I heard Alla’s voice before I had even fully opened the door to the banquet hall. Sharp and loud, like one of those overly cheerful morning radio hosts. She was standing in the middle of a small group, holding a glass of juice.
I was half an hour late. Kostya had been held up on a service call because a refrigeration unit had broken down at the supermarket on Zarechnaya Street. By the time he replaced the compressor, washed up, and changed his clothes, we had missed the bus and had to wait for the next one.
“…and can you imagine, girls? He’s now in charge of the entire regional division. Three hundred employees report to him. Three hundred!” Alla swept her eyes around the table before they settled on me. “Oh, look who finally made it—our quiet one. We were just talking about our husbands.”
I hung up my coat and sat down. There was only one empty chair left, directly across from Alla. Someone pushed a plate of cold cuts toward me, while somebody else poured me some lemonade.
It was a typical twenty-five-year school reunion. Nothing fancy: an inexpensive restaurant, three thousand rubles per person, and fewer people than expected. Only eighteen out of our thirty-two former classmates had shown up.
“Three hundred people,” Alla repeated, smiling at me. “Can you imagine that kind of responsibility? Every day he makes decisions that affect salaries, deliveries, everything. He comes home and still spends another two hours on his laptop. I keep telling him to rest, but he can’t. People are waiting for his decisions.”
I tried the Olivier salad. It was mediocre—too much potato and not enough mayonnaise.
Nina, who had once shared a desk with me at school, leaned closer.
“Where’s your husband?”
“At home. He couldn’t come. Work.”
“What does he do?”
“He repairs and services refrigeration equipment.”
I answered quietly, but Alla apparently heard me. Or perhaps she had been listening deliberately. She set down her glass and looked at me with that same expression I remembered from ninth grade, back when she had always found some way to make herself seem superior even while sitting at the same desk as everyone else.
“You know, girls, life works out differently for everyone,” Alla said, pretending to address the whole table while looking directly at me. “Some women marry men who build careers and keep moving upward. Others spend their lives with ordinary working men. You know, people who work with their hands all day and live from one paycheck to the next. That’s a life too, of course. Just… a different kind.”
The table fell silent.
Nina stared down at her plate. Someone coughed. A man at the far end—Zhenya, I think, who had always been good at mathematics—suddenly started telling his neighbor something, clearly just to fill the awkward silence.
I sat there feeling my face burn. Not from embarrassment, but anger.
There were so many things I wanted to say, yet the words seemed stuck in my throat.
I thought about Kostya coming home at eleven-thirty the previous night after another call. He had quietly reheated his dinner and sat down in the kitchen. I woke up and came out to see him.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” he had asked.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I’m starving. I’ve got no strength left. Sorry I woke you.”
Then he ate pasta that the microwave had barely warmed.
An “ordinary working man.”
Kostya could take apart an industrial refrigeration unit and diagnose a fault just by listening to the sound or feeling the vibration. People called him after other technicians had given up and told the owner to buy new equipment. Kostya would arrive, spend two hours working, and somehow make everything run again.
No, he didn’t earn what a regional director with three hundred employees probably earned. But we were paying off our apartment, our daughter was studying to become a chef, and there was always food in our refrigerator.
What else did we really need?
I said none of that aloud.
Alla would have laughed. Or worse, she would have pitied me. For someone like her, being “good with your hands” wasn’t an achievement. She measured life by job titles, salaries, and the number of people beneath you on an organizational chart.
I remembered after-school care when we were children. Alla already liked giving orders back then. Beautiful ribbons in her hair, an expensive three-compartment pencil case, always raising her hand first even when she didn’t know the answer. She simply needed to be noticed.
In high school, we had been assigned to make the class newspaper together. Or rather, we were supposed to work together. She eventually pushed me out of the project, telling our teacher that I was missing deadlines when she was actually the one falling behind. Even then, Alla knew how to present herself.
And now there she was across from me: slim, polished, wearing an elegant dress, neat haircut, expensive earrings, proudly talking about her husband’s three hundred employees.
And there I was in a blouse bought on sale, saying nothing.
“Well, everyone has different circumstances,” Nina finally said, trying to defend me. “Money isn’t everything.”
“Oh, Nina, that’s what people without money always say,” Alla laughed.
