Solo on one key by Rinat. Solo on one key. Download the book “Solo on one key” for free by Rinat Valiullin

Dedicated to my father...

Valiullin R. R., 2015

© Anthology LLC, 2015

Part 1

My gaze rested on the TV that stood opposite. I tried the news, not finding anything new in it, switched to the sea, there was some movie playing where a couple was lounging on the beach:

– I love the south. In the south it was always easier with women: you don’t have to give fur coats, and the sea is nearby,” he lay next to a pretty woman, resting his elbow in the sand and looking at her through dark glasses.

“Yeah, tell me also that the product always has its face on,” she turned the beach over to the other side, exposing her face to the sun.

-Are you going far? – the girl stopped his hand, which was moving from the waist to her chest.

– No, to orgasm and back.

Intimacy at 11.00 seemed too early to me, I deprived the characters of their voices and moved my gaze higher. There was a painting by a contemporary artist hanging there, which I once bought in the gallery opposite, but not because of a great passion for art, I just wanted to hide an unevenness on the wall. As soon as I hung it, the wall really stopped being nervous, and I worked more calmly, however, with its appearance, metamorphoses began to occur in my life. I didn’t remember the artist’s name, but the title stuck out: “Yin and Yang. Pigeon mail" - a sky streaked with wires and two doves on one of the lines. These lines broke the heights into pieces of different colors. Of course, it was about communication between two people, via the Internet or telephone. The sky was like a quilt, a blanket woven from different pieces, with which I wanted to hide, in which I would not mind spending this morning.

I didn’t want to work, I stood up, stretched, made a few swings with my arms, but still didn’t take off. I went to the window. The sun was the most capricious of all domestic animals. Today it did not love us again, no matter how much we adored it. It didn't work out. It's windy, humid and nasty outside. Autumn - what an injustice: while you want to depend on your loved one, you depend on the weather.

Maxim turned up the volume of the film again and sat down in a chair. The movie didn’t touch me; it didn’t have enough passion for summer, or whims for relationships. From time to time, instead of the box, the gaze stopped at the painting. He realized that it was more pleasant for him to look at it than at the screen, although it might be less informative at first glance, because at the second there was something to think about. Pictures to inspire. Neither the TV nor his picture could inspire anything. And what can an artificial eye, which blinked an advertisement once again, inspire you to do, other than to suck out the remaining time and positive emotions, especially if they were covering events in the world that are driving you even further, into the thick of autumn.

I switched the program, the news was broadcast, and the television went back to black and white. Switched to canvas. The doves cooed.

I also wanted to coo. I called Katya.

- Coffee? – Katya asked, displacing loneliness from the space of my office.

- Katya, could you turn off the TV?

“Well, you’re too narrow, Maxim Solomonovich,” the white blouse, black jacket and pink skirt protested in unison.

“Why is the skirt pink?” – a dream of the same color flashed through me.

– Maybe I’m testing you in the role of a submissive wife? – I was still looking at her, entrenched in the chair.

“This doesn’t fit into any framework,” still looking at me with bewilderment, she took the remote control from the table, and the pupil went out.

- That's what I'm talking about the picture. Do you like her, Katya? I wanted to say, is there a difference where you look: at the TV or at the painting?

– I don’t watch TV at all. Box for old people.

- Seriously? – I felt behind the times. – Am I really that old? – I reloaded my jacket on my shoulders.

– Not yet, but keep looking there.

– I could bring coffee more often.

“Better look at the picture,” Katya knew that if the boss switched to “you,” it meant that either he was uncomfortable or he was angry.

“Well, what kind of modesty, I could have said - better look at me, Maxim. I would have watched then, maybe more often, maybe not only watched. Although this would be wrong: a man, if he really wants a woman, pays attention himself. Or have I become so lazy and boring?

– You’ll also have to turn it off from time to time. By the way, where is the remote control for it?

- From whom?

- From the picture.

Katya did not understand humor; it was beyond her feelings. “How often a sense of humor remains in the shadow of other feelings while it is a source of oxygen for the mood. A sense of humor is the very savior that prevents self-esteem from conquering your entire inner world,” I wanted to read a moral to Katya, but I restrained myself. Perhaps the only thing that united us was attacks of modesty, when words stumble, afraid to come out, and get stuck in the throat. I rarely gave compliments, so as not to embarrass or seduce. She smiled forcefully:

– Maybe I should really make some coffee for you, Maxim Solomonovich?

- What, he’s not ready yet? And it looks like such a serious drink.

- As always? – Katya asked automatically, knowing full well that if there was no sun, then it could be replaced by three spoons of sugar instead of the usual two.

“I would really like it more than ever, “but not with you, Katya,” I added to myself.

Soon the aroma of coffee rubbed gently against my cheek.

In everyone’s life there are periods of storytelling when the atmosphere is dense with the prose of life, without any dialogue around. That is, there are a lot of people, but there is no dialogue, because everyone brings their own, brings their own words: “Let them lie there, you have no one and it’s free now anyway, I’ll take it later if necessary.” You don't need a case. You need something else, another, others, a few remarks, proposals, letters... Constant, warming, encouraging, yours.

I've been in this menopause for quite some time. Prose, prose, prose, like black soil. You can grow potatoes, but you want to cultivate a vineyard. However, he is capricious, he needs depressions, hills, valleys if it is about the body, climate - if it is about the soul, relief - if it is about the mind.

* * *

Yin: Today all day long there was a need to sit on your lap and snuggle up to the stubble file. From the very morning I simply need a bed from your meaty embrace, I want to dive there, kill with kisses the pallor of my lips and the grayness of everyday life. I know that of the evils of relationships, the most harmful: addiction - to be, a drug - together. I sat down shamelessly, what are my knees? I’m turned inside out, and I’m trembling, carelessly covered with my hand, when memory itself presses with anticipation. My memory card is full of our kisses.

Yan: You see, they are pushing the boundaries. Norms, frameworks are what makes us normal, but there is one “but”: if I am normal, you will quickly get bored of me.

Yin: You’re right: on the one hand, I really want madness, on the other – comfort.

Yan: Who are you with now?

Yin: I'm on a break. I'm drinking tea. And then to the side.

Yan: Just don't do anything stupid with just anyone. I'm already on my way to you, my love.

Yin: Are you still at work?

Yan: Yes.

Yin: I thought you had already left. When will you be free?

Yan: I think I’ll go soon. And what?

Yin: If you pass by, call. Maybe we'll get married.

Yan: Is there a reason?

Yin: Yes, I have duck in the oven.

Yan: Be careful not to oversalt it. So that it doesn't turn out like last time.

Yin: How was it last time?

Yan: I kissed her lips and neck while she cried, so sensitive that any nonsense was ready to ruin her mood. After the tears there was usually sex. She knew this, and I knew, continuing to console her, eating her skin with kisses, not understanding why it was so salty.

Yin: Great! Especially the last sentence. Don't even hope this time it won't rain.

Yan: Then I won’t take the umbrella! You are my button.

Yin: Nuclear?

Yan: Dual-core.

Yin: That’s what I feel: I’ve been going crazy lately. I'm going crazy.

Yan: Wait, I'll go with you.

* * *

Three nights, and the city is becoming quieter and quieter, like a tired huge animal. He feeds on the revelry couples of Nevsky, the night hunt is coming to an end, there is less and less game in his reinforced concrete fangs, and the proverb bleeds: dinosaurs are not born - they are made. The beast slowly falls asleep. His powerful body was washed away from the roads by vehicles. There are noticeably fewer couples, more and more lonely travelers with beer in their hands, that’s all the romance of the night, on the banks of the Neva, licked with marble lips. I drove home to the sound of yellow traffic lights that flickered at intersections with their indifference to traffic rules. I, too, could fall asleep and become a prehistoric fossil, but thoughts, damn them, as if the thirst for nightlife does not allow even my third eye to close, I am degrading, this is evolution, I feel a dinosaur inside me, like a city in the night, me too I don't get enough sleep. I turned off the engine, took a bottle of beer out of my bag, and the moon swung like a lonely lamp at me. In front of the house there was a park cut diagonally by asphalt. I found a vantage point, watching through the windshield as a woman walked along the path. A woman is like a woman. I had to look somewhere. Suddenly, two shadows caught up with her, tore the bag out of the ladies’ wardrobe and rushed towards me.

