Nelli remained silent on the phone, distractedly tapping her fingers on the table and calculating how many more minutes this conversation would last before she could claim urgent business. She understood that all her success, all these years of working 14 hours a day, business trips, negotiations, and won tenders were worth absolutely nothing in the eyes of her own family, because, in her mother’s opinion, she had not achieved the main thing.
That July evening, Nelli walked out of an expensive café in the city center, barely holding back the urge to scream at the top of her lungs from accumulated rage and humiliation. A summer downpour had just passed, leaving behind a humid stuffiness and asphalt gleaming in the lamplight. She stood under the establishment’s awning, trying to calm the trembling in her hands after another blind date, which Aunt Vera had arranged with the best intentions, sincerely wishing her niece happiness, but understanding that happiness in a very peculiar way.
Yaroslav Khomyakov, a forty-year-old head of the supply department at an automobile plant, a heavy-set man with a receding hairline and a self-satisfied smile, turned out to be exactly the type of suitor from whom one wanted to leave immediately. Forgetting about the paid bill and her purse on the back of the chair, as soon as the waiter brought the leather-bound menu, Yaroslav leaned back, folded his hands on his stomach, and began to scrutinize Nelli so openly and appraisingly that she felt like a commodity at a Sunday market.
— Thirty-three, then… — he drew out the words, lazily flipping through the wine list with his thick fingers. — My mother says: after thirty, women are not the same, their blood isn’t the same, their health isn’t the same. But you’re holding up well, good for you!
Nelli silently squeezed a napkin under the table, feeling her nails dig into the starched fabric.
— You’ll have to quit your job, of course, that’s not even up for discussion, — he continued in the tone of a man accustomed to managing subordinates. — My mother had a stroke, you understand, she needs care, and hiring strangers costs a fortune! You’ll manage, you have hands and feet.
— And what else is included in your plans for our possible union? — Nelli asked evenly, almost casually, although inside she was already seething with that special rage she usually reserved for negligent contractors….
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