Several people smiled automatically.
“I’m not judging anyone,” she continued. “I’m simply saying that choosing a husband means choosing your standard of living. You can choose an ambitious, determined man, travel, live an interesting life, deny yourself nothing. Or you can choose…” She paused dramatically. “Well, you understand.”
Again, she looked at me.
I pushed my plate away. I had lost my appetite.
I wanted to stand up and leave, but that would have looked like surrender, and Alla would have enjoyed that too much.
“So what exactly does your husband do?” I asked, keeping my voice as calm as possible.
Alla immediately brightened. She had probably been waiting all evening for someone to ask.
“He’s a regional director for a major grocery chain. Twenty-eight stores across the region. Every day it’s suppliers, leases, employees. He comes home and his phone never stops ringing. I tell him to switch it off, but he says business doesn’t wait. That’s responsibility. Not everyone could handle it.”
“Where do you go on vacation?” Nina asked, clearly trying to steer the conversation somewhere safer.
“Last year we went south, into the mountains. We rented a two-story suite overlooking a gorge. Sixty thousand a night. But it was worth every ruble. You wake up and the clouds are right outside your window. And the silence—you can hear the birds.”
She spoke as though she were reading from a luxury travel brochure.
I remembered that habit too. Alla never simply told a story about herself. She presented herself.
Later, the conversation moved to children. Alla’s daughter attended a private language school, while her son took tennis lessons with a personal coach.
“You can’t save money when it comes to children,” she declared. “They’re an investment.”
I suddenly noticed I had been tearing a paper napkin into tiny pieces under the table. A small pile had gathered on my lap.
Then my phone rang.
Kostya.
I stepped into the hallway, where the air smelled of restaurant food and disinfectant.
“How are you?” he asked. “You’re not cold, are you? It started raining. Want me to come pick you up?”
“No, it’s still early. How are things?”
“Fine. Finished the call. I’m at the workshop now, rebuilding two compressors. If you need me, call. I can take the bus or ask one of the guys to drive me.”
His voice was completely ordinary.
I listened, and suddenly my eyes began to sting.
He had spent the whole day driving around town, replacing a compressor that weighed close to seventy kilograms. Instead of resting, he was sitting in a workshop surrounded by spare parts.
And still, he was worried that I might be cold.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’ll call later.”
“All right. Say hello to your classmates.”
When I returned, everyone was talking about school trips and old crushes. Alla looked bored. Nostalgia apparently wasn’t her favorite subject.
I sat back down, and Nina pushed a plate toward me.
“You’ve barely eaten. Try the fish sandwiches.”
I nodded.
Soon enough, Alla started again. This time she was describing her husband’s car.
“Executive class. Black. Leather interior. Four-zone climate control.”
I thought about our old used foreign car that Kostya had bought three years earlier. It ran well and rarely broke down. He changed the oil himself and replaced the brake pads himself.
“Why pay someone when I can do it?” he always said.
I agreed.
“And you know what I’ll tell you, girls,” Alla continued, lowering her voice as if she were about to share some profound truth. “Success isn’t luck. It’s daily work. My husband gets up at six and goes to bed at one in the morning. He sacrifices his health, his time, his nerves. Meanwhile, some people sit around in workshops waiting for service calls and think they’ve made it in life. Different levels of ambition. Different standards.”
She didn’t say Kostya’s name.
She didn’t need to.
She was looking at me, and everyone at the table knew exactly whom she meant.
That was when I truly became angry.
Not because of what she said about my husband. She didn’t even know him.
I was angry because she was humiliating me in front of people I had known since childhood, and no one challenged her. They nodded, stared at their plates, studied their salads.
Not one person said, “Alla, enough.”
Then I understood.
They were afraid of her.
Afraid of her confidence, her booming voice, her expensive earrings. If you argued with Alla, she would simply turn her attention toward you. Better to stay quiet than become the next target.
The main course arrived. Someone turned on music, and a few couples started dancing.
I sat there thinking about Kostya. He had probably finished rebuilding the compressors by then and was sitting in our kitchen with a book. He loved reading about new refrigeration technologies.
“You have to keep learning,” he always said. “Otherwise you’ll fall behind.”
There was a stack of technical magazines beside his bed, and unlike most people who bought magazines and never opened them, he actually read every one.