"Coward!" – Honor quietly responded to me.

The woman screamed, cash numbers flashed through her head after the fright, thoughts that she would now have to call the banks and block the cards, that it was good that there was little cash, that yesterday she managed to pay her rent and school for her son. I took a sip as if that would stop them. He grabbed the door handle to open the door and rush towards the evil. But then he stopped. I was given someone else's bag, with someone else's funds: I had no desire to throw beer and rush across them. It’s good that the beer managed to cool my mind: firstly, everyone is alive, and secondly, I didn’t want to fight and die for someone else’s money. "Coward!" - Honor quietly screamed in me. I just honked the horn at the criminals and blinked my headlights. They got scared, threw a piece of leather and disappeared. “Not bad, this was that rare case when light defeated darkness,” I felt like a superhero, straightened up, finished my beer and closed my eyes in pleasure. There were no kisses, there was not even applause. The frightened woman picked up hers and hurried away. I looked after her for a long time until her excited body fell into the darkness of houses and apartments, where she was soon dialing her friend’s number, excitedly talking about the incident and checking the contents of her purse, counting the bills and happily finding credit cards among the discount cards: the trump cards remained in her hands .

I should have gone home too, but I didn’t want to. The street turned out to be the very place where it was now free, calm and warm. And at home, on tiptoe, you will have to look for parking for your ass and fall asleep to the grumbling of your wife. I hate tiptoeing around my house, where every rustle cuts into your consciousness, as if a piece of plaster is falling off your personal self. And now, like a skeleton, silently rising from the grave of the night, you must do all your work in the dark in order to lie back down. She will turn away from me as usual, I will try to hug my wife from behind and talk nonsense. I didn’t like it when she didn’t understand me, I didn’t want to explain to her why it took me so long to get to the house, it would have been a waste of time, although I began to mentally do this, usually while going up in the elevator. I looked at myself, guilt appearing on my face. “You look tired,” I read in the reflection. - I know it's not your fault. Lucky?" “He was like that, what about him, about the sight,” I tried to smile at my reflection, “now you can’t say, it’s unlikely that anyone anywhere will ever be able to sincerely love me.”

I couldn’t find a place near the front door, so I parked in front of the house, across the road. Opening the door, I got out of the car and clicked the alarm. After the gender ones, the time has come for political thoughts: in essence, our system has remained slave-owning, woven from profit and lust, industry and women. “You are a sexy machine,” I remembered my wife again. “If I were a mechanic, I would change some parts.” I didn’t accept another challenge from her. The pedestrian crossing constantly insisted that it was allowed and literally right there that it was completed. He tweeted in a high voice in the night, hoisting his tricolor over the small island state of pedestrians, I felt a little uneasy, I don’t know what tormented me. Apparently, the malaise that I didn’t get enough of something today or in this life in general. The transition from youth to adulthood has just been resolved, and is now complete. It’s like I didn’t have time. And now I’m a grown man, sitting with a bottle of beer on a bench, absolutely alone. Instead of the sun there is a lantern. I look at the float of my meaning in life, but it doesn’t move, no matter how much you feed the goldfish. Even the roach doesn’t take it. It’s a pity, a roach wouldn’t hurt now. And it’s not a matter of bait; they’ve acquired a lot, quite enough for a worthy youth for their descendants. Speaking of my old age, I looked carefully at the ground, there a lonely night ant was rushing about in search of beer caps and swag. “As I understand you, it’s difficult to quit both at the same time.” I quit smoking and started drinking. Not in a global sense, but in a momentary sense. He put out his cigarette and took out another bottle of beer.

Marina returned home, the thought “When will you come?” was obsessively spinning in her head, which she let go of far away after the second rejected call, with a cat at her feet: “I agree, he loves you more, but you’re not there yet.” “I didn’t wait for you,” the schnitzel calmed down in Marina’s stomach. She stuck a glass, half empty, into the table: “You can call me a pessimist, but the glass contains wine, not plain water.” She sat down at the computer as if it were a wall behind which she felt good, behind which she could sigh calmly, scratch her pubic area with the keyboard, thereby teasing passers-by on her personal page. “You know what I would call you - comfort,” she felt uncomfortable without her husband. “I hope that you remember, we were going to the dacha for honey mushrooms this weekend,” she got up and walked around the living room.

She pressed herself against the glass of the night, her forehead feeling the coolness of the window, which, apparently, was going to spend the rest of the evening with her. There’s a phone in your hand, heavy earrings of long beeps in your ears. Isn't this a reason to make yourself some tea? The tea was boring, monotonous, baked, porcelain.

* * *

- Where have you been?

“Where have you been, where have you been, where have you been, the CDs of your questioning eyes are playing the same song, you want to control my slipping steps, each of which is not even known to me. Why do you need it? You abandoned your life for this, look, it’s dying without attention, you’re not the only one who’s lonely,” I silently looked at my wife. She was in her repertoire, in her wardrobe. The only thing that brought us closer now was that she was also a little out of her mind.

- Where have you been?

“Let me get out of my coat, take off my shoes, pants, pour in the warmth of the kitchen, along with tea, since yours is not there, and then ask.”

- Where have you been? – for the third time my legal wife took the lead.

“Where I am already empty, completely absent. Where have I been? Who was I with? With one of the people passing by, with the city, with the sky, with the street, with beer, if you insist, I’ll tell you, just turn down the music of your boring record,” I remembered the same disc that is inserted into the lower lip of African women Mursi tribe. Even if this disc is already platinum, and a million sales have been made. Put your control shot on safety, I see that you were crazy here alone. Some people go crazy when they are alone, only to continue it together, nervously and dullly. Are we really one of those people too?

– You don’t have to answer. “You shouldn’t have come,” my wife waved her hand at me.

- I could, but I have a problem. Who else can I turn to with her if not you?

“I noticed this as soon as we got married. What's the problem now?

“I began to feel you too subtly.” Thinner than your summer dress falling off your shoulders. I know the dress doesn’t have a back, but it knows how to sit, just as well, exactly where I would prefer to lie,” I picked her up and kissed her chest. I swayed and we almost fell right in the corridor. It's good that there are walls. They held this couple, this house, this marriage.

- You are drunk? – my wife freed herself from my clutches.

– I guess I don’t know.

-You smell like beer.

- So what? Don't take this as vulgarity, but she touched the truth.

“Morality, like a cold governess, will guard my curiosity until you throw her a dress as bait, only then will it evaporate.”

- Three o'clock in the morning, it could be easier.

- Fine. Perhaps we are not destined to die one day, nursing loud-mouthed children in a spacious house. Today I am ready to serve as your shadow: languid, ruthless and dangerous: I will light a fire right on your heart from damp anxieties and pink coquetry.

- Looks like a declaration of love. How long have you been carrying this around?

– No, a week ago it stuck after the presentation of another book. Well, you remember.

“I remember when they brought you unconscious.”

- No, I had feelings.

– I think there was more alcohol. It's good that you didn't see how angry I was.

- Yes, it’s a pity... that I didn’t see it. I love it when you're angry, so sexy.

– Did you drink much then?

- No, not really, but when I vomited, I thought: had I really already drunk my share in this life and no longer got into me, when I looked, I no longer liked anything, my body refused to explore life through your cuts, when I fell out of love, I thought, is it really possible in this life that I could hate someone so much? I was sober, and you were pulling on your tights,” I began to compose as I went, giving my movements an even more drunken tone.

“Go to the bathroom and sleep,” my wife commanded.

- How is your mom? - I remembered that I had a mother-in-law in my house.

- I hope he doesn’t hear.

We slept exactly according to my scenario.

* * *

Yin: I know that any girl is like a bottle of wine for you: you gulped it down, burped with a kiss, wiped your lips with the words “I’ll call you” and moved on. But I am not a disposable swill, I am an intoxicating nectar, but for you it will remain non-alcoholic if you do not appear in the next half hour.

Yan: In the morning I was offered news, but I refused, someone will say: “Fool,” someone who doesn’t know what I did yesterday and with whom, most likely, I’m a supporter of evening news, although it’s hard to even consider them news, I I would call it a chronicle, and I would call myself a chronic alcoholic of the very woman whom I received every evening as a divine gift.

