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— Can you believe it, Masha? Yulia’s parents bought her an apartment! — Irina was nervously twirling a strand of dyed blond hair, the phone wedged between her shoulder and ear. What a big apartment your parents bought you, she thought enviously, eyeing her brother’s wife’s new place. Her slender fingers with a perfect pastel […]

Andrei set the last box of dishes on the kitchen table and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The move was finished—at last he and Lyuda were the full-fledged owners of their own country house. Two years of construction, endless weekend trips out to the plot, arguments with contractors, choosing materials, sleepless nights over the […]

— And dinner? The question was tossed into the quiet of the room as casually as Kirill tossed his jacket onto the back of the chair. He wasn’t expecting an answer; he was stating a need. The sound of his steps across the parquet was heavy, assured—the steps of a man who had returned to […]

It wasn’t a sound that ripped through the quiet of their bedroom, but an icy wave of his hatred. He stood in the doorway—his figure, usually so confident and upright, now hunched as if under an invisible weight. The face Alisa loved was twisted into a grimace she had never seen in seven years of […]

Vladimir felt as if the ground itself were springing beneath his feet from happiness. Not from drink—no—from that very pure, bright feeling that had been overflowing him since morning. Today was his day. The day he had waited for two long years, swallowing the dust of army training grounds and rereading to tatters the envelopes […]

The silence in the apartment was oppressive—thick as jelly, and just as sticky. Only the soft scrape of a fork along the rim of an almost empty plate disturbed it. At the table sat a small nine-year-old girl, her gaze fixed on the single spoonful of mashed potatoes smeared in a thin, pitiful layer across […]

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 […]

Marina opened her eyes and immediately squeezed them shut against the bright sunlight filtering through the not-quite-drawn curtains. Her first thought was a happy one—Saturday! Their first weekend in three weeks with no trips, no meetings, nothing urgent. She stretched luxuriously, savoring the softness of the bed and the quiet of the apartment. Beside her, […]

Andrey sat at the kitchen table, shuffling through the printed paperwork from the Zdravnitsa sanatorium. The evening sun slanted through the window, lighting his tired face. He knew Lena would be home any minute and the conversation wouldn’t be easy. But he hoped she would understand. Two weeks earlier his mother had called him at […]

After getting married for the third time, Serafima Grigoryevna got into the habit of visiting her son and daughter-in-law. Her new husband, Igor, was nine years younger, and she was very proud of that. “If a younger man looked my way, then I must be a beauty,” she would think, glancing at herself in the […]