Nelly placed two plates on the table and moved the napkin holder closer to the edge. It was Saturday, half past six, April twilight outside the window, and in half an hour Pavel would bring dinner. He always ordered in advance, called from the car, said, “Sunshine, I’m already on my way,” and she could hear the turn signal clicking through the phone.
She straightened the tablecloth and moved the saltshaker toward the wall. The apartment had changed over the past few months. New curtains—light ones. Before, dark ones had hung there, with heavy folds; her ex-husband had chosen them. The shelf above the sofa, where his factory volleyball trophies had once stood, was now empty. Nelly had placed three cacti in clay pots there and a small photograph of her mother.
The intercom crackled at the exact moment she was closing the cabinet door. Nelly picked up the receiver.
“Open up, it’s me.”
The voice was familiar.
But not the one she had been waiting for.
Artyom. Her ex-husband. She hadn’t heard him for four months, ever since he had taken the last box of his things in December. It had been freezing then. Artyom had arrived in his old jacket, picked up the box from the hallway, and hadn’t even taken off his shoes. He stood on the doormat, muttered, “Well, that’s it,” and left. He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t look back.
Nelly pressed the button. Not because she wanted to see him. She simply couldn’t find a reason not to open the door. She no longer got nervous at the sound of his voice. She had noticed it a few weeks earlier and had been surprised herself. No heaviness in her chest, no desire to slam down the receiver. Just calm, that was all.
The entrance door slammed downstairs. Nelly heard footsteps on the stairs. Someone was talking. A man and a woman.
She opened the apartment door and saw Artyom. Her ex-husband was standing on the landing in a new leather jacket he hadn’t owned before. Beside him stood a girl. About twenty-five, no older. Blonde, dyed hair, long nails, and bright makeup. The girl was smiling as if she had come to a friend’s birthday party.
“Hi,” Artyom said. He smirked and rocked from his heel to his toe. “We were passing by. Decided to drop in. Meet Kristina.”
Kristina nodded and said, “Hi there,” in the tone people use when greeting a shop assistant.
Nelly stepped aside, letting them into the hallway. She felt curious. Not hurt, not offended. Curious—exactly the way you feel when you are watching an old movie and suddenly notice a detail you had missed before.
They took off their shoes. Artyom went into the room and looked around. Kristina followed him, slapping her bare feet against the cold laminate floor. Her ex-husband stopped in the middle of the room and rolled his shoulders the way he always did when he felt he was in control.
“Oh, you changed the curtains,” he said. “Well, well.”
Kristina also looked around. Nelly saw the ex’s new girlfriend assessing the apartment, sweeping her gaze over the walls, the furniture, the floor. A small one-room apartment, modestly furnished. Kristina pressed her lips together.
Six months earlier, Nelly had stood in this same room and listened as Artyom packed his things. Eight years together had ended in one evening. Her husband came home from work later than usual, sat down at the table, pushed his plate away, and said, “I’m leaving. I don’t want to lie. There’s someone else.” No preface, no attempt to explain.
Nelly had sat down on the sofa. Her husband took shirts out of the wardrobe, stacked them, and stuffed them into a bag. He moved efficiently, as if he were packing for a business trip. She asked, “For how long?” Artyom answered without turning around, “Three months.” For three months he had come home, eaten the dinner Nelly cooked after her shift at the factory, lain beside her, and said nothing. And all that time, there had been another woman.
She didn’t cry. Not because she was holding herself together. She simply didn’t believe it was real. It seemed as if he would laugh any second, say something, and put the bag back. But her husband zipped it up, threw on his jacket, and left. The door closed. The tears came at night, when she lay alone and the refrigerator hummed in the empty kitchen.
For the first week, Nelly barely ate. She came home from work, sat in the kitchen, heated tea, and forgot to drink it. Her mother called from Voronezh and asked careful questions. Nelly answered, “We broke up, Mom. I’ll tell you later,” and changed the subject. Her colleagues at the factory noticed nothing. Nelly worked as a technologist at a confectionery factory, and there was no time there to think about personal matters. Recipes, measurements, quality-control logs, twelve-hour shifts.
The divorce was finalized in two months. The apartment went to Nelly because they had bought it with her grandmother’s money. Her ex-husband didn’t even argue. He took the car, his things, and his new life.
And then came three months of silence. Nelly went to work, came home, cooked dinner for one, and went to bed early. Her friend Vera called every evening and asked, “Well, how are you?” Nelly answered, “Fine,” and it was almost true. The pain hadn’t gone away. Nelly had grown used to it, the way people get used to an old scratch on their hand. You don’t notice it until you brush against something.