Yin: What's the news? I know her?

Yan: I think you're starting to get jealous?

Yin: Ran away. This is not jealousy, this is curiosity.

Yan: There is no reason, I would even say, a leash. Briefly speaking. Come, we'll watch movies and kiss.

Yin: Yes, I completely forgot, what will you do if I leave tomorrow?

Yan: Where?

Yin: To mom.

Yan: I'll miss you.

Yin: What else?

Yan: Drink, smoke, work.

Yin: And also.

Yan: I really miss you.

Yin: And then?

Yan: And then you will be bored.

* * *

The steel needle slid along the green cloth, trying to cover the distance between people in a shorter way, in order to sew those who set off to those greeting them as quickly as possible. Boredom drives humanity. People still continue to get bored, moving towards each other. She was going to her mother. It was a two-day trip, but Marina never felt sorry for these vacation days, since she lived them in such pleasant peace, meditating on the wide fields outside the window, in long tea parties in villages smoking with samovars. Moreover, there was no airport in her hometown, and she would have to fly first to Nizhnekamsk, and then to Yelabuga by train or bus with full packages of hotels. Following tradition, she could not return home empty-handed. With an empty heart, yes, but never without gifts. Although the mother, touching and arranging them in cabinets, all the time deliberately grumbled: “Why are you spending so much money, we also have all this.”

Marina liked to fly along the iron ski track, pushing off with the poles of the concrete pillars flashing outside the window, then slowing down to Nordic walking, then speeding up, switching to skating. She was amused that, as if obeying the speed of the train, her thoughts also switched from galloping to jogging and vice versa. The road echoed in her head with glued pieces of canvas, as if these were some small insignificant inconsistencies that occur from time to time in her life.

In the morning there were two of them in the compartment when another woman sat down next to her. Middle age, average build, average attractiveness, but highly talkative. It seemed that her speech was competing in speed with the train, which was also awarded the title of fast. The ladies had already managed to get acquainted and even poured a couple of glasses of transparent conversation, glass holders cut into iron logic, which they held on to, every now and then lifting them to part their lips and take a sip, but then they put them back on the table, not daring to open completely. The middle-aged woman who so elegantly laid her slender figure on the seat opposite was a perfumer:

- Just don’t be offended by me if I stick my nose into things that aren’t my business, this is professional. The nose is my instrument, I use it to feel people. I can't stand lies. I know almost everything about those with whom I communicate or am simply nearby. Can you imagine how hard it is for me to discuss what you can talk about with a person when you know what he ate for lunch or drank for dinner. Would you like me to tell you what you had for breakfast?

“No, I still remember,” Marina remembered about the egg, tea and oatmeal cookies. All this time, the neighbor was spinning a balloon in her hands, and it was growing before our eyes. It soon seemed that there were already three of them in the compartment.

– Your work is interesting. “You know everything about everyone,” Marina tried to be hospitable.

– Yes, it’s not always to your advantage. Yes, and harmful. The liver is no good anymore. Here,” she finally inflated the balloon, on which it was written: “People, love each other,” she tied it with a ribbon so that it would not turn sour. - This is love. She is like a balloon: big, weightless and attractive. One has only to pick it up and immediately become a person without age, without principles and without restrictions. Take it,” she handed the ball to Marina.

Current page: 1 (book has 23 pages total) [available reading passage: 6 pages]

Rinat Valiullin
Solo on one key

Dedicated to my father...

Valiullin R. R., 2015

© Anthology LLC, 2015

Part 1

My gaze rested on the TV that stood opposite. I tried the news, not finding anything new in it, switched to the sea, there was some movie playing where a couple was lounging on the beach:

– I love the south. In the south it was always easier with women: you don’t have to give fur coats, and the sea is nearby,” he lay next to a pretty woman, resting his elbow in the sand and looking at her through dark glasses.

“Yeah, tell me also that the product always has its face on,” she turned the beach over to the other side, exposing her face to the sun.

-Are you going far? – the girl stopped his hand, which was moving from the waist to her chest.

– No, to orgasm and back.

Intimacy at 11.00 seemed too early to me, I deprived the characters of their voices and moved my gaze higher. There was a painting by a contemporary artist hanging there, which I once bought in the gallery opposite, but not because of a great passion for art, I just wanted to hide an unevenness on the wall. As soon as I hung it, the wall really stopped being nervous, and I worked more calmly, however, with its appearance, metamorphoses began to occur in my life. I didn’t remember the artist’s name, but the title stuck out: “Yin and Yang. Pigeon mail" - a sky streaked with wires and two doves on one of the lines. These lines broke the heights into pieces of different colors. Of course, it was about communication between two people, via the Internet or telephone. The sky was like a quilt, a blanket woven from different pieces, with which I wanted to hide, in which I would not mind spending this morning.

I didn’t want to work, I stood up, stretched, made a few swings with my arms, but still didn’t take off. I went to the window. The sun was the most capricious of all domestic animals. Today it did not love us again, no matter how much we adored it. It didn't work out. It's windy, humid and nasty outside. Autumn - what an injustice: while you want to depend on your loved one, you depend on the weather.

Maxim turned up the volume of the film again and sat down in a chair. The movie didn’t touch me; it didn’t have enough passion for summer, or whims for relationships. From time to time, instead of the box, the gaze stopped at the painting. He realized that it was more pleasant for him to look at it than at the screen, although it might be less informative at first glance, because at the second there was something to think about. Pictures to inspire. Neither the TV nor his picture could inspire anything. And what can an artificial eye, which blinked an advertisement once again, inspire you to do, other than to suck out the remaining time and positive emotions, especially if they were covering events in the world that are driving you even further, into the thick of autumn.

I switched the program, the news was broadcast, and the television went back to black and white. Switched to canvas. The doves cooed.

I also wanted to coo. I called Katya.

- Coffee? – Katya asked, displacing loneliness from the space of my office.

- Katya, could you turn off the TV?

“Well, you’re too narrow, Maxim Solomonovich,” the white blouse, black jacket and pink skirt protested in unison. “Why is the skirt pink?” – a dream of the same color flashed through me.

– Maybe I’m testing you in the role of a submissive wife? – I was still looking at her, entrenched in the chair.

“This doesn’t fit into any framework,” still looking at me with bewilderment, she took the remote control from the table, and the pupil went out.

- That's what I'm talking about the picture. Do you like her, Katya? I wanted to say, is there a difference where you look: at the TV or at the painting?

– I don’t watch TV at all. Box for old people.

- Seriously? – I felt behind the times. – Am I really that old? – I reloaded my jacket on my shoulders.

– Not yet, but keep looking there.

– I could bring coffee more often.

“Better look at the picture,” Katya knew that if the boss switched to “you,” it meant that either he was uncomfortable or he was angry.

“Well, what kind of modesty, I could have said - better look at me, Maxim. I would have watched then, maybe more often, maybe not only watched. Although this would be wrong: a man, if he really wants a woman, pays attention himself. Or have I become so lazy and boring?

– You’ll also have to turn it off from time to time. By the way, where is the remote control for it?

- From whom?

- From the picture.

Katya did not understand humor; it was beyond her feelings. “How often a sense of humor remains in the shadow of other feelings while it is a source of oxygen for the mood. A sense of humor is the very savior that prevents self-esteem from conquering your entire inner world,” I wanted to read a moral to Katya, but I restrained myself. Perhaps the only thing that united us was attacks of modesty, when words stumble, afraid to come out, and get stuck in the throat. I rarely gave compliments, so as not to embarrass or seduce. She smiled forcefully:

– Maybe I should really make some coffee for you, Maxim Solomonovich?

- What, he’s not ready yet? And it looks like such a serious drink.

- As always? – Katya asked automatically, knowing full well that if there was no sun, then it could be replaced by three spoons of sugar instead of the usual two.

“I would really like it more than ever, “but not with you, Katya,” I added to myself.

Soon the aroma of coffee rubbed gently against my cheek.

In everyone’s life there are periods of storytelling when the atmosphere is dense with the prose of life, without any dialogue around. That is, there are a lot of people, but there is no dialogue, because everyone brings their own, brings their own words: “Let them lie there, you have no one and it’s free now anyway, I’ll take it later if necessary.” You don't need a case. You need something else, another, others, a few remarks, proposals, letters... Constant, warming, encouraging, yours.

