“Oksana, we need to talk. Seriously.”
His voice, stripped of its usual evening relaxation, made her stop chopping vegetables. The knife froze halfway through a crunchy celery stalk. Oksana threw a quick glance at her husband over her shoulder. Vadim was leaning against the doorframe, looking as if he was preparing not for dinner, but for a presentation at the board meeting. Solemn and a bit pompous.
“Again about the car rims? Vadim, we agreed — next month,” she resumed making the salad, her movements habitually quick and precise. The aroma of meat frying in the pan and fresh herbs filled the kitchen, creating a cozy island that her husband, apparently, intended to destroy.
“No, it’s not about the rims. It’s about our future. Our strategy,” he pronounced the word “strategy” with special emphasis, as if he had just discovered it. He came into the kitchen and sat down at the table, placing his hands on the countertop. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately. We live well, I don’t argue. But I feel like I’m standing still. You know? Routine, everyday life… it all sucks you in. A man must develop himself, invest in himself. Otherwise, he degrades.”
Oksana stopped cutting. She put the knife on the board and turned to him, drying her hands on a towel. A shadow of a tired smile flickered on her face. She prepared to listen to yet another theory gleaned from some motivational blog for “real alpha males.”
“Alright, I’m listening. What’s your brilliant plan to avoid degradation?” There was no irritation in her voice yet, only slight irony.
Vadim took this as a sign of approval. He straightened up, his gaze becoming even more serious.
“I’ve made a strategic decision. Starting this month, we’re changing our financial policy. My salary is now my personal resource. My investment fund. I will invest it in projects that will help me grow. On the car, so it looks respectable. On my hobby, because it broadens horizons. On courses, finally. I must grow, Oksana.”
He paused, giving her a chance to realize the depth and importance of his plan. Oksana was silent; her smile slowly faded. She looked at him, and disbelief began to wrestle with budding bewilderment in her eyes.
“Wait,” she said slowly, as if tasting each word. “I don’t quite get it. Your salary is your fund. And… what about everything else?”
“That’s the second part of my plan!” he enthusiastically jumped in. “You’re strong and smart. You earn more than me, and that’s great, I’m proud of you! So all the shared expenses — mortgage, utilities, food, household chemicals, everything needed at home — that’s now your responsibility. You don’t want your husband to turn into a boring average Joe who only thinks about paying bills, do you? My job is to think about the big picture, about prospects. Yours is to provide a reliable rear. It’s the perfect partnership!”
Silence fell over the kitchen, broken only by the sizzling oil in the pan. Oksana looked at her husband, at his completely serious, inspired face, and desperately wanted to laugh. The idea was so absurd, so brazen and childish, that it couldn’t be true. It must be a joke. A very bad, inappropriate joke.
“You’re kidding, right?” she finally asked, and there was no irony left in her voice. Only cold, ringing steel.
“Why immediately ‘kidding’?” Vadim asked sincerely, surprised. “I’m offering you an efficient family model, where everyone does what they do best. I develop and create future capital, and you maintain the current standard of living. It’s logical. You’re just used to the old system, but you have to be flexible.”
He said this so simply, so casually, as if he were suggesting rearranging the furniture in the living room. And at that moment Oksana understood. He wasn’t joking. He really believed what he was saying. He was seriously proposing that she become his personal sponsor, his support staff, and his bank all in one while he “invests in himself.” The cozy aroma of dinner suddenly felt nauseating, and the familiar kitchen seemed alien and hostile. Cold, calculating rage began to rise from the depths of her soul, pushing out shock and bewilderment.
Three days passed. Three days of thick, viscous silence worse than any argument. They moved around the apartment like two invisible ghosts to each other, touching only when necessary and exchanging short, functional phrases. But the tension grew; the air in their shared bedroom and kitchen seemed cuttable with a knife. Oksana waited. She gave him a chance to come to his senses, to realize and say this was the stupidest joke of his life. But Vadim didn’t change his mind. On the contrary, every day he got more and more into the role of a brilliant strategist and investor.
Friday evening he sprawled on the couch with a tablet, engrossed in flipping through pages of some car tuning site. He did this demonstratively, occasionally grunting and commenting aloud as if talking to himself, but actually addressing her.
“Oh, here’s an exhaust system! The sound will be amazing. Only seventy thousand… Gotta get it. It’s image, it’s status.”
Oksana, standing by the window watching the city lights, slowly turned around. The last drop of her patience evaporated. She approached and stood in front of the couch, blocking his TV screen where silent scenes of some action movie flickered.
