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Beautiful women should not be left unattended, even when they are asleep.

God knows what they’re dreaming about.

From the novel “Flirting with loneliness”, Gleb Karpinsky

An affair

After his wife left him and began to live openly with her lover, Adam began to dilute his melancholy with other women. Mostly they were tired of marriage ladies. Such people were easily picked up by him in social networks and chats. He only had to look at the photos, at the statuses, and exchange a few phrases to understand what kind of woman was in front of him. And how often, behind the haughty masks of decent mothers and faithful wives, behind the deceitful smiles of benefactors and PUritans, behind the garish disguises of shrews and hysterics, he had seen the true face! And as soon as he touched one or another chord of the refined female soul, the mask fell off by itself.

Adam quickly indulged in easy victories, but, as he sated his defeated ego, he soon began to realize that he was degrading. He even regretted that the energy spent on frivolous affairs was not directed to some great and noble cause, and he became more and more disillusioned with women. He no longer enjoyed having a woman of strict upbringing or high morals give herself to him like a total whore. When she confessed her love forhim, he immediately abandoned her, regardless of feelings, cruelly pushed her away from him. On the one hand, he was afraid of a serious relationship, on the other, he justified his behavior by saying that he never cheated, did not take off his wedding ring, did not make a fool of himself, but simply said that he still loved his wife, and many of his women even envied Laura.

But there were also some among them who openly used it. They knew that Adam had no money, but at the same time they went with him to the restaurant, spoiled by the previous attention and care of their lovers, ordered delicious dishes and demanded expensive gifts and other entertainment. And then he felt like the last ragamuffin, and only the realization that he was spending his last ruble on a pleasant pastime consoled him. These women often left him, considering him a failure, laughed at his naivety and inconsistency in life, and looked for other fools. There were also those who openly looked at Adam as a convenient bed for their secret criminal pleasures.

Once he made an agreement on the Internet with a certain Julia. Perhaps the name was fictitious, the page on the Internet said only that the woman was suffering and looking for support and comfort. Julia was a little high-strung and nervous. She was stifled by her lack of self-confidence as a woman, she was always angry at her husband, at his constant infidelities and inattention to her. Her whole being longed for some kind of shake-up on the side, but fear stopped her, and at the thought of a possible connection, she turned cold with horror. She kept looking around and flinching, as if she sensed that she was being watched, imagining a tyrant husband who was just waiting for the moment to point his finger at her and say” You’re блfuckingдьyourself!”. Every time her hesitant heart skipped a beat when the phone rang or a text message from her husband arrived. She hurried to answer, to justify herself, feeling guilty and beaten. Adam met her at the subway station, just as the evening lights were coming on and people were returning from work. No one paid any attention to them in the crowd, and they were like two conspirators who immediately recognized each other, but did not hurry to embrace.

“Hi,” he said first, and kissed her timidly on the cheek.

He often kissed strange women in the first minutes of a meeting, and this brought him very close to them, violated their personal space, excited their blood and subordinated them to some inevitable fate. Julia shivered, pleasantly startled by the kiss.

“You’re funny!”

“And you’re all right,” he said, still watching the game.

She was a little embarrassed, and they followed the path past a frozen pond where schoolboys were playing hockey. Their packs were stacked to represent the gate. It was fun and exciting, and the playful mood of the children was transmitted to passers — by who stopped and cheered for this or that team.

— I used to play hockey too, when I was little. I did my best on the goal, and then skates were a rarity… " sighed Adam with nostalgia. — Can you skate?”

Yulia nodded, afraid to utter a word, and to rouse her, he took her gently by the hand. His profile delighted her with its regular features, its classical Roman beauty, and she was ashamed of her feelings, a flush creeping up her cheeks. A light snow was falling. It fell on their faces and melted, and if she brushed it away furtively and blinked against the wind, Adam ignored the weather and looked straight ahead with a kind of deep understanding and defiance, and, it seemed that tears were running down his sad, dimly lit face.