In January, Vera invited her to her birthday. A small gathering, about ten people, in a café on Pushkinskaya. Nelly didn’t want to go. Vera said, “If you spend one more Saturday sitting at home, I’ll come over and break down your door.” So Nelly went.
Pavel was sitting two seats away from her. Tall, broad-shouldered, with short dark hair. Tanned, like a person who spends weekends outdoors rather than in front of the television.
Brown eyes, large hands, broad wrists. Vera later said she had invited him at the last minute because one of the guests couldn’t come and a seat had opened up.
All evening Pavel was quieter than the others. But when he joined the conversation, he began with a question. “Have you tried this dish? No? You should. They cook it properly here.” A low voice, calm movements. He didn’t try to joke. He didn’t try to impress anyone either.
He spoke normally, and it was easy to sit in silence beside him. Nelly noticed that Pavel was the only one at the table who didn’t interrupt. Everyone talked at once, laughed, reached across the table for salad. But he waited until the other person had finished speaking, and only then answered.
After the café, he offered her a ride home. Nelly got into the car and noticed that the interior was clean and smelled of leather. On the back seat lay a folder with documents and a bag from a bookstore. Pavel drove her to her entrance, didn’t try to come upstairs, and said, “Text Vera that you got home, otherwise she’ll worry.” Then he left.
The next day Vera called and asked:
“So, what did you think of Pavel?”
“What about Pavel?”
“He asked me whether you were married or not.”
Nelly laughed. For the first time in three months after the divorce.
They started seeing each other in February. Pavel called her himself after asking Vera for her number. He suggested lunch on Saturday. Not a restaurant, not a bar. A small place near Pokrovsky Boulevard where he went on weekends. Nelly arrived and saw him already sitting at a table, reading a newspaper. A real paper newspaper, not his phone. It touched her, though she couldn’t have explained why.
Pavel was the kind of man who didn’t rush. He didn’t call ten times a day, didn’t shower her with messages. Once every two or three days, he invited her somewhere. A café, an exhibition, a walk along the embankment. He treated her as if they had a whole life ahead of them and there was no reason to hurry.
One day, at the end of February, they were walking along the embankment, and Nelly told him about the divorce. Not everything, only the main points. That she had been married for eight years, that her husband had left her for another woman, that it had taken her time to recover.
Pavel listened without interrupting. Then he said, “I was divorced too. Three years ago. My son stayed with my ex.” And he added nothing more. No questions, no advice. He said it and fell silent. Nelly appreciated that. After Artyom, who had spent eight years talking down to her, it felt like stepping out of a cramped room into fresh air.
Pavel had his own company. He supplied products to restaurants and cafés: meat, fish, farm vegetables. He didn’t brag about it. Nelly learned the details by chance, when she once stopped by his office to pick up an umbrella she had left in his car and saw invoices on the desk, sample boxes in the corner, and two employees who stood up and greeted her as if they already knew her.
In March he said:
“Sunshine, let me take a key to your apartment. I’ll bring dinner on Saturdays.”
Nelly gave him the keys. And from then on, every Saturday he stopped by a restaurant, picked up the order, and came to her place. Sometimes with flowers. Always in a good mood.
And now her ex-husband was standing in her apartment, looking at the cacti on the shelf.
“You got yourself some flowers,” Artyom said with a snort. “Haven’t bought a cat yet? Lonely women usually get cats.”
Kristina giggled. Briefly, like a hiccup.
Nelly didn’t answer. She stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the room, leaning her shoulder against the frame, silently looking at Artyom. The two plates on the table behind her were visible from the room, but her ex-husband hadn’t noticed them. Napkins, cutlery, two candles in low candleholders. A Saturday dinner for two.
“Well then,” Artyom sat on the armrest of the sofa and folded his arms across his chest, “still sitting here alone? I told you, Nelly. Who would need you? Thirty-four years old, no children, a one-room apartment. Who would be interested in that?”
He said it calmly, almost kindly, like a person sharing life experience. That was Artyom all over. For eight years he had repeated the same things: “You won’t manage,” “Your hands grow from the wrong place,” “Good thing you have me.” Nelly had grown used to it and stopped arguing. Then he left, and it turned out she hadn’t fallen apart without him.
Because without him, she hadn’t vanished. She learned to fix the faucet herself. She sorted out the apartment documents. She took an extra shift and increased her salary. She cleaned up the balcony, where her ex-husband had stored old car tires throughout all the years of their marriage. Now there was a small table and two folding chairs there, and in summer Nelly planned to have breakfast on that balcony.
Kristina sat down on the edge of a chair and placed her handbag on her knees. Her ex-husband continued inspecting the room like an inspector who had found violations.
