Stories from Lyubavino. Chronicle of an extraordinary Incident

The fact was, he had just acquired a one-room apartment. More precisely, he had bought it using the payments he was entitled to under the program we mentioned earlier, and he had immediately started renovations.

The loggia floor, a legacy from the previous owners, was covered in old, badly swollen laminate. Naturally, he decided to replace it with something more respectable. In fact, he had embarked on his “dream renovation”: new windows, underfloor heating – all the trappings of proper folks.

The repair crew had successfully pulled up the flooring on Thursday afternoon. And beneath it, they discovered… a fire hatch.

It turned out such hatches were installed on every loggia in the building. The opening was plugged with insulation, since below it was the neighbor’s loggia – already properly insulated, fully renovated, and quite cozy.

As for the downstairs neighbors, they were a veterinary doctor named Yelena (the best in the district, by the way) and her gorgeous, handsome cat, Marquis. This mischievous but affectionate tomcat had entered her life a couple of years earlier after his previous owners abandoned him at the clinic to be euthanized due to a serious illness. Yelena had nursed him back to health, fattened him up, neutered him – and was now the proud owner of a sleek, black-and-white, fluffy rascal, a beloved and inveterate prankster.

The cat heard his noble name from his owner only on rare occasions. She usually addressed him as “my little fluffy booty” – and that was when he was being an absolute angel. If he was misbehaving (which was far more often), he would be greeted with a stern “you fluffy butt” or “you brazen, shameless mug.” And she had a vast reserve of such epithets for every possible mood of her beloved human.

As fate would have it, Marquis’s owner was young, devilishly attractive, and – as you might have guessed – quite single. So, when she noticed the new tenant in her building, the young lady immediately concluded that a rather handsome and promising young man had moved in next door. And every time their paths crossed on the street or in the stairwell, and their gazes met, she was the first to shyly lower her eyes, blush, and feel a strange, inexplicable awkwardness that often puzzled her greatly.

Sergey, of course, had also noticed the lovely blonde. But that was as far as it went. Although his mother was already broadly hinting at a wedding and grandchildren (preferably in bulk and in the near future), he stood firm: career first, then – if he survived – his personal life. He still had five years to serve in Lyubavino, time enough to build a reputation as a competent specialist, and only then – onward to the city, to private practice and, perhaps, even to matrimony. But not now. Oh no. Heroic acts like marriage were only to be contemplated after reaching professional heights.

That was exactly his train of thought… until one evening he stepped out onto the balcony to get some air in his birthday suit.

He had completely forgotten about that wretched service hatch, and besides, it was dark. His mind was entirely occupied with the final moments of the match and the old joke. In short, after crashing through the insulation with a loud crack and making a hole in his neighbor’s stretch ceiling, he ended up dangling like a New Year’s gift bag – only instead of sweets inside, it was him. Desperately clutching the concrete edge of his balcony and frantically kicking his legs in the void, he tried to hold on and not fall through completely onto his charming neighbor below.

At the moment of his crushing fiasco, from the sheer suddenness and mild shock, he only managed to emit a few strange, loud, inarticulate sounds, very much like the cry of a seagull caught in a meat grinder… if such a thing were possible. Anyway, the evening for Sergei Alexandrovich instantly lost its languidness.

The noise immediately attracted the attention of the downstairs neighbor and her rather playful cat (especially since for cats, as we know, the night is for hunting). The young woman was seriously frightened, thinking that under the cover of the power outage, some unsavory characters were trying to break in, most likely with dubious intentions.

Yelena, on the verge of surrendering to Morpheus, had been performing her traditional evening routine. Her head was adorned with curlers that gave her the look of a little imp. Her face was covered with a thick, light-green mask, making her resemble a victim of botched Halloween makeup; and, as the cherry on top, bright white toe separators were proudly on display. She had been drying her nails, which she’d had to finish painting by flashlight. In short, she was decidedly not expecting visitors.

But the strange noise and the feeling of someone’s presence on the balcony forced Yelena to act. Feeling utterly defenseless, she decided to arm herself, confidently grabbing a hefty frying pan from the stove. Switching off her flashlight to avoid giving herself away, she held her breath. Trembling with fear, she quietly crept up to the kitchen window that opened onto the balcony.