I've been in this menopause for quite some time. Prose, prose, prose, like black soil. You can grow potatoes, but you want to cultivate a vineyard. However, he is capricious, he needs depressions, hills, valleys if it is about the body, climate - if it is about the soul, relief - if it is about the mind.

* * *

Yin: Today all day long there was a need to sit on your lap and snuggle up to the stubble file. From the very morning I simply need a bed from your meaty embrace, I want to dive there, kill with kisses the pallor of my lips and the grayness of everyday life. I know that of the evils of relationships, the most harmful: addiction - to be, a drug - together. I sat down shamelessly, what are my knees? I’m turned inside out, and I’m trembling, carelessly covered with my hand, when memory itself presses with anticipation. My memory card is full of our kisses.

Yan: You see, they are pushing the boundaries. Norms, frameworks are what makes us normal, but there is one “but”: if I am normal, you will quickly get bored of me.

Yin: You’re right: on the one hand, I really want madness, on the other – comfort.

Yan: Who are you with now?

Yin: I'm on a break. I'm drinking tea. And then to the side.

Yan: Just don't do anything stupid with just anyone. I'm already on my way to you, my love.

Yin: Are you still at work?

Yan: Yes.

Yin: I thought you had already left. When will you be free?

Yan: I think I’ll go soon. And what?

Yin: If you pass by, call. Maybe we'll get married.

Yan: Is there a reason?

Yin: Yes, I have duck in the oven.

Yan: Be careful not to oversalt it. So that it doesn't turn out like last time.

Yin: How was it last time?

Yan: I kissed her lips and neck while she cried, so sensitive that any nonsense was ready to ruin her mood. After the tears there was usually sex. She knew this, and I knew, continuing to console her, eating her skin with kisses, not understanding why it was so salty.

Yin: Great! Especially the last sentence. Don't even hope this time it won't rain.

Yan: Then I won’t take the umbrella! You are my button.

Yin: Nuclear?

Yan: Dual-core.

Yin: That’s what I feel: I’ve been going crazy lately. I'm going crazy.

Yan: Wait, I'll go with you.

* * *

Three nights, and the city is becoming quieter and quieter, like a tired huge animal. He feeds on the revelry couples of Nevsky, the night hunt is coming to an end, there is less and less game in his reinforced concrete fangs, and the proverb bleeds: dinosaurs are not born - they are made. The beast slowly falls asleep. His powerful body was washed away from the roads by vehicles. There are noticeably fewer couples, more and more lonely travelers with beer in their hands, that’s all the romance of the night, on the banks of the Neva, licked with marble lips. I drove home to the sound of yellow traffic lights that flickered at intersections with their indifference to traffic rules. I, too, could fall asleep and become a prehistoric fossil, but thoughts, damn them, as if the thirst for nightlife does not allow even my third eye to close, I am degrading, this is evolution, I feel a dinosaur inside me, like a city in the night, me too I don't get enough sleep. I turned off the engine, took a bottle of beer out of my bag, and the moon swung like a lonely lamp at me. In front of the house there was a park cut diagonally by asphalt. I found a vantage point, watching through the windshield as a woman walked along the path. A woman is like a woman. I had to look somewhere. Suddenly, two shadows caught up with her, tore the bag out of the ladies’ wardrobe and rushed towards me.

"Coward!" – Honor quietly responded to me.

The woman screamed, cash numbers flashed through her head after the fright, thoughts that she would now have to call the banks and block the cards, that it was good that there was little cash, that yesterday she managed to pay her rent and school for her son. I took a sip as if that would stop them. He grabbed the door handle to open the door and rush towards the evil. But then he stopped. I was given someone else's bag, with someone else's funds: I had no desire to throw beer and rush across them. It’s good that the beer managed to cool my mind: firstly, everyone is alive, and secondly, I didn’t want to fight and die for someone else’s money. "Coward!" - Honor quietly screamed in me. I just honked the horn at the criminals and blinked my headlights. They got scared, threw a piece of leather and disappeared. “Not bad, this was that rare case when light defeated darkness,” I felt like a superhero, straightened up, finished my beer and closed my eyes in pleasure. There were no kisses, there was not even applause. The frightened woman picked up hers and hurried away. I looked after her for a long time until her excited body fell into the darkness of houses and apartments, where she was soon dialing her friend’s number, excitedly talking about the incident and checking the contents of her purse, counting the bills and happily finding credit cards among the discount cards: the trump cards remained in her hands .

I should have gone home too, but I didn’t want to. The street turned out to be the very place where it was now free, calm and warm. And at home, on tiptoe, you will have to look for parking for your ass and fall asleep to the grumbling of your wife. I hate tiptoeing around my house, where every rustle cuts into your consciousness, as if a piece of plaster is falling off your personal self. And now, like a skeleton, silently rising from the grave of the night, you must do all your work in the dark in order to lie back down. She will turn away from me as usual, I will try to hug my wife from behind and talk nonsense. I didn’t like it when she didn’t understand me, I didn’t want to explain to her why it took me so long to get to the house, it would have been a waste of time, although I began to mentally do this, usually while going up in the elevator. I looked at myself, guilt appearing on my face. “You look tired,” I read in the reflection. - I know it's not your fault. Lucky?" “He was like that, what about him, about the sight,” I tried to smile at my reflection, “now you can’t say, it’s unlikely that anyone anywhere will ever be able to sincerely love me.”

I couldn’t find a place near the front door, so I parked in front of the house, across the road. Opening the door, I got out of the car and clicked the alarm. After the gender ones, the time has come for political thoughts: in essence, our system has remained slave-owning, woven from profit and lust, industry and women. “You are a sexy machine,” I remembered my wife again. “If I were a mechanic, I would change some parts.” I didn’t accept another challenge from her. The pedestrian crossing constantly insisted that it was allowed and literally right there that it was completed. He tweeted in a high voice in the night, hoisting his tricolor over the small island state of pedestrians, I felt a little uneasy, I don’t know what tormented me. Apparently, the malaise that I didn’t get enough of something today or in this life in general. The transition from youth to adulthood has just been resolved, and is now complete. It’s like I didn’t have time. And now I’m a grown man, sitting with a bottle of beer on a bench, absolutely alone. Instead of the sun there is a lantern. I look at the float of my meaning in life, but it doesn’t move, no matter how much you feed the goldfish. Even the roach doesn’t take it. It’s a pity, a roach wouldn’t hurt now. And it’s not a matter of bait; they’ve acquired a lot, quite enough for a worthy youth for their descendants. Speaking of my old age, I looked carefully at the ground, there a lonely night ant was rushing about in search of beer caps and swag. “As I understand you, it’s difficult to quit both at the same time.” I quit smoking and started drinking. Not in a global sense, but in a momentary sense. He put out his cigarette and took out another bottle of beer.

Marina returned home, the thought “When will you come?” was obsessively spinning in her head, which she let go of far away after the second rejected call, with a cat at her feet: “I agree, he loves you more, but you’re not there yet.” “I didn’t wait for you,” the schnitzel calmed down in Marina’s stomach. She stuck a glass, half empty, into the table: “You can call me a pessimist, but the glass contains wine, not plain water.” She sat down at the computer as if it were a wall behind which she felt good, behind which she could sigh calmly, scratch her pubic area with the keyboard, thereby teasing passers-by on her personal page. “You know what I would call you - comfort,” she felt uncomfortable without her husband. “I hope that you remember, we were going to the dacha for honey mushrooms this weekend,” she got up and walked around the living room.

She pressed herself against the glass of the night, her forehead feeling the coolness of the window, which, apparently, was going to spend the rest of the evening with her. There’s a phone in your hand, heavy earrings of long beeps in your ears. Isn't this a reason to make yourself some tea? The tea was boring, monotonous, baked, porcelain.

* * *

- Where have you been?

“Where have you been, where have you been, where have you been, the CDs of your questioning eyes are playing the same song, you want to control my slipping steps, each of which is not even known to me. Why do you need it? You abandoned your life for this, look, it’s dying without attention, you’re not the only one who’s lonely,” I silently looked at my wife. She was in her repertoire, in her wardrobe. The only thing that brought us closer now was that she was also a little out of her mind.

- Where have you been?

