Arseny stood at the window of a suite on the twenty-second floor, looking out over the night metropolis spread beneath him. Myriads of lights merged into golden rivers flowing nowhere. He felt like a traitor, a coward, a complete idiot. Tomorrow he was going to cheat on his wife. And the worst part was that he felt no thrill of anticipation. His heart was clamped in a vise of heavy, cold lead. But things couldn’t go on like this. Better a sinful fall than finally losing his mind to the war inside him.
Since his teenage years, some ancient, inexplicable instinct had been speaking in Arseny. His heart didn’t skip for statuesque cover girls; it skipped for Thumbelinas. Short, almost weightless, with thin wrists and fragile collarbones, like migratory birds ready to take off at a gust of wind. His friends teased him, saying he was like a puppy who was a sucker for bones. Arseny waved them off, but inside he knew—they were right. It was his Achilles’ heel, a weakness nature had given him against all logic.
The lush curves of movie divas and photo models left him indifferent. But a girl he bumped into in a crowd, one whose head barely reached his shoulder and whose eyes held a look of defenselessness, could make his heart beat faster. That was how “wrong” he had turned out in his parents’ eyes.
He met Sofia in the institute library. She was reaching for a book on the top shelf, and of course he helped. She turned, and he drowned in bottomless gray eyes framed by dark lashes. She was the exact embodiment of his youthful dream: petite, delicate, with a quiet, melodious voice. He married her almost as soon as they graduated, gripped by an irrational fear that someone would steal this beautiful, fragile girl away from him. Need it be said that in reality Sofia, for all her prettiness, didn’t have crowds of admirers? Precisely because of that very fragility that captivated him.
Sofia was three years younger. She didn’t have a university degree—she finished a technical college in food processing and worked as a technologist at a confectionery factory. Her hands always smelled of vanilla and almond, and that sweet scent became synonymous with home for Arseny. He himself got a job at a firm trading in electronic components and quickly built a decent career.
Their early marriage seemed to have come straight off the pages of a sunny novel. Their parents on both sides were young and strong; they helped the newlyweds with the down payment on a cozy two-room apartment on the outskirts of the city. The mortgage didn’t feel like a burden but a joint project; the plans were Napoleonic, and the future appeared cloudless and bright.
They lived in perfect harmony. They didn’t quarrel; every problem was solved over a cup of tea and the pastries Sofia brought home from work. Friends watched them with mild envy, calling them the perfect couple.
They weren’t planning children, but neither did they shy away from the idea. They simply lived and delighted in each other. And when, in the fifth year of their marriage, Sofia became pregnant, it was the happiest and most natural event of all.
The way her fragile body—she wore a size 42—managed to carry and give birth to two healthy boys was called a small miracle by the doctors. Arseny, frozen with fear, watched her growing belly, afraid she would simply break under the weight. But Sofia turned out to be stronger than anyone thought. Yarik and Lyoshka were born, two screaming bundles of joy that burst into their lives with cyclones of sleepless nights, diapers, and endless laundry.
The world shrank to the size of their apartment. Arseny faithfully went to work, and all the rest of his time he devoted to his family. He forgot what it meant to meet friends, watch football, or sleep more than four hours in a row. And he was happy in that weariness, in that chaos filled with children’s laughter and the smell of baby food.
And it was in this bustle that he missed the most important, irreversible moment. He didn’t notice when his Thumbelina disappeared.
One morning, when the twins finally started sleeping through the night and the sun slanted into the bedroom at an unmistakable angle, he woke before his wife and looked at her. Truly looked for the first time in many months. And didn’t recognize her.
Sofia slept with her thick dark hair fanned across the pillow. Her shoulders, always so narrow, had broadened, rounded. The line of her back curved smoothly down to a firm, strong waist and full hips he wouldn’t have imagined before. It wasn’t fat. It was womanliness in its ripest, most fruitful expression. The strength of motherhood cast in flesh.
And what always happened to him at the sight of women far from his youthful ideal happened again. A deaf inner wall of indifference rose up. The male part of his nature, primitive and cruel, fell silent. He still loved Sofia—her mind, her kindness, her laughter, her hands that could stroke his head so tenderly after a hard day. But the primal pull that once sent his blood racing was gone. Evaporated.