“I did the math, Vadim,” her voice was calm, but in that calmness was the chill of steel. “I took my salary. Subtracted the mortgage, all utilities, car insurance, and average grocery costs for two. You know what’s left? Almost nothing. Pennies barely enough for work lunches.”
He tore his gaze away from the tablet; slight irritation showed on his face as if she had distracted him from something truly important.
“And so? I explained. These are temporary difficulties. Investments require sacrifices. You have to look at the future, not count every penny like an accountant.”
“Oh, really? So what I earn is OURS, but what you earn is YOURS? Honey, aren’t you being a bit too cheeky?!”
“Well…”
“We’ve been together for five years! We took this mortgage together, chose this furniture together, damn it, were happy together when I got this job because it let us both breathe freer! And now you decide that my money is shared, but yours are your personal toys?”
His face twisted. He sat on the couch, throwing the tablet aside.
“Don’t reduce everything to a primitive level! I’m talking about development, and you talk to me about sausage and rent! You don’t believe in me! You want me to remain an office plankton who brings home a paycheck and silently watches TV! You’re just afraid of a strong, successful man next to you! It’s convenient for you that I depend on our common pot!”
“A strong man?” she laughed, but the laugh was short and bitter, with no hint of amusement. “A strong man doesn’t hide behind his wife’s back! A strong man is a partner, not a spoiled child who invented a new game and demands everyone else pay for his whims! You call this ‘investing in yourself’? No, Vadim. It’s parasitism. Pure, unadulterated infantile parasitism.”
He jumped to his feet, his face flushed.
“That’s it, I get it. Talking to you is useless. You have a poor mindset! You’ll never understand what real goals are! Conversation’s over!”
With these words, he demonstratively passed by her, took headphones from the coffee table, put them on, and flopped into the gaming chair, turning on the console. Moments later, the room filled with sounds of gunfire and explosions. He fully immersed himself in his virtual world, showing her that her real problems were just annoying noise to him. Oksana stood in the middle of the living room. She watched his back, the flicker of lights on the screen, and felt something inside her finally snap. The last thread binding them. He himself offered to play a game. Well, she would accept his rules.
The morning of the twentieth started with thick, deafening silence. Oksana moved through the apartment with the precision of a machine, getting ready for work. Shower, coffee, makeup — a ritual perfected, now serving as her armor. Vadim was already sitting in the living room. Not with the console, no. He was studying something on his phone with an important air, occasionally making notes in a notebook. He created the illusion of busy activity, pretending to be immersed in serious matters, not just an idler waiting for success to fall on his head.
Oksana entered the room, purse on shoulder, ready to leave. She stopped a few steps from him.
“Today is the twentieth, Vadim. Mortgage payment day.”
He didn’t look at her, lazily waving his hand toward the kitchen as if shooing a pesky fly. His attention was fully absorbed by his smartphone screen.
“I told you, that’s your concern now. Provide the rear, remember? I need to focus on the main thing.”
That phrase, thrown with such casual confidence, was the final trigger in her head. Arguing was useless. Persuading was humiliating. Only one thing remained — to act. She silently turned and, instead of leaving the apartment, went to her desk in the corner of the living room. Vadim glanced at her maneuver out of the corner of his eye, a shadow of a smug smile flickering on his lips. He was sure she would grumble, get angry, but eventually do what she had to — pay. Where else could she go?
Oksana opened her laptop calmly. No rush, no sudden movements. Her back was perfectly straight; fingers easily found the keyboard. Vadim, still pretending to study stock quotes or something equally important, watched her sidelong. He heard quiet clicks of keys, confident mouse clicks. She logged into her bank account, and he mentally applauded himself. His strategy was working. He was breaking the old system.
The screen displayed the monthly payment amount. Oksana looked at the numbers with a cold, detached gaze. It was just a task, an equation demanding a solution. Without hesitation, she opened the calculator on the screen, divided the amount by two exactly. She copied the resulting number and pasted it into the transfer field. Her finger hovered for a moment over the “Confirm” button. This was her Rubicon. The step after which there was no turning back. She pressed it. A successful transaction notification lit up the screen green, like a traffic light allowing movement into a new life.
Then she calmly closed the bank’s site and opened notes on her phone. Created a new list. “Ribeye steak – 1 piece. Arugula. Cherry tomatoes. Avocado. Bottle of good dry red wine.” The list was short, selfish, and made no provision for a second diner. She saved it, locked the phone, and slowly stood up.
She turned to her husband. He finally looked away from his phone and looked at her with a questioning, slightly condescending expression. He was waiting for a report.
“You’re right,” she said in a flat, lifeless voice.