And then… Oh gods! A scene beyond all description unfolded before her! Against the backdrop of the dark, star-studded sky, in the ghostly moonlight streaming onto the loggia, swinging in an eerily senseless manner were… a pair of long male legs!

Recoiling from the window, Yelena gasped and dashed back across the room toward the loggia door, clutching the frying pan tightly to her chest. And her faithful cat, Marquis, as if switching into hunter mode, strode ahead with the dignity of a lion.

Somewhere near the ceiling, in the darkness of the loggia, a silhouette was discernible. A male one. Or rather, only its lower half.

Her heart began to pound so loudly it seemed about to shatter the nocturnal silence – and her ribcage along with it. Her glasses were forgotten, and now only the vague outlines of the frightening figure were before her eyes. Was it a trick of the shadows, or something far more sinister? In the semi-darkness, her feminine imagination obligingly supplied the most terrifying scenarios – from burglars specializing in balcony break-ins to maniacs hunting single women.

She cautiously moved a little closer, threateningly raising the frying pan just in case.

The cat – that furry scoundrel – had taken a seat nearby, like the lord of the manor, and with undisguised curiosity began to study the twitching limbs of the newly appeared biped who had the unprecedented audacity to invade his domain. He, unlike his mistress, possessed excellent night vision and a sharp sense of smell and had immediately figured out where this mishap had fallen from.

Yelena, on wobbly legs, crept closer and, squinting hard (as all visually impaired people do), peered intently at the object of her interest… A-a-and… Indeed discovered bare, hairy male legs dangling in the air.

Not trusting her myopic eyes, she risked raising her gaze higher – to the point from which those very legs were growing! But whether it was disbelief at the sudden windfall of female happiness in the form of a naked man, or being even more frightened by it, she squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that her eyeballs nearly pierced the back of her own skull; from such a squeeze, she reflexively jerked backward.

And then it dawned on her: it was her upstairs neighbor. Or rather, his lower half.

But just how in the blazes did he end up here?! And absolutely stark naked, to boot!

With a purely feminine curiosity, after briefly studying the neighbor’s dangling lower portion, she suddenly came to her senses and, covering her eyes with her palm in a show of modesty, addressed the unexpected visitor with a rather strange question:

“Is that you?..”

Silence hung in the air… Only the cat sitting nearby, raising an eyebrow meaningfully, seemed to say: “Well, yes, of course it’s him. Who else could it be?”

Then she realized she had asked an absolutely foolish thing and posed a more sensible, or so it seemed to her, question:

“And how did you end up here??!” She still didn’t know the neighbor’s name.

Sergei, who until the last moment had naively believed his acrobatic sketch would remain a secret, upon hearing this fatal question from below, understood – his hopes were utterly shattered. He even thought he could hear the clinking sound of those shattering hopes.

What to say? His mind was filled with nothing but white noise. With a grimace of martyrdom on his face, he closed his eyes, pressed his lips together, and tried to pull himself up again. But yet another heroic attempt to climb back onto his own loggia ended in complete fiasco.

He was desperately lacking support. His shoulders and arms remained up top, but maintaining this position was becoming more and more difficult – the muscles in his arms were hopelessly beginning to tire. An acute necessity arose to haul up, as quickly as possible, everything that was so helplessly dangling down below.

Suddenly picturing his lower body in the company of the unfamiliar but very pretty girl, he realized with horror: he was absolutely, categorically naked!

Shame and awkwardness overwhelmed him. He was ready to sink through the ground! Although, dear reader, as you can see, he had already successfully managed to do just that!.. From a feeling of utter helplessness, Sergei let out a quiet whimper.

Meanwhile, Yelena cast a fleeting glance at her cat. He was focused to the utmost, and despite her own eyesight problems, she understood as clear as day: her fluffy strategist had declared a hunt on the neighbor’s “jingling bells” and was already preparing to charge after his prey with his signature victory cry of “Murr-meow!”

Having assessed the situation in the blink of an eye, she snatched a towel from the dryer with one graceful motion. She girded the loins of the poor soul whose future was now literally hanging by a thread, thereby saving not only him but also his reproductive prospects.

And, while she was at it, if truth be told, she covered up those anatomical details that so embarrassed her.