He tried to fight himself. He shouted in his own head that he was a scoundrel and an ungrateful bastard. That he had a family, a loving wife, wonderful children, and his brain had no business being clogged with such nonsense. But his body refused to listen. It yearned for fragility, for defenselessness, for that very type that was his drug.
And at that very moment a newcomer arrived in the neighboring department at work. Lika.
When he saw her in the corridor, Arseny literally rooted to the spot. He couldn’t move; he couldn’t look away. She was the living embodiment of his past. Thin as a reed, with sharp elbows and a slender neck, she seemed an exact copy of Sofia five years earlier. The very one he had loved so madly.
From that day his life turned into hell. He flailed between two poles: at home real, true love awaited him—his family, his sons, his Sofia, who had begun to notice his coldness and quietly suffer, not understanding why. And at work a phantom awaited him, an obsession, the embodiment of his foolish, ineradicable ideal.
Lika caught on quickly. She wasn’t blind and saw his awestruck, lost look. She knew he was married, but apparently considered that a trifling detail. She would catch his eye and smile a special, promising smile. It was as if she were saying, “I know what you want. And it’s possible.”
And then the frightening, alluring moment came. Management sent the two of them to a three-day industry symposium in another city. Everything was preordained. Rooms in the same hotel. Colleagues who would surely find ways to occupy themselves in the evenings. And an opportunity that, as lust whispered, couldn’t be missed.
“Viktor from Planning will be in the bar all night, and I’m rooming with Anya—she’ll definitely run off to her boyfriend. We’re adults, Arseny. How long are you going to hide from yourself?” Lika said, her words sounding like a sentence.
He agreed. He told himself: yes, I’m a horrible person. But maybe if I do this, I’ll knock this nonsense out of my head. Maybe the spell will dissipate when I touch it. After all, she’s so much like the old Sofia. It’s almost not cheating—it’s a return to the past.
The symposium was excruciatingly boring. Arseny didn’t hear a word of the presentations. He saw only her profile, her thin fingers tucking back a strand of hair. His heart pounded like crazy.
At last the final session ended. Lika came up to him so close he could smell her perfume—light, floral, nothing like Sofia’s sweet vanilla.
“Let’s go now. Anya’s already gone. We don’t have much time,” she whispered.
And he went. His legs were jelly, and a lump rose in his throat. He had made up his mind.
The room was standard, bland: carpet, two beds, bedside tables, a TV. The door clicked shut and Lika immediately pressed herself to him, looping her arms around his neck. Panic-awkwardness surged through him. His body tensed. To defuse the situation, by old habit from home, he playfully poked her sides with both index fingers.
She squealed—not with surprised laughter, but irritably and sharply: “Ow! Stop it! I can’t stand being tickled!”
Arseny jerked back as if burned. His Sofia always answered such teasing with a happy, embarrassed laugh and a counterattack. Why was everything different here?
Pouting, Lika unhooked herself from him. “Relax, I’ll be quick,” she said more mildly and slipped into the bathroom.
The sound of running water seemed deafening. He took off his tie, feeling like the lowest cad. His hands trembled. He tried to picture what his sons were doing now, what Sofia was thinking… but his thoughts tangled and snapped.
The bathroom door opened. Lika came out in a short silk robe, her slender legs visible beneath. And again a wave of desire swept over him, blotting out his pangs of conscience for an instant. He began hurriedly unbuttoning his shirt. It was expensive, with heavy cufflinks—a present from his parents for his last milestone birthday. The cufflinks weren’t simple ones; they were engraved, one of the few costly things he allowed himself.
And at that very moment there was a knock at the door.
Frowning, Lika cracked it open. Outside, their boss’s voice was calling everyone down to the bar “for networking.” Lika, with a sweet smile, pleaded a headache. The door closed.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked with a mild reproach, coming closer.
Arseny went back to his cufflinks. His fingers, usually so deft, suddenly turned wooden. One cufflink slipped, clinked on the floor, and rolled somewhere under the bed.
There he was, at the climactic moment of his downfall, crawling on his knees across the hotel carpet looking for a stupid cufflink! He felt humiliatingly foolish. At last the little metal disc was found right by the wall.
He stood, trying to preserve a shred of dignity, and set to work on his fly. And then the zipper jammed solid. He yanked helplessly at the slider, sweat beading on his forehead. Lika watched him with a strange smile—a mixture of impatience and pity.
