless water expanse, the lulling sound of the waves and the gentle sunlight. Eventually everything changed when I became an independent person and earned enough money to be able to visit the sea. During my vacation, I was completely devoted to the celebration of life and doing nothing. Now my life has changed and I have the privilege of living on the seacoast, rejoicing in my embodied childhood dream.

Today, walking along the sea, I watch people around me, who express their feelings and emotions honestly and transparently. They are so pure and sincere that they attract everyone to themselves, beckoning with their secrets and mysteries. I like watching them, fantasizing and creating stories about their lives. People coming to the sea on vacation are a special category of holidaymakers who are improved by the surrounding marine environment, making them kinder, gentler and more tolerant to each other.

Here is a young, beautiful, tanned couple, visiting the sea for the first time together. They are innocent and in love. They are so passionate about each other and their feelings, awakened by this sun, that they completely ignore others, unknowingly attracting the glances. The rules of decency, however, do not allow you to admire this natural innocence and beauty.

The company of young girls, enthusiastically twittering like a flock of carefree birds, attracts the eye of passers-by. Young, cheerful, naughty girls are looking at the guys of the same age, sitting nearby. And here is an attractive couple, an imposing man of about 60 years old, gently telling something to his companion, who is obviously younger. On the face of his companion, a dreamy smile is wandering. She is happy with her life at this moment and probably wishes it would last longer.

Summer’s relaxing warmth, gentle sun and soft sea water makes people kinder by awakening their purest feelings, giving a wonderful sense of lightness and love. Viewing this, I want to immerse myself in an endless sensual tenderness together with my beloved woman. Approaching her calmly sitting in the deckchair, I am dreaming about hugging as once a very long time ago, patting her tanned knees and touching gently her knees with lips…

– You can go to swim in the sea, just to freshen up and cool off! – she says tritely, shattering any illusion of universal tenderness and bliss.

– Yes, of course, you’re right, – I said, coming back from my fantasy. And so the fairy tale ends before it started. In my life, I have to look at beautiful, tanned, loving men and women, dreaming and creating my own fairy tale.

Life is often compared with a striped cloth; the black strips mean bad luck, the gray ones symbolize the everyday routine. Rarely among them there are light strips of happiness. Quick jump from black to white means feeling the fullness of life; the opposite is to travel along the black strip for a long time, enduring endless defeats and failures.

Leo was turning 30 and found himself in this situation. Fortune seemed to have turned away from him forever. First, misfortune hit his business, in which Leo invested all his money and energy. Being a boy, he was dreaming of owning a cafe. He pictured a cozy hall, French wicker chairs, with photographs of old cars on the walls… Leo worked at two jobs, saving every penny until he had enough money to rent the space and buy equipment.

He rented a cafe in a popular, crowded area. He outfitted the cafe exactly as he had dreamed in his childhood, hired two cooks and developed the menu. The cafe was never empty. Clerks and secretaries from the neighboring offices came before work to drink coffee with hot buns and read the morning newspapers. Taxi drivers came at lunch to eat a steak with mashed potatoes. In the evening, courting couples came to the café; they liked the French chanson, which was played there.

Leo already began to make a decent profit and continued to improvement his café. He bought a large TV and exotic plants in pots. Leo’s wife helped with the bookkeeping and gave some ideas for the design. But a Chinese restaurant opened to the left of Leo’s Cafe and many customers left, enticed by the exotic. Leo tried to fight with his competitor and lowered prices. But because of this, he had to let one of his chefs go and reduce the salary of the waitresses.

A month later, an American fast food restaurant opened on the right. Leo calculated that the café now had no more than seven visitors a day. He fired the waitresses and he and Laura themselves began to serve the occasional customers. Attempts to save his business failed. Leo owed the suppliers of products and could not pay for utilities. His lifetime dream was getting vanished.

Leo lost his appetite and slept occasionally. Tired and gloomy, he returned home late, counting losses in his mind and trying to come up with a plan to escape. On one of these evenings he saw his wife with another man. They were sitting in a dark red Mercedes parked under a street lamp and kissed passionately. Leo, exhausted by his failures with business, stood and looked in silence. He saw his beloved beautiful Laura hugging a stranger, in an expensive suit, as his hand pulled the strap of the dress from her shoulder…

Leo felt a burning pain in his heart and stood frozen, paralyzed, unable to move though the eerie scene in the Mercedes stuck in his memory for a long time.

He tried not to think about it, along with Laura’s words, as she shouted, picking up her suitcase:

– Yes, I had an affair and I’m not ashamed of that! I can’t live with you! You are loser! You are falling into a hole and you want to take me with you!

Leo stood with his back to her, gazed at the lights of the evening city outside the window, and seemed to hear nothing. He realized that Laura, his beloved and only friend, betrayed and abandoned him at the most difficult moment in his life.

– Why? How could she? – Leo asked himself unhesitatingly.

Everything lost its meaning. It was not necessary to rush to the café or to make morning coffee for his sweetheart. There was no longer a reason to shave; a burning clot of pain constantly stuck in his chest. Leo tried to forget with the help of beer and wine, but the heaviness did not decrease. During the day yearning teared to pieces, at night – insomnia or nightmares.

Constantly in his mind was the image of Laura and her arms around another man. Leo felt the scent of her skin, smelled of meadow flowers, heard her frequent breathing and muffled love sighs, as if she was there. Alcohol first increased his agonizing hallucinations, then plunged him into a black dream. Waking up, Leo saw Laura again, her eyes closed with pleasure, her slender hand on the neck of a stranger in an expensive suit…

Is it worth living in this hell? Work, wife, money – everything is lost. There are only debts left, which cannot be paid. It seemed that all good things were gone forever together with Laura. Leo could not think about future without anguish and fear. He involuntarily remembered his uncle, who shot himself with a gun, and a cousin who hung himself. The causes of both suicides were unknown. The family talked about secret losses in the casino, about deadly diseases and even mistresses who blackmailed. But all these were just speculation. Now Leo seemed to understand why his relatives had chosen this path. They were just tired of life.