Sergei, feeling that his gaping nakedness had finally been charitably covered, was deeply embarrassed and, stammering slightly, shouted from above:

“Thank you… M-ma’am… I don’t know your name…”

For a moment, he considered going downstairs, but when he imagined the eyes of this young and attractive neighbor, he immediately dismissed the idea. “I’d better get up there somehow,” he decided. He would be unbearably ashamed to look into those eyes.

“Y-you’re welcome… Yelena, my name is Yelena Yuryevna…” she replied, matching his tone and also stammering from awkwardness.

“V-very nice to meet you… Sergei… Sergei Alexandrovich…”

“Likewise…” came the voice from below.

“What a wildly absurd situation I’ve gotten into… What a complete disaster!” he continued his mental monologue with inexpressible indignation. “Me, an educated man, a third-generation doctor, from a good family, and I end up in such a mess…!”

Fully aware that gravity is a treacherous lady and one can’t hang in such a position for long, the hereditary doctor nevertheless decided to try to get back up. In a slightly strained voice, he addressed his neighbor:

“Yelena, please don’t think me impudent… Would it be too much trouble to put something under my feet? P-please… I just need something to brace against…”

“Yes, yes, right away!” Yelena instantly vanished into the darkness of the apartment.

She, in turn, was also absolutely not keen on having the neighbor end up in her apartment, since she was in a state completely unsuitable for any kind of visit: practically half-naked, in a ridiculous short nightgown, without any underwear, in curlers, with a face mask on, and with her toes splayed apart due to the separators. And in the dead of night, no less! Quite a sight indeed! Therefore, just a moment later, Sergei found a pouf under his feet, and on it, a stool. Leaning on this wobbly but salvific construction, he managed to hoist himself back up.

Yelena followed the disappearing bare heels vanishing into the gaping hole in the ceiling with a pensive gaze. Suddenly, a realization dawned on her: she was going to miss this guest, who had appeared so unexpectedly and so dramatically. Along with it came the understanding of a bitter truth – her brand-new stretch ceiling was irrevocably ruined.

The towel that had slipped from Sergei Alexandrovich’s hips during his “vertical takeoff” lay forlornly on the floor.

“I’m sorry… Sergei Alexandrovich…” Yelena shouted into the black abyss. “You’ve gone and torn my ceiling here…”

After a short pause, a familiar, slightly guilty voice came from the hole:

“Yes, yes… I apologize, Yelena… Yelena Yuryevna… It turns out I have a hatch to the balcony here… And I completely forgot about it in the dark… I’ll compensate you for everything. I’ll send my ceiling guy over. Thank you… Sorry again… I’ll make it all right…”

“It’s quite alright…” Yelena replied, picking up the towel from the floor. “These things happen…”

But only one thought was spinning in her head: “Do these things really happen?!”

But, dear friend, the story of Yelena and Sergei does not end here at all. Oh no! It is only just beginning. And you and I are going to witness the development of their relationship, which undoubtedly promises to be no less spicy than the scene we have just described. Perhaps even more so…

We most certainly promise to share all the amusing details of their further interactions with you, a bit later, following the strictest chronology.

For now… meanwhile…

Chapter V The Glass Epic: The Beginning

Kids are life’s bouquet, it’s true,

But only when they’re not getting on you.

Meanwhile, it was Friday morning. In an apartment of a modest five-story building nearby, an intriguing series of events was beginning to unfold – a cycle so tragically comical and absurdly farcical that it could make even the most hardened cynic question the laws of the universe.

But as we all know, reality is what happens to us while we’re making other plans. And it must be said that reality’s plans for Nikolai Vladimirovich that weekend were truly grandiose.

And it all started with a Gogolesque prank. In fact, it was too Gogolesque.

On this fateful Friday, Nikolai Vladimirovich – a young man who seemed the picture of balance, with a good job, an exemplary family man, and the father of two charming children of the same age (a walking monument to domestic bliss, straight out of a mortgage advertisement) – instead of gently waking his wife with kisses, felt an irresistible urge…

No, not to work hard, but to crawl to his wife’s side of the bed. Yes, to that sacred territory of the marital bed where mere mortals are strictly and categorically forbidden to tread!