Another knock at the door. This time loud and insistent.
“Room service!” a cheerful young voice called.
Without thinking, Arseny barked back, “We didn’t order anything!”
Embarrassed mumbling came from the hall: “Oh, crap… Is this three-twelve? I need… I need three-twenty-one! Sorry, guys, second day on the job!”
Lika laughed nervously. Arseny tugged at the zipper with renewed force. No use.
And then came a third knock. Not a knock, but a full-on drumroll. A drunk, slurring voice boomed behind the door:
“D-Dash… Is Dashka here? I need Dashka! Darya Seliv—Selivanova! Where is she?”
“There’s no Dashka here!” Lika almost shrieked, losing the last of her composure.
“H-how not? Where is she then?” the drunk voice wondered sincerely.
“Get out! Leave us alone!” Arseny roared, all his pent-up anger—at himself, at the situation, at that damned cufflink and the cursed zipper—pouring into the shout.
Silence fell in the corridor, then indistinct apologies and retreating footsteps.
The silence in the room rang. Arseny stood with his head bowed, his shirt open and bunching over the obstinate trousers. He looked at Lika—at those perfect yet alien features. And he felt absolutely nothing. Not a drop of the desire that had driven him to this room.
Instead, a wave of the cosmic, stunning absurdity of what was happening washed over him. He, Arseny, a respected specialist, a loving father, an exemplary family man, was standing in a hotel room with another woman, his zipper stuck, his parents’ gift rolling across the floor, while someone in the hallway hunted for a mythical Darya Selivanova.
This wasn’t fate. It was farce. A coarse, vulgar, blaring sign from above.
He slowly, almost automatically, began tucking in his shirt.
“Forgive me, Lika. This isn’t going to happen. I can’t. I… I have no right.”
She regarded him with cool curiosity.
“Then explain one thing. I thought your type was me. Skinny, little ones. Why did you marry Sofia then? She’s now… you know… a bit of a plump thing.”
Arseny closed his eyes. A picture flared within: Sofia in a white wedding dress, like a porcelain doll. And then another: Sofia sleeping beside him, strong, warm, smelling of milk and baby cream. His Sofia. His one and only.
“Probably because she’s Sofia. There’s no one like her in the entire universe. And I think I’ve only just realized that what attracts me isn’t ‘Thumbelinas.’ I’m attracted to Love. And it has a single name and a single face.”
Lika sighed. “Pity. I liked you. But I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”
“No,” Arseny said softly but very clearly. “This is exactly what’s meant to be. The kind of fate that sticks its foot out just in time when you’re walking straight toward a precipice.”
He left the room without looking back. He breathed deeply. He felt the shackles fall away, his mind clear, and his heart at last begin to beat in the right, the only true rhythm. He silently thanked whoever was up there for the rookie bellhop, the sociable boss, the jammed zipper, the anniversary cufflinks, and the drunken admirer of the unknown Dasha. The universe had dotted every i in the most graphic way.
He got home deep in the night. The light was on. Sofia sat in the living room on the couch, her legs tucked beneath her. She was watching some quiet old movie, but from her face he could tell—she hadn’t slept, she’d been waiting for him. A silent question and a shadow of anxiety lay in her eyes.
“So, how was the seminar?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even.
Arseny went over to the couch, sank to his knees before her, and took her hands in his. They were warm and a little rough from constant work with dough.
“Unbearably boring. I missed you till my heart hurt. I missed you every second,” he said, and every word was the purest truth, coming from the depths of his cleansed soul.
He looked at her—real, alive, his. At her luxuriant hair gathered in a messy bun, at her full, kind hands, at her strong, beautiful body that had given him two sons. A wave of tenderness, gratitude, and passion overflowed him, and he couldn’t help himself: in his own way, as he used to, he playfully poked her in the side with his fingers.
Sofia squealed. But not like Lika. She burst into happy, joyful, slightly embarrassed laughter—the kind you laugh only at home, only with the closest of people. And she immediately answered him in kind.
And in that moment Arseny realized that what gave him goosebumps, the tremor of delight and happiness, wasn’t fragile elegance at all. His true drug, his only ideal, was this laughter. Her laughter. His wife’s laughter. And he needed nothing else.