“The wallpaper’s the same,” he said. “I hung that wallpaper, remember? The seam near the window turned out crooked, but you said it was fine.”
“I remember,” Nelly said. Her voice was even, without effort.
“And the sofa?” Artyom ran his palm over the armrest. “The same one. I carried it from the store myself. The elevator wasn’t working. Fourth floor. You stood downstairs giving orders.”
Nelly tilted her head slightly. She remembered that day. She remembered how Artyom sweated, how he cursed on every landing, how he later sat down on that sofa and said, “Now we’re living.” And back then she had thought that was what family was. A man carrying a sofa up to the fourth floor and saying, “We’re living.” Only later it turned out those were just things. A sofa, wallpaper, a kitchen faucet. Everyday chores that he passed off as love.
“I fixed your faucet three times,” her ex-husband continued. “Changed the wiring. Connected the radiator in the hallway. And you? Did you ever say thank you?”
“I did,” Nelly answered.
“I don’t remember.”
He didn’t remember. That was familiar. Artyom remembered only his own merits, never other people’s words.
Kristina glanced sideways at her. The ex-husband’s new girlfriend had clearly expected something else too. She had expected to see a woman in a washed-out robe, with red eyes and dirty dishes in the sink.
Instead she saw a clean apartment, a well-groomed hostess in a simple dark dress, and a table set for two. Kristina looked at the plates, then at Nelly.
“Are you expecting guests?” Kristina asked, nodding toward the table.
Artyom caught her gaze and turned too. He saw the two plates, the candles, the cutlery. For a second he fell silent. Then he smirked.
“Waiting for a girlfriend?” he asked with a sneer. “Vera, I bet? You two sit together and complain about life?”
Nelly said nothing. Only the corner of her mouth twitched slightly.
“I told you,” her ex-husband stood up from the armrest and shoved his hands into his pockets, “you’d be lost without me. Here’s living proof. Six months have passed. Alone, without a man, without prospects. And I’m doing all right. Kristina here,” he nodded toward the girl, “young, beautiful. Life is just beginning.”
Kristina fixed her hair, but this time she didn’t giggle. She was looking at Nelly and seemed to be beginning to sense that something was not going according to plan. The ex-wife wasn’t crying, wasn’t snapping back, wasn’t asking them to leave. She simply stood there and listened.
The lock clicked in the hallway.
Artyom fell silent. Kristina raised her head. Nelly did not move.
The front door opened. Footsteps sounded, bags rustled, and Pavel appeared in the corridor.
He was wearing a dark gray suit and a light shirt without a tie. He was a head taller than Artyom. In his right hand he carried two large paper bags with a restaurant logo; in his left, an enormous bouquet of white and cream roses.
Her fiancé swept his gaze over the room, saw Artyom and Kristina, then looked at Nelly. She gave him the faintest smile.
“Sunshine, I brought dinner,” Pavel said. His voice was quiet and steady. He put the bags on the floor and, without rushing, hung his jacket on the hanger by the door. Then he looked at Nelly’s ex-husband and his girlfriend.
“Oh, we have guests?”
Artyom stood in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets. He did not move. His face stretched, his eyes darted around. A second earlier he had felt in control, and now he looked as if he had walked into the wrong office.
Nelly went up to Pavel and took the bouquet.
“Meet him,” she said. “This is Pavel. My fiancé.”
Nelly said it in an even voice, as if she were talking about something self-evident. Pavel was here every Saturday. He had keys. He brought dinner. That was all.
Pavel stepped forward and held out his hand to Artyom. Her ex-husband shook it automatically, without saying a word. Pavel nodded to Kristina, then looked at Artyom again.
“Wait,” Pavel said, tilting his head slightly. “Is this the one? The one who said you’d be lost without him?”
“The very one,” Nelly said.
Pavel looked at Artyom calmly, without mockery, without contempt. With mild bewilderment, the way one looks at a person who has told a long story and forgotten what point he was making.
Artyom turned red to his ears. The flush rose from his neck to his cheeks and flooded his forehead. He took his hands out of his pockets but didn’t know where to put them. He shifted from one foot to the other.
Kristina got up from the chair. She was no longer smiling or giggling. She took Artyom by the elbow and pulled him toward the door. Quietly, without a word. Artyom followed her without looking back. In the hallway they put on their shoes in silence. Kristina zipped up her jacket and left first.
Artyom lingered on the threshold. He turned around and looked at Nelly. She stood with the bouquet in her hands, beside Pavel. Her ex-husband wanted to say something, but changed his mind. He stepped over the threshold and pulled the door shut behind him.