Around ten o’clock, a tall man in an expensive suit entered the hall carrying a leather briefcase.
Alla’s face lit up.
“Oh! That’s my husband! He promised he’d stop by!”
He approached the table and politely greeted everyone.
I looked at him carefully. His face was exhausted, there were dark circles under his eyes, and his tie had been loosened. He sat beside Alla, placed his briefcase on the neighboring chair, and released a long breath.
He looked as though he could barely stay upright.
“Meet my classmates,” Alla began enthusiastically, listing names. Then she gestured toward me. “And this is the husband of our… former desk partner.”
She didn’t even introduce me by name.
Her husband nodded politely, murmured something, and reached for a sandwich.
Alla caught his hand.
“Don’t eat that. You’re not supposed to. I ordered something separately for you. It’s in the car.”
“I’m hungry,” he said quietly.
“You can wait. Eat at home.”
He withdrew his hand.
For several minutes he simply sat there, staring into space.
Then his phone rang.
He left the room.
Alla watched him go.
“See? Even with everything he has today—three meetings and a video interview with Moscow—he still came to see me. That’s a real man. He always finds time for his family.”
I checked the time.
Ten-thirty.
Kostya was probably asleep.
Or waiting for my call.
Alla’s husband returned looking even more exhausted. He sat on the edge of his chair and began quietly speaking to his wife. I wasn’t trying to listen, but fragments of the conversation reached me.
“…they rejected the report… supplier missed the deadline… tomorrow by eight…”
“You’re the manager,” Alla replied. “Delegate it. Why are you running around like a hamster on a wheel? Hire people.”
“I can’t delegate something I’ll be held responsible for.”
“Then you’re hiring the wrong people.”
“Alla, not now. I’m really tired.”
She fell silent.
And suddenly I saw something I had failed to notice all evening.
Behind the beautiful picture of Alla’s “successful marriage” sat an exhausted, overworked man.
A man who didn’t sleep enough.
Who ate whenever he could.
Who no longer belonged to himself.
Three hundred employees meant three hundred potential problems.
Twenty-eight stores meant twenty-eight sources of stress.
His prestigious car was probably just another place where he spent four hours a day answering phone calls.
Around eleven-thirty, people began leaving.
I put on my coat, and Nina caught up with me in the hallway.
“Don’t take Alla personally,” she said. “She’s always been like that. Remember the new girl in ninth grade? Alla made her life miserable just because she didn’t want to be friends with her. Some people never change.”
“I’m not offended,” I lied. “It was just unpleasant.”
“I understand.” Nina hesitated. “My husband’s a construction foreman, you know. He spends all day on-site and comes home exhausted. But when he gets home, he plays with the kids. On weekends, we go out of town. If he spent every waking hour in meetings, what would be the point?”
I nodded.
We said goodbye, and I called Kostya.
He answered immediately.
“Finished?”
“Yes. You’re still awake?”
“Yep. The kettle’s hot. Come home.”
“I’m on my way.”
Outside, the air smelled of wet asphalt and autumn leaves.
As I stood at the bus stop, I thought about Alla, about her husband’s tired eyes, and about all her boasting.
Maybe underneath all that confidence was actually fear.
The fear of having to prove, prove, prove that her life was better than everyone else’s.
The bus arrived twelve minutes later.
I sat by the window as the city slowly became quiet.
At home, I slipped off my shoes and found my slippers. Tea was waiting on the table.
Kostya poured me a cup and placed a plate beside it with two simple cheese-and-butter sandwiches.
He knew I always came home hungry from gatherings like that because I felt awkward eating in front of people.
“So?” he asked. “How was it?”
I took a sip of tea.
I wanted to tell him everything, but I couldn’t.
Repeating Alla’s words would only hurt him.
He wouldn’t show it. He would probably shrug and say, “Who cares what people say?”
But he would remember.
And the next time I invited him somewhere, he would find an excuse not to come. Not because he was offended, but because he wouldn’t want to embarrass me.
“It was fine,” I said. “We sat around, talked. Alla Soboleva was there. She married some kind of director.”
“Oh, Soboleva,” Kostya smiled. “The one you told me about? The girl who used to boss everyone around at school?”
“That’s her.”
“So how is she?”