Why? A question worthy of Shakespeare’s pen! Perhaps it was retrograde Mercury, or perhaps simply a man’s desire for change. In any case, his wife’s spot seemed an oasis of comfort and coziness at that moment. He was determined to move there at all costs, eager to spend his precious morning hours in bliss.

With the tact of a bulldozer but the softness of a cat, Nikolai Vladimirovich carefully (yet persistently!) nudged his wife over and sprawled out on the conquered territory with the triumph of Napoleon entering a subdued Moscow. With relish, he inhaled the delicate scent of perfume and cosmetics emanating from her pillow.

His wife’s place, we must note, was on the side of the bedroom door.

Nikolai Vladimirovich was in a state of complete bliss! Vacation! No work! His wife – right there, next to him! The kids – somewhere around the house!

What more did this slightly portly cupid need for happiness?

Anna Vasilievna, his spouse – a pretty woman of about thirty, with a great sense of humor and a love of playing jokes on her beloved husband – was also enjoying the long-awaited vacation. Awakened by her husband’s maneuvering, she lay quietly beside him, buried in her phone, unsuccessfully trying to find a signal.

At that moment, the head of the family was blissfully lost in the deep embrace of Morpheus on his trophy pillow, sleeping, as they say, “without his hind legs” – that is, dead to the world. His excessively hairy feet, by the way, were sticking out from under the blanket with utter disregard for decorum.

And then his little daughter, Lyolya – an angelic sunbeam of a girl with pigtails, four years old – padded into her parents’ bedroom as usual, rubbing her sleepy eyes with a little pink fist, and suddenly froze in the doorway.

In her mama’s place – the most beautiful mama in the world – rested… hairy legs!

Lyolya’s eyes, usually the size of decent cherries, widened to the size of respectable saucers. A complex thought process was clearly taking place in her childish mind.

“Mama, wow, you have such hairy legs!” gasped the child, clearly impressed by this unexpected discovery.

“Want to give them a pull?” her mother whispered mischievously, with a sly smile.

Lyolya was intrigued by the offer…

“Don’t worry, just give a tug, that’s all…” her kind mother encouraged.

“But it’s going to hurt you!” the girl objected. “Don’t you worry about that…” Mom replied with a mischievous smile and froze in curious anticipation.

And Lyolya, clinging with her little hands, pulled with all her might…

Nikolai Vladimirovich, who had not expected such a trick from his family, let out a sound rivaling the death throes of a castrated cat. Startled awake by his own scream, he catapulted out of bed with bulging eyes, as if he had just lost something very important.

After performing a complex acrobatic maneuver in the air, he crashed to the floor with a thud and attempted to jump up, but instead slammed into the bedside table and knocked over the lamp.

In an attempt to grab his injured head, Nikolai Vladimirovich slammed his elbow into the glass pane of the door with all his might. The glass seemed to have been waiting for this moment! With a joyful tinkle, it shattered on the floor…

Thus began the enchanting epic of replacing the banal frosted glass in an ordinary interior door, an epic that lasted several unforgettable weeks. But that is a different story, dear reader, which we will gladly tell you another time.

Chapter VI Adventures with Glass: Day One

The glass dimensions were a total mismatch,

The poor sod didn’t know this was the first hitch…

And so… Nikolay Vladimirovich and glass! Day One… Friday…

Having cut his elbow and acquired a magnificent bump on his forehead, and after scolding his daughter for her innocent, yet fateful initiative, Nikolai Vladimirovich made the astonishing discovery that behind this entire provocation (as, indeed, one might have expected) stood his indefatigable, mischief-making wife! After giving her a thorough telling-off, he ate a hearty breakfast and set off for the glazier’s workshop.

There, a note on the door awaited him:

“Workshop closed today due to a power outage.”

But Nikolai Vladimirovich was in a determined mood. In a small town like theirs, as is customary, everyone knows where everyone lives – and so he headed straight for the glazier’s home.

To his immense good fortune, he found the master at home. Launching into a brief but emotionally charged speech about the importance of both the integrity of glazed doors and one’s own peace of mind, Nikolai Vladimirovich desperately pleaded for the man to see things from his perspective. In the end, he managed to persuade the glazier to go to the workshop to cut the required piece of glass.

The fact of the matter was that, at that particular moment, our hero was more troubled by the absence of glass in his bedroom door than by the lack of electricity and other civilized comforts. What can you do – he was a perfectionist! He demanded completeness and order in all things. And a phenomenon such as a door with a yawning, blatant hole was, to put it mildly, somewhat irritating to him.

