Now You’ll Dance!” Her Husband Blocked the Accounts. The Fun Ended When He Came Home
“Now you’ll dance!” her husband said, blocking the accounts. The merriment on the other end of the line thundered with the heavy bass of club music and the booming laughter of his friends. “You can sit there until tomorrow without buying anything. Gnaw on some crackers. Maybe you’ll get a little smarter.”
The cashier at the hypermarket tapped her fingernail meaningfully against the plastic of the card terminal. The red cross on the screen glowed humiliatingly bright.
“Miss, the payment didn’t go through. Should we put the items back?”
Anna silently dug two paper hundred-ruble notes out of the deep pocket of her coat. It was just enough for bread and a carton of ryazhenka. The farmer’s beef and cheeses she had come to buy especially for her husband’s dinner remained lying on the rubber conveyor belt.
When she stepped out into the evening frost, the woman stopped beneath a dim streetlamp. Twenty years of marriage had finally turned into a dead end, where even a loaf of bread was handed out according to the ruler’s mood. Many years earlier, Viktor had skillfully persuaded her to create a joint financial fund. At first, it had seemed like a wise decision. Gradually, without her noticing, that fund migrated to his personal phone number, while his wife was left with an additional nameless card. A real electronic collar. The length of the leash depended directly on how obedient she was.
The day before, she had been wiping the glass on the coffee table. Viktor’s synced tablet flashed brightly, showing a notification: payment confirmed for a beachfront bungalow, a resort for two. The travel dates matched perfectly with his upcoming difficult business trip. The second name on the boarding pass was Kristina, the new intern from the logistics department.
Viktor took her direct question about the booking as a personal insult. He sprang up from the sofa and hurled the television remote onto the parquet floor with force. The man furiously insisted that she was an ungrateful dependent, completely forgetting one inconvenient fact. This spacious three-room Moscow apartment had been inherited by Anna from her grandfather. Twenty years ago, Viktor himself had entered it with a worn travel backpack full of enormous ambitions and empty pockets. And now he alone decided how many grams of respect she deserved today.
The biting wind slashed at her face, but she did not feel the cold. Pity dissolved into sharp, saving anger.
When Anna got back to the apartment, the first thing she did was call a twenty-four-hour locksmith service. The locksmith arrived half an hour later, carefully checked the registration stamp in her passport, and took out his tools. Sharp metal shavings from the drilled-out lock cylinder scattered onto the doormat. The aggressive screech of the drill turned out to be the best therapy. The heavy mechanism gave in and fell out with a dull thud.
Three large checkered bags quickly swallowed her husband’s wardrobe. She did not handle his things with ceremony. Wrinkled designer shirts flew on top of expensive Oxfords. His heavy laptop landed beside them. At the very bottom of the closet lay a thick wool sweater she had knitted by hand for their first wedding anniversary. Her fingers froze for a fraction of a second above the familiar pattern. Then, with one sharp movement, Anna sent the sweater straight into the bucket with the potato peels. Throwing away the past turned out to be much easier than spending years breathing in its toxic smell.
The fun ended when he came home. He came home to a locked door—the locks had been changed while he was celebrating his own male superiority in a bar.
After hurriedly paying the locksmith with the last of her hidden reserves, the woman carried the heavy bags down to the first floor. The elderly concierge, who had been humiliated many times by Viktor’s lordly manners, was more than willing to hide the unwanted luggage in the service storage room.
Anna went back upstairs without even turning on the light. Outside the window, cars flickered by, slicing yellow headlight stripes across the ceiling. The apartment seemed incredibly spacious. No one demanded that she set the table, accused her of being in a bad mood, or threatened to shut off the financial tap.
At around half past eleven, the intercom on the hallway wall exploded with a hysterical crackle. The sound scraped against her nerves. Anna slowly approached the plastic panel.
He had rung the intercom. She answered, “The keys are with the concierge. So is the list of things I packed.”
“Anya, open up right now!” the speaker spat out her husband’s hoarse, slurring voice. “Why can’t I get my own key in? What kind of stupid games are these? The guys came up with me. Come on, set the table!”
A deep pause followed. The irony of the situation was overwhelming: the man who had promised her a hungry, lonely evening was now standing on the damp concrete himself, demanding care.
“Tomorrow I’m filing for divorce with the magistrate’s court,” the owner of the apartment said evenly. “This conversation is over. Don’t come here again. I’ll call the duty police unit immediately.”
“Open up this instant! I was wrong about the blocking—it was a bank error!” Viktor’s tone abruptly collapsed from aggression into a pathetic attempt at justification, then instantly flared back up. He slammed his fist against the iron entrance door. “Who needs you at your age anyway?! You’ll come running back to me yourself!”
The woman pulled the receiver away from her ear and, with one tug, yanked the device’s plug out of the wall socket. The dry click finally cut off twenty years of dictatorship.
He stood outside the entrance at ten o’clock in the evening with a suitcase of other people’s decisions. His own decisions caught up with him quickly. Throughout their entire life together, he had masterfully violated her personal boundaries, carefully regulating the supply of family oxygen. He enjoyed feeling like the permanent author of their destinies. But life’s roulette wheel had made a sudden and cruel turn.
Anna slid aside one section of the huge wardrobe. The massive rail, where her husband’s heavy jackets had always been crowded together, now left a clean empty space. That dark emptiness did not frighten her at all. On the contrary, it smelled of cleanliness and long-awaited peace. Unpleasant meetings with lawyers, division of accounts, and drawn-out arguments still lay ahead. But tonight she would fall asleep in the wide bed completely peacefully. Without someone else’s rules, imposed debts, or the familiar fear.