“Let me get out of my coat, take off my shoes, pants, pour in the warmth of the kitchen, along with tea, since yours is not there, and then ask.”

- Where have you been? – for the third time my legal wife took the lead.

“Where I am already empty, completely absent. Where have I been? Who was I with? With one of the people passing by, with the city, with the sky, with the street, with beer, if you insist, I’ll tell you, just turn down the music of your boring record,” I remembered the same disc that is inserted into the lower lip of African women Mursi tribe. Even if this disc is already platinum, and a million sales have been made. Put your control shot on safety, I see that you were crazy here alone. Some people go crazy when they are alone, only to continue it together, nervously and dullly. Are we really one of those people too?

– You don’t have to answer. “You shouldn’t have come,” my wife waved her hand at me.

- I could, but I have a problem. Who else can I turn to with her if not you?

“I noticed this as soon as we got married. What's the problem now?

“I began to feel you too subtly.” Thinner than your summer dress falling off your shoulders. I know the dress doesn’t have a back, but it knows how to sit, just as well, exactly where I would prefer to lie,” I picked her up and kissed her chest. I swayed and we almost fell right in the corridor. It's good that there are walls. They held this couple, this house, this marriage.

- You are drunk? – my wife freed herself from my clutches.

– I guess I don’t know.

-You smell like beer.

- So what? Don't take this as vulgarity, but she touched the truth.

“Morality, like a cold governess, will guard my curiosity until you throw her a dress as bait, only then will it evaporate.”

- Three o'clock in the morning, it could be easier.

- Fine. Perhaps we are not destined to die one day, nursing loud-mouthed children in a spacious house. Today I am ready to serve as your shadow: languid, ruthless and dangerous: I will light a fire right on your heart from damp anxieties and pink coquetry.

- Looks like a declaration of love. How long have you been carrying this around?

– No, a week ago it stuck after the presentation of another book. Well, you remember.

“I remember when they brought you unconscious.”

- No, I had feelings.

– I think there was more alcohol. It's good that you didn't see how angry I was.

- Yes, it’s a pity... that I didn’t see it. I love it when you're angry, so sexy.

– Did you drink much then?

- No, not really, but when I vomited, I thought: had I really already drunk my share in this life and no longer got into me, when I looked, I no longer liked anything, my body refused to explore life through your cuts, when I fell out of love, I thought, is it really possible in this life that I could hate someone so much? I was sober, and you were pulling on your tights,” I began to compose as I went, giving my movements an even more drunken tone.

“Go to the bathroom and sleep,” my wife commanded.

- How is your mom? - I remembered that I had a mother-in-law in my house.

- I hope he doesn’t hear.

We slept exactly according to my scenario.

* * *

Yin: I know that any girl is like a bottle of wine for you: you gulped it down, burped with a kiss, wiped your lips with the words “I’ll call you” and moved on. But I am not a disposable swill, I am an intoxicating nectar, but for you it will remain non-alcoholic if you do not appear in the next half hour.

Yan: In the morning I was offered news, but I refused, someone will say: “Fool,” someone who doesn’t know what I did yesterday and with whom, most likely, I’m a supporter of evening news, although it’s hard to even consider them news, I I would call it a chronicle, and I would call myself a chronic alcoholic of the very woman whom I received every evening as a divine gift.

Yin: What's the news? I know her?

Yan: I think you're starting to get jealous?

Yin: Ran away. This is not jealousy, this is curiosity.

Yan: There is no reason, I would even say, a leash. Briefly speaking. Come, we'll watch movies and kiss.

Yin: Yes, I completely forgot, what will you do if I leave tomorrow?

Yan: Where?

Yin: To mom.

Yan: I'll miss you.

Yin: What else?

Yan: Drink, smoke, work.

Yin: And also.

Yan: I really miss you.

Yin: And then?

Yan: And then you will be bored.

* * *

The steel needle slid along the green cloth, trying to cover the distance between people in a shorter way, in order to sew those who set off to those greeting them as quickly as possible. Boredom drives humanity. People still continue to get bored, moving towards each other. She was going to her mother. It was a two-day trip, but Marina never felt sorry for these vacation days, since she lived them in such pleasant peace, meditating on the wide fields outside the window, in long tea parties in villages smoking with samovars. Moreover, there was no airport in her hometown, and she would have to fly first to Nizhnekamsk, and then to Yelabuga by train or bus with full packages of hotels. Following tradition, she could not return home empty-handed. With an empty heart, yes, but never without gifts. Although the mother, touching and arranging them in cabinets, all the time deliberately grumbled: “Why are you spending so much money, we also have all this.”

Marina liked to fly along the iron ski track, pushing off with the poles of the concrete pillars flashing outside the window, then slowing down to Nordic walking, then speeding up, switching to skating. She was amused that, as if obeying the speed of the train, her thoughts also switched from galloping to jogging and vice versa. The road echoed in her head with glued pieces of canvas, as if these were some small insignificant inconsistencies that occur from time to time in her life.

In the morning there were two of them in the compartment when another woman sat down next to her. Middle age, average build, average attractiveness, but highly talkative. It seemed that her speech was competing in speed with the train, which was also awarded the title of fast. The ladies had already managed to get acquainted and even poured a couple of glasses of transparent conversation, glass holders cut into iron logic, which they held on to, every now and then lifting them to part their lips and take a sip, but then they put them back on the table, not daring to open completely. The middle-aged woman who so elegantly laid her slender figure on the seat opposite was a perfumer:

- Just don’t be offended by me if I stick my nose into things that aren’t my business, this is professional. The nose is my instrument, I use it to feel people. I can't stand lies. I know almost everything about those with whom I communicate or am simply nearby. Can you imagine how hard it is for me to discuss what you can talk about with a person when you know what he ate for lunch or drank for dinner. Would you like me to tell you what you had for breakfast?

“No, I still remember,” Marina remembered about the egg, tea and oatmeal cookies. All this time, the neighbor was spinning a balloon in her hands, and it was growing before our eyes. It soon seemed that there were already three of them in the compartment.

– Your work is interesting. “You know everything about everyone,” Marina tried to be hospitable.

– Yes, it’s not always to your advantage. Yes, and harmful. The liver is no good anymore. Here,” she finally inflated the balloon, on which it was written: “People, love each other,” she tied it with a ribbon so that it would not turn sour. - This is love. She is like a balloon: big, weightless and attractive. One has only to pick it up and immediately become a person without age, without principles and without restrictions. Take it,” she handed the ball to Marina.

“Lucky with your neighbor,” Marina thought to herself, but out loud, hugging the pink ball and placing her face on it, she sent another phrase: “How inexplicably pleasant and fragile she is.”

“Yeah, it’s immense,” the neighbor confirmed.

“Now it will definitely burst, like mine once burst,” Marina continued to think.

“Judging by the beginning, this Saturday did not promise anything good. How I love those who don’t have the habit of promising something,” Marina was still hugging the pink bubble.

“Saturday is good if there is someone to take shelter and continue to sleep,” as if the stranger was reading her thoughts.

– Yes, all that remains is to enjoy and take care of it.

– Saturday or love? – the woman laughed quietly.

“Toma,” the perfumer left a trail of awkward pause behind her, but immediately added another, pressing the scarlet bottle of her lips, from which the words burst out in rapid succession: “Oh, that’s what I remembered about love.” Today I received an SMS from a friend: “I met such a young man on the Internet! You can not even imagine". I told her: “Well, describe it in at least two words.” She told me: “I fell in love.” I told her: “What about three?” “Well, in general, the sky is overcast with excitement, clouds of hope are floating with the flow, the coffee is hot, time is running out, dreams are illusory. Tomorrow I'm going to the cinema. I hope for clarification in my personal life on Sunday,” Toma said so quickly, as if she was participating in a speed talk competition. The words crackled in the firebox of her lips, all you had to do was add firewood. At the same time, her eyebrows gesticulated so emotionally that it seemed as if it was a running line, exactly repeating her heated speech.

- Tom, do you mind if I open the door? – Marina still couldn’t choose how to behave. A slight atmosphere of schizophrenia filled the compartment. I wanted to ventilate a little.

- No, the main thing for me is not to catch a cold. A runny nose is my professional incompetence. And smoking too, although I sometimes sin. But rarely. On weekends. Today and tomorrow I will smoke. Tomorrow is Sunday? – She looked at Marina seriously.