“Exactly the same. Still bossing everyone around.”
Kostya nodded and didn’t ask anything else.
That was another thing about him: he knew when not to push.
He sat beside me drinking tea from his favorite mug, the one that said “Best Technician,” a birthday gift from his coworkers.
And I suddenly understood what had been missing all evening.
Here, I didn’t have to prove anything.
I didn’t have to defend myself.
I didn’t have to perform.
We sat in the kitchen until one in the morning.
Then Kostya put the cups into the dishwasher, checked the door lock, and went to bed.
I remained by the window for a while.
The next morning, I heard the front door close as he left for work.
There was a note on the table.
“I’ll be home by seven. Lunch is in the fridge.”
I read it and smiled.
There he was—my “ordinary working man.”
Up at six.
Off to work without complaining.
Leaving lunch for me before he went.
And the refrigerator, by the way, was perfectly set to minus eighteen degrees in the freezer and plus four in the main compartment.
He had adjusted it himself.
Three days later, Nina called.
“You won’t believe this. I ran into Alla at the shopping center. She looked terrible. Her husband lost his job. Well, technically he was laid off. His position was eliminated. Another company bought the chain and started restructuring. The whole regional management team was cut. She says it’s temporary and that he has offers from other cities, but they don’t want to move.”
Nina paused.
“And… don’t tell anyone this. Alla was really upset. No makeup, red eyes. She asked whether I knew anyone who needed an English tutor. She used to teach part-time at a language school. I guess money is getting tight.”
After the call, I sat for a long time staring at the wall.
The news didn’t make me happy.
I’ve never known how to take pleasure in someone else’s misfortune.
But I thought about how quickly life can change.
One day you have an executive-class car and pay sixty thousand a night for a luxury mountain suite.
The next day you’re looking for tutoring work and wondering whether you can still afford private school.
That same day, Kostya was installing a refrigerated display case in a new grocery store.
He came home cheerful.
“The owner’s happy. He offered me two more locations.”
And that was when something became very clear to me.
As long as there are grocery stores, warehouses, cafés, restaurants, and cafeterias in our city, Kostya will have work.
Refrigeration equipment always breaks.
And when it does, somebody has to know how to fix it.
Not from behind a laptop.
Not from an office.
Not through a video meeting with Moscow.
With his own hands and twenty years of experience.
That evening, I finally told Kostya what had happened to Alla.
He listened and shook his head.
“You know, I was thinking,” he said after a moment. “Why don’t we go somewhere next year? A vacation. Not the mountains,” he added with a smile, “but maybe a health resort. My back’s been bothering me a little.”
“Let’s do it.”
He disappeared into the other room and returned with a travel brochure.
Apparently, he had already looked at a few places.
We sat in the kitchen until midnight, looking at photographs, reading reviews, debating whether we should pay extra for a balcony or choose a simpler room.
Just an ordinary evening.
Ordinary conversations.
And I felt happy.
Happier than I had felt at any moment in that banquet hall.
The following week, I ran into Alla at the supermarket.
She was standing beside the frozen-food section, carefully studying the price of dumplings.
I intended to walk past, but she noticed me.
“Oh… hi.”
Her voice was completely different from the one I had heard at the reunion.
Quiet.
“Hi.”
“I… well…” She hesitated, dropped the dumplings into her basket, and looked away. “I wanted to apologize. For that evening. I said things I shouldn’t have said. I just…”
“Forget it.”
“No, really. I shouldn’t have behaved like that. It was stupid.”
She never quite met my eyes.
She picked up her basket and quickly walked toward the checkout.
I watched her go.
She was dressed simply. No expensive earrings. No heels. Just an older jacket and ordinary clothes.
Times really had changed.
That evening, I told Kostya.
He shrugged.
“Well, she apologized. That’s something. Maybe she understood something.”
“You think so?”
“I don’t know. But don’t waste your energy being angry with her. What good will it do you?”
I still think about that reunion sometimes.
When Kostya comes home, washes his hands, and sits down with a cup of tea, I look at him and know I don’t need anyone else.
Inside those quiet evenings is a small, dependable world where nobody has to report to anyone, compete with anyone, or prove anything.
And sometimes I wonder:
How much of what we value in life is truly ours—and how much of it exists only to impress other people?