Vadim raised an eyebrow in surprise. He hadn’t expected such a start.
“Everyone should invest in themselves,” she continued, her words an exact copy of his own. “I just paid my half of the mortgage. I think the bank will be glad to talk to you about the second half. You can consider this your first serious investment project.”
His expression began to change. Smugness slowly gave way to bewilderment, then to growing suspicion.
“What?” he asked again, as if he hadn’t heard.
“I’ll buy groceries only for myself today,” she went on, ignoring his question. Her voice didn’t waver for a second. “Your food, like your share of the loan, you as the man who invests in himself will provide yourself. Dinner, by the way, is your personal project for today, too.”
She turned and, without looking back, headed for the exit. The sound of the closing lock echoed in the deafening silence of the apartment like a gunshot. Vadim remained sitting on the couch, looking at the empty place by the laptop. It slowly, painfully dawned on him that the game he had so brilliantly invented suddenly stopped being a game. And he was no longer the lead player, but just an object of someone else’s experiment.
The evening darkened, turning the windows into dark mirrors reflecting the cold light of the living room. Vadim spent the whole day in a state of dull, irritated waiting. He didn’t believe. He couldn’t believe that her morning stand was anything more than female hysteria, a flashy gesture that would fizzle out by evening. He checked his bank account several times — the second half of the mortgage payment never came through. A call from the bank, polite but insistent, made him break out in a cold sweat and mutter something about a “technical delay.” He was hungry. The fridge, unfortunately, contained nothing but a dried piece of cheese and half a lemon.
When the key turned in the lock, he tensed. He sat on the couch, adopting a pose of offended dignity, waiting. He had prepared a speech about how petty and unworthy her behavior was, how she undermined the foundations of their future. He was ready to forgive her when she, of course, came with an apology.
Oksana entered the apartment. In her hands was a single paper bag from an expensive grocery store. She didn’t look at him. Took off her shoes, went to the kitchen, and with a quiet rustle placed the bag on the counter. Vadim watched her every move. He saw her take out a thick, marbled piece of meat in vacuum packaging, a bunch of bright arugula, a branch of glossy cherry tomatoes. And finally, a bottle of wine — the very one they only bought on special occasions.
She moved without hurry, with some detached, meditative grace. Unpacked the steak, patted it dry with a paper towel, generously rubbed it with salt and pepper. Put a heavy cast-iron skillet on the stove. Not a word. Not a glance at him. She acted as if he simply didn’t exist in this apartment. The aroma of hot oil began to tickle the nostrils. Vadim swallowed. His confidence began to slowly melt away, giving way to anxious bewilderment. This was no longer a performance for him. It was something else.
The meat landed on the pan with a deafening sizzle. The kitchen instantly filled with a thick, maddening smell of fried meat. Oksana, unhurried, opened the wine bottle, filled a tall glass, and took a small sip, closing her eyes. Then she calmly washed the vegetables, tore salad leaves into a large bowl with her hands, added halved tomatoes. She cooked like an artist painting a picture — confidently, expertly, and clearly enjoying it.
He couldn’t stand it. He got up and approached the kitchen border, stopping in the doorway.
“And what does all this mean?” His voice was sharper than he intended.
Oksana flipped the steak. A perfect caramel crust appeared on the seared side. She threw a sprig of rosemary and a crushed garlic clove onto the pan. The aroma became even richer and more complex. She took the glass and took another sip, turning halfway toward him.
“It means I’m making dinner,” she answered as if explaining the obvious to a mentally challenged person.
When the steak was ready, she transferred it to a wooden board to “rest.” Set the table. For one person. An expensive plate, heavy cutlery, a napkin, a wine glass. She sliced the meat across the grain — pink juice flowed out. Placed the pieces on the plate next to a mound of fresh salad dressed with olive oil. Sat down at the table, took knife and fork, and cut off the first piece. She brought it to her mouth, chewing slowly with visible pleasure.
Vadim watched this scene, a murky wave of rage and humiliation rising in his soul. He was a stranger at this celebration of life. A spectator not even invited to the balcony seats. He was nobody.
“And me?” he blurted out. A pathetic, childish question that finally tore off his “strategist” mask.
Oksana didn’t even raise her eyes to him. She cut off another piece of meat, elegantly skewered it on the fork with a leaf of arugula. Took another sip of wine, enjoying the aftertaste. And only then, still not looking at him, threw over her shoulder a phrase cold and sharp as a surgical scalpel:
“Honey, dinner is your personal project for today. Start investing in yourself from today. And this applies to everything from now on…”