The lock clicked.
The apartment became quiet. Only the bags on the floor smelled of something warm and meaty.
Pavel turned to Nelly. The corners of his lips twitched.
“Did you see his face?” he asked.
Nelly laughed. Quietly at first, then louder. She pressed the bouquet to her chest and laughed until tears came to her eyes. Pavel laughed too. He picked up the bags from the floor, carried them to the kitchen, and began unpacking dinner.
“I’ll set everything up now,” her fiancé said, arranging the boxes on the table. “We’ll save dessert for later.”
Nelly put the bouquet in a vase on the windowsill. The tap water was cold; the stems crunched when she trimmed them with kitchen scissors. Outside, the streetlights came on, and the kitchen was reflected in the glass: the table, the plates, the silhouette of a man unpacking bags.
Nelly remembered how Artyom used to talk about men who cooked or bought food for women. “Henpecked fools,” her ex-husband would hiss. “A real man works, and a wife should set the table.”
In all their years together, Artyom had never brought home anything except a loaf of bread on his way from work. Nelly cooked every day. Soup, main course, sometimes baked goods. Her husband ate, pushed his plate away, and went into the room. No “thank you,” no “that was tasty.” He simply got up and left.
But on the very first evening Pavel brought dinner, he called from the car and asked, “Do you eat fish? I want to get salmon, but what if you don’t like it?” Nelly ended the call and stood in the hallway for a full minute with the phone in her hand. Because in all her years of marriage, no one had ever asked what she liked to eat.
Her fiancé took cutlery from the drawer. He knew where everything was. Spoons in the left drawer, forks in the right, napkins on the second shelf. He knew because he had dinner here every Saturday.
“There’s turkey with vegetables and cream soup,” Pavel said, opening the lids and serving portions.
Nelly sat down at the table across from Pavel. Steam rose above the plates. For some reason, only now, after Artyom had left, did she feel how tired she was of keeping a straight face. Not in front of her ex-husband.
In front of herself. For six months she had convinced herself that she didn’t care, that she had survived it, that there was no resentment or anger left. And that was true. But along with the resentment, something else had gone too. The feeling that someone needed her. Artyom had destroyed that feeling for years, and after he left, an emptiness remained in its place.
Pavel hadn’t tried to fix it. He came, brought dinner, talked, asked how her day had gone, told her about his. He didn’t teach her how to live and didn’t give advice. And gradually the empty place inside healed on its own, like a path that becomes overgrown when people stop walking on it.
Not because her ex-husband had seen Pavel. Not because of his red face and silent departure.
But because everything had fallen into place. Artyom had come to gloat, because in his picture of the world, Nelly was supposed to be lost without him. That was the only version of events in which his leaving looked right. If his ex-wife suffered, it meant he had been needed. If she did not suffer, it meant those eight years had meant nothing.
Nelly took a napkin and spread it over her lap.
“You know,” she said, “he came to make sure I was unhappy.”
“And did he?”
“I think he got his answer.”
Nelly picked up her spoon. An ordinary Saturday dinner. Warm food, candles on the table, flowers on the windowsill. And Pavel across from her.
Six months earlier, she had sat at this same table alone and couldn’t imagine that life could be like this. That you could stop being afraid of the doorbell. That you could stop flinching when you heard a familiar voice. That the person who had spent eight years repeating, “You’ll be lost without me,” could stand in your hallway and evoke nothing but mild surprise.
Nelly tasted the soup. It was delicious, thick, with mushrooms. Pavel ate across from her, silent and calm. Outside, darkness had fully fallen, and two silhouettes at the table were reflected in the dark glass.
Her fiancé raised his eyes and said:
“Sunshine, how about we go to the embankment tomorrow? They promised plus fifteen.”
Nelly smiled. Why not?
It was an ordinary evening. Soup, turkey, dessert later. Conversation about nothing, warm light in the kitchen, a bouquet in a vase. Nothing special. But that very day, finishing her soup and listening to Pavel talk about a new contract with a chain of cafés on Pokrovka, Nelly understood one thing.
Nelly hadn’t won and she hadn’t taken revenge. She hadn’t done anything on purpose at all. She simply lived her life. And her ex-husband came, saw that life, and left.
And that was better than any revenge.
As for Kristina, they say she left Artyom a month later. She rented a room from a friend, packed her things into two bags, and moved out without warning. Nelly heard it from Vera. She wasn’t surprised.
Artyom had not changed and had no intention of changing. He had surely said the same thing to Kristina: “You’ll be lost without me.” But Kristina was twenty-five. She still had time to figure things out.
Do you think Artyom will ever understand that the problem isn’t the women?