“An empty day,” she nodded affirmatively.

– You can hatch grandiose plans for a whole week, so that in the end you don’t give birth to a single walk, in a word, just take it and not go anywhere. Because, willy-nilly, you think about Monday, as about a loved one, with whom life is not easy, but without whom life would lose its taste. Maybe some tea? – Toma modestly suggested, unloading sweets from the bag. - Don't think so. Actually, I don’t like sweets, but I’m crazy about this!

“You drink, I allowed myself two cups of coffee this morning,” with these words, Marina took out a tablet from her travel bag and, bending her legs under her, sat down by the window. Trying to protect himself from his companion.

– Were you worried?

- What? Sorry, I didn't hear.

– Two cups of coffee, you say.

- Ahh. Yes, no, I couldn’t get drunk alone,” Marina lied. A vice once again appeared on the threshold before her, and it was not satisfied.

– To be honest, I don’t like reading at all. They gave me a tablet, now I’m learning to read again,” Marina continued to think. Nobody gave her anything, she bought it herself, for the trip, especially in order to read this book, which she had already downloaded a long time ago and which she did not dare to open for a very long time. “But if you choose between a tablet and a dress, it would be better to buy yourself a new one.”

-What kind of book?

“Well, it’s more likely not even a book, but a diary of one correspondence between a man and a woman,” Marina turned on the screen and buried her face in the tablet.

- Interesting? – Toma did not let her go, noticing the blush on her neighbor’s cheeks.

- Very much. It feels like it's written about me in the third person.

- View from above?

– I would even say – from below.

- How interesting.

- Nothing interesting. The language is terrible, you have to think after every line,” she answered, having already immersed herself in the liquid crystals of the screen, without looking at her neighbor.

- You intrigued me. I didn’t even want to drink tea—at first I took it, then, crumpling it in my hands, I put my Sudoku Tom aside. Every now and then she changed two books in her hands: a collection of Sudoku and another, apparently popular science book. A little later, Marina saw the title: “In the constellation of cancer.”

“If you want, I’ll read a little,” Marina took her eyes off the screen.

- With great pleasure.

Yin: Well, I have to go. Let's write off.

Yan: Girl, where are you going?

Yin: Married.

Yan: What's there?

Yin: I don't know.

Yan: Tell me later.

Yin: Too intimate a topic.

Yan: Will you have to sleep with someone there?

Yin: Sleep. Of course.

Yan: I thought to live.

Yin: Of course, constantly worry.

Yan: How do you like the groom?

Yin: Gently.

Yan: You seem worried.

Yin: Of course, this thought haunts me. I can't wait for this day.

Yan: Don't worry, we'll sign soon.

Yin: I will worry like this sea of ​​love that splashes under my feet.

Yan: Where are you now, in the subway?

Yin: No, I’m saying I’m sitting by the sea. One.

Yan: Really couldn’t meet anyone? What are you doing there?

Marina was still looking at the screen, where, in addition to the letters, the same metro appeared, where she almost met one young man, when they looked at each other for a long time, until he came up and said something pleasant to her, and then added something else that she will never ride the subway again.

It was on the subway, her beautiful body was wrapped in an autumn coat of bad weather, boredom, fatigue, she was holding her purse and listening to her friend.

– The weather this summer is not good.

– I don’t care about that now.

-What do you care about? And, I see that young man opposite: every now and then dipping you into his blue crystals.

* * *

I sat at the table and drew an elongated, surprised face on A4. “Monday,” I thought to myself. For some reason, Tuesday seemed puffy, with sleepy eyes, Wednesday turned out to be a middle-aged woman with chemicals on her head, hovering in bewilderment between Tuesday and Thursday, the latter looked somewhat like my editor: short, calm, married, Friday came out as a vulgar woman, but cheerful, with shadows of fatigue from an idle life, she called her close friend Saturday, she was still basking under the blanket, every now and then glancing at her son. Sunday was the unlucky son of Saturday and Monday.

The window showed already midday and some kind of mass confusion of young people in one elegant cocktail. On the round surface of which a man floated up, loudly drinking from a straw: “Friends, we congratulate you on the Day of Philologist and Orientalist! Our concert..." Max turned down the volume, closing the window and leaving the young man barking into the microphone behind the glass. Maxim sank back into his chair and checked his email out of habit.

"What day of the week?" – I asked myself, because Katya was not there today.

“And it rains on Saturday. Showers of the soul. I didn't have them on Saturdays before. Previously, Saturday was not a day of the week for me, it was a day of the year, if it were up to me, I would have given it the title of birthday... for life.” There were no letters. Nobody wanted to work on Saturday. “Why the hell am I working?” – my body grew sharply from the table, and was blown away by a gust of desires towards the door. Having counted the steps with its feet, it soon plunged into the warmth of spring. First, I sat on a bench away from the celebration and began to observe what music did to people.

A blonde danced in the focus of my vision. I looked at her as if I already knew everything about her, and she knew nothing about me. Everyone thinks so when they meet, a complete delusion, even disrespect for the secrets of the other. Such acquaintances, as a rule, are doomed, even if they drag on and lead to bed, a fiasco awaited them. I too was doomed to fail. “Fail here? Or wait: “Get lost!”? I didn't want to know much about her, I only wanted to know what she wouldn't tell me herself or wouldn't let me feel when I touched her. There was no desire to reduce everything banally to the penultimate verb. I didn't want to run my palm over her skin like a magnetic card to read everyone who had already done it; there was no need for that. She was just tall, young and already freely figured in my dreams. And it’s not just about her beautiful figure. I'm just wound up. The girl was apparently one of those who created a Brownian movement of men around her. And now spinning in this Brownian hell, she steamed in the bath of spring, brushing them aside. Looking at the dancing young people, I also suddenly wanted to be light, relaxed, frivolous.

Dedicated to my father...

Valiullin R. R., 2015

© Anthology LLC, 2015

Part 1

My gaze rested on the TV that stood opposite. I tried the news, not finding anything new in it, switched to the sea, there was some movie playing where a couple was lounging on the beach:

– I love the south. In the south it was always easier with women: you don’t have to give fur coats, and the sea is nearby,” he lay next to a pretty woman, resting his elbow in the sand and looking at her through dark glasses.

“Yeah, tell me also that the product always has its face on,” she turned the beach over to the other side, exposing her face to the sun.

-Are you going far? – the girl stopped his hand, which was moving from the waist to her chest.

– No, to orgasm and back.

Intimacy at 11.00 seemed too early to me, I deprived the characters of their voices and moved my gaze higher. There was a painting by a contemporary artist hanging there, which I once bought in the gallery opposite, but not because of a great passion for art, I just wanted to hide an unevenness on the wall. As soon as I hung it, the wall really stopped being nervous, and I worked more calmly, however, with its appearance, metamorphoses began to occur in my life. I didn’t remember the artist’s name, but the title stuck out: “Yin and Yang. Pigeon mail" - a sky streaked with wires and two doves on one of the lines. These lines broke the heights into pieces of different colors. Of course, it was about communication between two people, via the Internet or telephone. The sky was like a quilt, a blanket woven from different pieces, with which I wanted to hide, in which I would not mind spending this morning.

I didn’t want to work, I stood up, stretched, made a few swings with my arms, but still didn’t take off. I went to the window. The sun was the most capricious of all domestic animals. Today it did not love us again, no matter how much we adored it. It didn't work out. It's windy, humid and nasty outside. Autumn - what an injustice: while you want to depend on your loved one, you depend on the weather.

Maxim turned up the volume of the film again and sat down in a chair. The movie didn’t touch me; it didn’t have enough passion for summer, or whims for relationships. From time to time, instead of the box, the gaze stopped at the painting. He realized that it was more pleasant for him to look at it than at the screen, although it might be less informative at first glance, because at the second there was something to think about. Pictures to inspire. Neither the TV nor his picture could inspire anything. And what can an artificial eye, which blinked an advertisement once again, inspire you to do, other than to suck out the remaining time and positive emotions, especially if they were covering events in the world that are driving you even further, into the thick of autumn.

I switched the program, the news was broadcast, and the television went back to black and white. Switched to canvas. The doves cooed.

I also wanted to coo. I called Katya.