The glazier, having listened with sympathy and heeded Nikolai Vladimirovich’s impassioned appeals, readily agreed to help. They went together to the workshop, where the master carefully cut a piece of glass to the required size based on the provided measurements. Then, having kindly supplied Nikolai Vladimirovich with some useful installation tips, he sent him on his way.

Armed with this sacred knowledge, Nikolai Vladimirovich carried the fragile cargo home, picturing in his mind the perfectly installed glass in his bedroom door. It seemed the coveted goal was now within close reach…

But the path to a fervently desired outcome, as we know, is often thorny. Deciding to save time, Nikolai Vladimirovich cut through the labyrinth of the garage cooperative, hoping to avoid any unwanted (or indeed, any) encounters. However, Fate, as if on purpose, thrust Vasilich right under his nose – his stairwell neighbor, who was proudly soaping down his sparkling “swallow,” a brand-new Lada.

“Hey there, Vladimych! Check out the babe I managed to snag for myself!” bellowed Vasilich, beaming like a polished nickel. “Spacious – it’s like a cosmos inside! And fuel-efficient – words fail me, especially after my old rickety jalopy… Just look at this interior, will you!”

With an ardent enthusiasm bordering on obsession, he flung open the driver’s door as if inviting him aboard a spaceship.

Nikolai Vladimirovich, possessing decent reflexes for a man of his age, miraculously dodged this grand gesture, saving the brand-new glass from certain doom.

“Whoa there, Vasilich! Take it easy! Don’t shatter my glass! I barely managed to talk the glazier into cutting it now…”

“What, he’s working today?” Vasilich asked in surprise, vigorously wringing out his car-wash towel.

“Well, that’s just the thing, he isn’t,” sighed Nikolai Vladimirovich. After a moment’s thought, he added with almost genuine enthusiasm: “Yeeeah… that’s a classy ride you’ve got, no argument there.” He decided to praise his neighbor’s acquisition, if only to get to his bedroom door faster and seal that unpleasantly gaping breach. “Alright, Vasilich, I’ve got to run, and this glass, as you see, is no feather.”

He turned, took a couple of steps, and… stepped (without looking, of course, as always) right onto a cat lazily sunbathing.

The cat, as if deeply offended (which, to be fair, was the absolute truth), let out a shriek like a wounded groundhog and shot into the air like a rocket-propelled grenade. In the course of its epic flight, it collided with the off-balance Nikolai Vladimirovich, knocking the precious glass from his hands!

The glass, as if giving a final salute with its smooth surface, slipped from Nikolai Vladimirovich’s grasp. Hitting the asphalt with a deafening crash, it shattered into hundreds of fragments, glittering in the sun like a scattering of diamonds…

No words exist to describe the grief of Nikolai Vladimirovich. His eyes reflected a catastrophe of planetary proportions…

The angry and offended cat, having landed at a safe distance from this Armageddon, was drilling him with a gaze full of reproach and a thirst for vengeance. One could almost read in its eyes: “All sorts of people wandering about here, stepping on decent cats, the scoundrels…”

But Nikolai Vladimirovich had no time for the cat or its wounded feline pride. All that was left for him now was to rush back to the workshop at a waltz tempo – or rather, at the rhythm of a panicked gallop – praying that the glazier had not yet managed to vanish in an unknown direction. To his indescribable joy, the man was still there, fiddling with some mysterious tools.

Just five minutes ago, a client had happily scurried off with a sheet of glass under his arm. Now he was back on the workshop’s threshold. His face no longer expressed joy, but the despair of a man in urgent need of a new piece of glass – preferably as of yesterday. The master’s surprise was genuine. Without asking unnecessary questions, he cut another rectangle of the fragile material.

After lunch, with an air of importance and a clever expression on his face, Nikolai Vladimirovich attempted to install it. But, to his utmost astonishment, the glass pane, as if smirking with malicious glee, turned out to be slightly smaller than required.

Noticing this mishap, Anna Vasilievna, with her customary mocking look, proceeded to poke fun at her husband’s ability to measure anything with a tape measure. True to form, she couldn’t resist a biting jibe in his direction: