4. Visible Windows
Father met Lucy as usual with questions: “How did you get there? How did you rest? Where did you go to Moscow? What was the most memorable? How is your health?”
For a long time she retold the screenplay “Like the gods…” with the participation of folk artists, and herself tensely thought: “What has happened? Whence this cold? Alex was right, why did I go to the south? It would have been better if I stayed in the city to avoid conflict.”
Her father took the excitement with which she talked about the performance she saw, fatigue and overwork of her daughter, but, despite this, he asked:
“Lucy, what happened?” It seems to me that you are ill. You do not say something. Maybe you have complications at work? You’re very worried. Before you left, you had not been so nervous.
After these words, she could not stand it and burst into tears: “Here’s how it always is. My father understands me even more than I do myself.”
The next day she felt unwell. She wanted to call Alex, but he did not say if he wanted to hear her.
“Perhaps during my trip to the south he had another girl. No. So it can not go on. You can go crazy with the unknown. It is necessary to find out the relationship. Does he want to continue meeting or decided that I no longer want to see him? Let it be so, but I will say this first…”
This day Alex was loaded to the limit. It all began in the morning. He did not have time to appear in the shop, as a replacement master came up to him and said in a businesslike manner:
“You know what, Alex, two newcomers will come to our workshop today and we’ll have to debug the machine tools with programmed control. Actually, I already have watched them. They’re fine, but without you I can not let the guys go to work. You, Alex, have ‘golden hands’, ” she patted him on the shoulder. “Check the machines, please. Do not forget safety. In a word, do everything as expected. Young people need to be taught!”
“Young people need to be taught,” the last words of the master sounded in Alex’s mind.
He sat down at the computer. He had to check every machine in all working positions.
While he was working, the cell phone flashed Lucy’s number several times, but he was busy and did not answer. When released, he dialed the number himself, but no one picked up the phone.
After work, Alex went to her house: “Maybe something has happened? I am guilty myself, did not agree to a meeting in a human way.”
Lucy was alone. She met him in a light blue home dressing gown. Her hair was neatly stabbed; she looked very cute at home.
“I want to talk with you seriously,” she began first, when he came and sat down at the table in the kitchen, but Alex felt her voice tremble. “What kind of change? If you decided to part with me, then tell me honestly, and we will stop seeing each other. If you have another woman, tell me, why did you come to me?”
“Do not worry, I like you as before, but I thought that after a trip to the south, you had no desire to meet. I was busy, so I did not answer calls, but I came to you myself. If you want, we’ll go, take a walk or go to the movies, or better to a concert. The ensemble ‘Young Voices’ came on tour.”
“No, I see, you’re tired, sit down, I’ll pour you some tea and, please, do not refuse!”
Lucy set before Alex a plate of soup and a hot dish with meat. He ate everything, because he was really hungry.
“Yes, Lucy, you are an amazing person,” he said. “I love girls with a character.”
“I have adequate feelings for you,” she laughed.
Never did any of the girls with whom Alex was familiar before her liked him so much. The desire to make her an offer to marry him appeared with him when she was in the south, but he decided to wait.
“It is necessary to check the feelings. Lucy is a very nice girl and she will surely find a boyfriend, so if I’ll be in a hurry, can cause antipathy,” Alexey reasoned in a secret.
He stayed with her not for long, they still sat in the hall on the couch, listened to the music, Lucy showed him the albums of painting brought from Moscow.
They kissed and feelings seized Alexey when she offered to show him a red night dressing gown.
“French, look how handsome! Chanel,” she pulled out of the bedroom a coat rack with a nightgown on straps. “Try it on?”
“Let me touch,” Alexey got up and moved towards the bedroom, but then she blocked his way. “Come on… You allow me to smoke with you?”
“As you want.”
He lit a cigarette and went out into the kitchen again. He began to shake the ashes into a metal ashtray in the shape of a snake. Then he came back and pushed the curtains in the bedroom, and she was already dressed in a silk, blood-red shirt and lay on the bed on her side, leaning her elbows on the pillow. All the bends of the fragile body loomed. He imagined a fire in the snow from the sight of such a dazzling and burning picture. They actually froze from the air conditioner, which was switched on at full power. It seemed to him little – plus sixteen, but she forbade increasing degrees, and to smooth the trouble, she said:
“I have Crimean wine. Let’s try?”
“Prepare me something stronger to drink. Vodka can be mixed with this compote.”
“There’s no vodka. Father will be back soon,” she rose from the pillow and pulled him to her with an arm as he sat down beside her. “I’ll bring some glasses, do you mind?”
Defiantly she rose from the bed, and, causing an impression of flaming the fire of the dress, returned with a tray on which stood two tall crystal glasses filled with an amber drink.
They drank a glass of Crimean sherry and felt that they loved each other. Drink gave honey and grapes at the same time, causing secret desires, intoxicating and warming the body to the depths of the soul.
“If you want, I’ll read poetry for you. I have my friend’s notebook. It is called: ‘Illumination with Love’. She let me study.”
Without permission, Lucy began to read, turning the yellow sheets in half:
Trip to Yalta
“I will listen further, read, and then pour me a little more of your sherry. A fine style, something reminds me of the old fortress and the ruins of Chersonese, where I was with my parents when I was a child.”
She poured him and herself. They drank, and she began to flip through, choosing the most interesting poems in her opinion.
About Love
They became interested in poetry and forgot about time. Alexey was dozing, and sometimes he got up and went to the kitchen to smoke, and she stopped reading and lay relaxed and remembered her mother, their talking of love, the rocking on the waves in the sea, the table covered with a white tablecloth and tea appliances, paintings by Renoir, Monet, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Modigliani, Picasso, Kandinsky. The notebook consisted of several inserts that scattered on the floor.
“Take it, or it will break.” Alexey handed her several sheets. “I’ll hurry. I’m afraid of your father,” he got out of bed, dressed, and, slowly combing himself in the glass of the bookcase stuffed with books, he said:
“I want to explain something to you. My aunt was recently killed near the mail building. She was slaughtered by a nerd. She was on her way from work. He attacked from behind and stabbed her with an ordinary knife. The investigation was entrusted to lieutenant-colonel Kiryanov. Do you have any friends among private detectives? It’s just a perfect murder. There is no evidence, no instrument of crime, no criminal.”
Lucy put scattered sheets of poetry on the table and stood up. She rummaged in her memory and remembered that she had kept the telephone number of the private detective, Tatiana Alexandrovna Ivanova, when she investigated the theft of a large amount of money intended for encashment.
“Yes, I do, but for that, kiss.” She held out her thin hand to him.
He kissed the palm of her hand from the inside to the center. Every nerve of her hand shrank from the warm touch of his lips. With her other hand, she wrote the phone number of the detective on a green sheet with a sticky end and stuck to his arm.