- Coffee? – Katya asked, displacing loneliness from the space of my office.

- Katya, could you turn off the TV?

“Well, you’re too narrow, Maxim Solomonovich,” the white blouse, black jacket and pink skirt protested in unison. “Why is the skirt pink?” – a dream of the same color flashed through me.

– Maybe I’m testing you in the role of a submissive wife? – I was still looking at her, entrenched in the chair.

“This doesn’t fit into any framework,” still looking at me with bewilderment, she took the remote control from the table, and the pupil went out.

- That's what I'm talking about the picture. Do you like her, Katya? I wanted to say, is there a difference where you look: at the TV or at the painting?

– I don’t watch TV at all. Box for old people.

- Seriously? – I felt behind the times. – Am I really that old? – I reloaded my jacket on my shoulders.

– Not yet, but keep looking there.

– I could bring coffee more often.

“Better look at the picture,” Katya knew that if the boss switched to “you,” it meant that either he was uncomfortable or he was angry.

“Well, what kind of modesty, I could have said - better look at me, Maxim. I would have watched then, maybe more often, maybe not only watched. Although this would be wrong: a man, if he really wants a woman, pays attention himself. Or have I become so lazy and boring?

– You’ll also have to turn it off from time to time. By the way, where is the remote control for it?

- From whom?

- From the picture.

Katya did not understand humor; it was beyond her feelings. “How often a sense of humor remains in the shadow of other feelings while it is a source of oxygen for the mood. A sense of humor is the very savior that prevents self-esteem from conquering your entire inner world,” I wanted to read a moral to Katya, but I restrained myself. Perhaps the only thing that united us was attacks of modesty, when words stumble, afraid to come out, and get stuck in the throat. I rarely gave compliments, so as not to embarrass or seduce. She smiled forcefully:

– Maybe I should really make some coffee for you, Maxim Solomonovich?

- What, he’s not ready yet? And it looks like such a serious drink.

- As always? – Katya asked automatically, knowing full well that if there was no sun, then it could be replaced by three spoons of sugar instead of the usual two.

“I would really like it more than ever, “but not with you, Katya,” I added to myself.

Soon the aroma of coffee rubbed gently against my cheek.

In everyone’s life there are periods of storytelling when the atmosphere is dense with the prose of life, without any dialogue around. That is, there are a lot of people, but there is no dialogue, because everyone brings their own, brings their own words: “Let them lie there, you have no one and it’s free now anyway, I’ll take it later if necessary.” You don't need a case. You need something else, another, others, a few remarks, proposals, letters... Constant, warming, encouraging, yours.

I've been in this menopause for quite some time. Prose, prose, prose, like black soil. You can grow potatoes, but you want to cultivate a vineyard. However, he is capricious, he needs depressions, hills, valleys if it is about the body, climate - if it is about the soul, relief - if it is about the mind.

* * *

Yin: Today all day long there was a need to sit on your lap and snuggle up to the stubble file. From the very morning I simply need a bed from your meaty embrace, I want to dive there, kill with kisses the pallor of my lips and the grayness of everyday life. I know that of the evils of relationships, the most harmful: addiction - to be, a drug - together. I sat down shamelessly, what are my knees? I’m turned inside out, and I’m trembling, carelessly covered with my hand, when memory itself presses with anticipation. My memory card is full of our kisses.

Yan: You see, they are pushing the boundaries. Norms, frameworks are what makes us normal, but there is one “but”: if I am normal, you will quickly get bored of me.

Yin: You’re right: on the one hand, I really want madness, on the other – comfort.

Yan: Who are you with now?

Yin: I'm on a break. I'm drinking tea. And then to the side.

Yan: Just don't do anything stupid with just anyone. I'm already on my way to you, my love.

Yin: Are you still at work?

Yan: Yes.

Yin: I thought you had already left. When will you be free?

Yan: I think I’ll go soon. And what?

Yin: If you pass by, call. Maybe we'll get married.

Yan: Is there a reason?

Yin: Yes, I have duck in the oven.

Yan: Be careful not to oversalt it. So that it doesn't turn out like last time.

Yin: How was it last time?

Yan: I kissed her lips and neck while she cried, so sensitive that any nonsense was ready to ruin her mood. After the tears there was usually sex. She knew this, and I knew, continuing to console her, eating her skin with kisses, not understanding why it was so salty.

Yin: Great! Especially the last sentence. Don't even hope this time it won't rain.

Yan: Then I won’t take the umbrella! You are my button.

Yin: Nuclear?

Yan: Dual-core.

Yin: That’s what I feel: I’ve been going crazy lately. I'm going crazy.

Yan: Wait, I'll go with you.

* * *

Three nights, and the city is becoming quieter and quieter, like a tired huge animal. He feeds on the revelry couples of Nevsky, the night hunt is coming to an end, there is less and less game in his reinforced concrete fangs, and the proverb bleeds: dinosaurs are not born - they are made. The beast slowly falls asleep. His powerful body was washed away from the roads by vehicles. There are noticeably fewer couples, more and more lonely travelers with beer in their hands, that’s all the romance of the night, on the banks of the Neva, licked with marble lips. I drove home to the sound of yellow traffic lights that flickered at intersections with their indifference to traffic rules. I, too, could fall asleep and become a prehistoric fossil, but thoughts, damn them, as if the thirst for nightlife does not allow even my third eye to close, I am degrading, this is evolution, I feel a dinosaur inside me, like a city in the night, me too I don't get enough sleep. I turned off the engine, took a bottle of beer out of my bag, and the moon swung like a lonely lamp at me. In front of the house there was a park cut diagonally by asphalt. I found a vantage point, watching through the windshield as a woman walked along the path. A woman is like a woman. I had to look somewhere. Suddenly, two shadows caught up with her, tore the bag out of the ladies’ wardrobe and rushed towards me.

"Coward!" – Honor quietly responded to me.

The woman screamed, cash numbers flashed through her head after the fright, thoughts that she would now have to call the banks and block the cards, that it was good that there was little cash, that yesterday she managed to pay her rent and school for her son. I took a sip as if that would stop them. He grabbed the door handle to open the door and rush towards the evil. But then he stopped. I was given someone else's bag, with someone else's funds: I had no desire to throw beer and rush across them. It’s good that the beer managed to cool my mind: firstly, everyone is alive, and secondly, I didn’t want to fight and die for someone else’s money. "Coward!" - Honor quietly screamed in me. I just honked the horn at the criminals and blinked my headlights. They got scared, threw a piece of leather and disappeared. “Not bad, this was that rare case when light defeated darkness,” I felt like a superhero, straightened up, finished my beer and closed my eyes in pleasure. There were no kisses, there was not even applause. The frightened woman picked up hers and hurried away. I looked after her for a long time until her excited body fell into the darkness of houses and apartments, where she was soon dialing her friend’s number, excitedly talking about the incident and checking the contents of her purse, counting the bills and happily finding credit cards among the discount cards: the trump cards remained in her hands .

I should have gone home too, but I didn’t want to. The street turned out to be the very place where it was now free, calm and warm. And at home, on tiptoe, you will have to look for parking for your ass and fall asleep to the grumbling of your wife. I hate tiptoeing around my house, where every rustle cuts into your consciousness, as if a piece of plaster is falling off your personal self. And now, like a skeleton, silently rising from the grave of the night, you must do all your work in the dark in order to lie back down. She will turn away from me as usual, I will try to hug my wife from behind and talk nonsense. I didn’t like it when she didn’t understand me, I didn’t want to explain to her why it took me so long to get to the house, it would have been a waste of time, although I began to mentally do this, usually while going up in the elevator. I looked at myself, guilt appearing on my face. “You look tired,” I read in the reflection. - I know it's not your fault. Lucky?" “He was like that, what about him, about the sight,” I tried to smile at my reflection, “now you can’t say, it’s unlikely that anyone anywhere will ever be able to sincerely love me.”

I couldn’t find a place near the front door, so I parked in front of the house, across the road. Opening the door, I got out of the car and clicked the alarm. After the gender ones, the time has come for political thoughts: in essence, our system has remained slave-owning, woven from profit and lust, industry and women. “You are a sexy machine,” I remembered my wife again. “If I were a mechanic, I would change some parts.” I didn’t accept another challenge from her. The pedestrian crossing constantly insisted that it was allowed and literally right there that it was completed. He tweeted in a high voice in the night, hoisting his tricolor over the small island state of pedestrians, I felt a little uneasy, I don’t know what tormented me. Apparently, the malaise that I didn’t get enough of something today or in this life in general. The transition from youth to adulthood has just been resolved, and is now complete. It’s like I didn’t have time. And now I’m a grown man, sitting with a bottle of beer on a bench, absolutely alone. Instead of the sun there is a lantern. I look at the float of my meaning in life, but it doesn’t move, no matter how much you feed the goldfish. Even the roach doesn’t take it. It’s a pity, a roach wouldn’t hurt now. And it’s not a matter of bait; they’ve acquired a lot, quite enough for a worthy youth for their descendants. Speaking of my old age, I looked carefully at the ground, there a lonely night ant was rushing about in search of beer caps and swag. “As I understand you, it’s difficult to quit both at the same time.” I quit smoking and started drinking. Not in a global sense, but in a momentary sense. He put out his cigarette and took out another bottle of beer.

Marina returned home, the thought “When will you come?” was obsessively spinning in her head, which she let go of far away after the second rejected call, with a cat at her feet: “I agree, he loves you more, but you’re not there yet.” “I didn’t wait for you,” the schnitzel calmed down in Marina’s stomach. She stuck a glass, half empty, into the table: “You can call me a pessimist, but the glass contains wine, not plain water.” She sat down at the computer as if it were a wall behind which she felt good, behind which she could sigh calmly, scratch her pubic area with the keyboard, thereby teasing passers-by on her personal page. “You know what I would call you - comfort,” she felt uncomfortable without her husband. “I hope that you remember, we were going to the dacha for honey mushrooms this weekend,” she got up and walked around the living room.

She pressed herself against the glass of the night, her forehead feeling the coolness of the window, which, apparently, was going to spend the rest of the evening with her. There’s a phone in your hand, heavy earrings of long beeps in your ears. Isn't this a reason to make yourself some tea? The tea was boring, monotonous, baked, porcelain.

* * *

- Where have you been?

“Where have you been, where have you been, where have you been, the CDs of your questioning eyes are playing the same song, you want to control my slipping steps, each of which is not even known to me. Why do you need it? You abandoned your life for this, look, it’s dying without attention, you’re not the only one who’s lonely,” I silently looked at my wife. She was in her repertoire, in her wardrobe. The only thing that brought us closer now was that she was also a little out of her mind.

- Where have you been?

“Let me get out of my coat, take off my shoes, pants, pour in the warmth of the kitchen, along with tea, since yours is not there, and then ask.”

- Where have you been? – for the third time my legal wife took the lead.

“Where I am already empty, completely absent. Where have I been? Who was I with? With one of the people passing by, with the city, with the sky, with the street, with beer, if you insist, I’ll tell you, just turn down the music of your boring record,” I remembered the same disc that is inserted into the lower lip of African women Mursi tribe. Even if this disc is already platinum, and a million sales have been made. Put your control shot on safety, I see that you were crazy here alone. Some people go crazy when they are alone, only to continue it together, nervously and dullly. Are we really one of those people too?

– You don’t have to answer. “You shouldn’t have come,” my wife waved her hand at me.

- I could, but I have a problem. Who else can I turn to with her if not you?

“I noticed this as soon as we got married. What's the problem now?

“I began to feel you too subtly.” Thinner than your summer dress falling off your shoulders. I know the dress doesn’t have a back, but it knows how to sit, just as well, exactly where I would prefer to lie,” I picked her up and kissed her chest. I swayed and we almost fell right in the corridor. It's good that there are walls. They held this couple, this house, this marriage.

- You are drunk? – my wife freed herself from my clutches.

– I guess I don’t know.

-You smell like beer.

- So what? Don't take this as vulgarity, but she touched the truth.

“Morality, like a cold governess, will guard my curiosity until you throw her a dress as bait, only then will it evaporate.”

- Three o'clock in the morning, it could be easier.

- Fine. Perhaps we are not destined to die one day, nursing loud-mouthed children in a spacious house. Today I am ready to serve as your shadow: languid, ruthless and dangerous: I will light a fire right on your heart from damp anxieties and pink coquetry.

- Looks like a declaration of love. How long have you been carrying this around?

– No, a week ago it stuck after the presentation of another book. Well, you remember.

“I remember when they brought you unconscious.”

- No, I had feelings.

– I think there was more alcohol. It's good that you didn't see how angry I was.

- Yes, it’s a pity... that I didn’t see it. I love it when you're angry, so sexy.

– Did you drink much then?

- No, not really, but when I vomited, I thought: had I really already drunk my share in this life and no longer got into me, when I looked, I no longer liked anything, my body refused to explore life through your cuts, when I fell out of love, I thought, is it really possible in this life that I could hate someone so much? I was sober, and you were pulling on your tights,” I began to compose as I went, giving my movements an even more drunken tone.

“Go to the bathroom and sleep,” my wife commanded.

- How is your mom? - I remembered that I had a mother-in-law in my house.

- I hope he doesn’t hear.

We slept exactly according to my scenario.

Solo on one key Rinat Valiullin

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Title: Solo on one key

About the book “Solo on one key” Rinat Valiullin

Modern prose, truly deep, piercing, making the heart tremble and the soul sing - all this is about the work of the incredibly talented domestic author Rinat Valiullin. Although, in addition to prose, he creates simply brilliant poetic masterpieces and designs the covers for his books himself. When you pick up any of them, you never cease to be amazed at how alive and real an ordinary book can be. Valiullin puts into them not only his creativity and talent, but also his whole soul, therefore, it seems that the warm, positive energy of a living being emanates from his books.

The magnificent novel “Solo on One Key” tells about a lot of things, but in general, it is, of course, about life. About real, real, about life as it is. The original structure of a “novel within a novel” makes the story even more exciting and realistic. The author, in his favorite, unique manner, talks about a person’s search for a soul mate and, despite the fact that this is a novel about love, the leitmotif in it is the theme of loneliness. An amazing combination of incompatible things, harmony in oppositions and balance in opposites. Valiullin, despite the indicated philosophical, romantic and at times dramatic theme of the work, nevertheless, did not fail to add spice to his plot. His masterly descriptions of piquant erotic moments are so vivid and realistic that they can excite the imagination of any reader. However, everything described balances on the edge of what is permitted, in no case turning the novel into vulgar reading.

And already, according to the established, good tradition, the book “Solo on One Key” is replete with deep and precise expressions, dialogues, metaphors, quotes and allegories. In every phrase of the author, in every reflection of the hero there is the deepest meaning and great wisdom of life. Perhaps this is also why Rinat Valiullin’s books are so popular - because they are a reflection of our real life. In addition, the author, being a resident of St. Petersburg, makes this city as full-fledged a character in his books as other people.

It seems that his heroes are inseparable from the city, and their lives and destinies are forever intertwined. Along with such a wealth of images, characters, events and storylines, it is impossible not to separately note the amazingly voluminous and beautiful Russian language. This book is a real gift for anyone who loves deep and poignant works that combine humor, reflection and humanism.

Read the talented novel “Solo on One Key” by Rinat Valiullin, enjoy the excellent plot and colorful characters. Enjoy reading.

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Quotes from the book “Solo on One Key” by Rinat Valiullin

In general, I wanted to say that it’s good to think for three, to flirt for two, to rely on one, but you need to count on yourself.

You date a girl, live with a woman, worry about your beloved, but still love yourself.

If you were unable to reboot it, wait until the batteries run out,” my brain told me what I had already known for a long time.

It’s very simple to answer a person with consent, but if it concerns your personal freedom, then a short word “Yes” can turn your whole life upside down, imperceptibly swapping these two letters.”

The longer I am in mistresses, the stronger the feeling that I am becoming a prostitute for one client.

I used to think that love had no soul. It turned out that he still has... at least he fucked mine.

The more you begin to think about the meaning of life, the stronger the drinks become.

I used to think that friendship is something that never ends. A kind of bottle from which you can drink endlessly, at any moment, at any time of the day or night, you take it out of the cupboard, pour a glass, knock it over, you immediately feel warm throughout your body and lighter in your soul.

Men wanted to love women that night; women were not content with just one.

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