There was something blissful about his good-natured, sweet smile. With such a person, it seemed, you could talk about everything, even the most intimate. When he spoke, passionately and passionately, his intelligent, deep eyes shone with a kind of revelation, and his face itself seemed to radiate light, like the radiance on an icon at the first rays of the spring sun. He was carried away by his thoughts, reflections, and carried away even the most indifferent listener.,Like an ancient orator, he poured out his great soul, trying to touch the hearts of the crowd, only this time it was a woman, weak and tired, but dreaming of love. His words touched Julia, kindled her long-extinguished fire. She still tried to rebel and resist, but she could no longer resist, and she felt her heart light up, and Adam kept telling her about himself and Laura, about the injustice they had to deal with.

His hand was large and strong, his grip gentle and unobtrusive. She could have freed her hand, but she was already too timid and walked meekly, feeling like a small and stupid girl. She liked this game. She forgot herself, enjoying this walk in the middle of nowhere, without a goal or any obligations.

“You have high self-esteem,” she said. — You’re very impertinent…”

“Every human being is a god who came down to Earth to suffer humiliation. And everything that happens around me is just my rules, it’s like I deliberately limited myself in my abilities, you know? But trust me that everything is in my power…

He had long ago decided that he would take her to his rented apartment, and Yulia, pretending not to notice where they were taking her, or indeed she did not notice it, complained about her husband all the way.

“It’s a scoundrel! Imagine, my close friend is his mistress! And she sends me his text messages. And there are such lyrics! Poems of your own composition!

“What does she want?” Adam asked, taking a shortcut.

They walked past the pond and stopped in front of the hill where the house stood. Adam had already pointed out that he lived somewhere over there and even pointed out his window, but Julia couldn’t see anything and just waved away the snowflakes as if they were intrusive flies. Then he pulled her with him, and they began to climb in an unexpected place. They had to walk sideways to avoid slipping down, and they were even out of breath and out of breath. At that moment, through the noise of the evening city, the bell of a nearby church rang out, and for some reason Adam had the absurd idea that the messiah climbing Golgotha was also stumbling and panting, but instead of a heavy cross, Adam was dragging along a lost woman and a whole train of her sins.

“What’s he trying to do?” Known! her companion scoffed angrily. “He wants a divorce.”

“And you, why don’t you leave yourself?” Adam demanded. “Why do you need a husband who doesn’t love you?”

— You see, we live with his mother, and if something happens, I will stay on the street, and he can take the children away, why do I need these problems? Perebesitsya yes will return! And this bitch won’t get it!

They went to the entrance and began brushing off the snow, tapping their feet, straightening their clothes, as if to make each other look decent. Yulia hesitated a little when Adam let go of her hand, as if giving her a choice — to go in or not to go in, and she so wanted to be pushed, taken by the scruff of the neck and thrown into the abyss, like a stupid kitten. She tried not to think, to be a naive fool, but she couldn’t.

“You know,” he said suddenly, looking her straight in the eye, “the greatest sin on earth is to reject the love of those who love you.

A janitor stopped them in the foyer. She did not like tenants, demanded registration and complained to the district police officer. Adam also annoyed her by taking suspicious girls around all the time.

“Ah, young man, what kindшof bars are these?! She said sternly as she adjusted the curly wig that made her look like a vicious poodle on her head.

“Marya Ivanovna! It’s my little sister who’s here, “he lied, even though he knew they wouldn’t believe him anyway, and quietly promised to bring a cake tomorrow so that no one would hear.

“Okay, come on in,” the janitor said, frowning. — Just to keep things in order!”

As they stepped into the elevator, Adam got his first good look at Julia in the bright light. In real life, she looked older than in the photos.

“How old is she? Thirty-five? Forty? He wondered.

He’d been fooling the kids ' heads lately, and he was pretty tired of their whims. And now that he had a mature woman in his power, he felt a sense of good fortune. Julia stared at the blinking elevator buttons and read пthestrange inscriptions on the walls. Her eyes wandered, and she was already getting used to the inevitable. He suddenly wanted to take her right there in this dirty and spattered elevator, and she, sensing his desire, clung to him and even kissed him. Her lips were weak, almost lifeless, and smelled of sweet strawberry gum. Adam put his arm around her, touchedher beautiful white neck with his lips, and whispered something pleasant. The elevator opened, but they were in no hurry to get out. She loved the way his cold hands took her tired face gently and gently, like an expensive crystal vase, as his gentle fingers wandered over her sensitive skin, walked under her thick hair, caressed behind her ears and the back of her head. She would involuntarily get goosebumps all over her body, and she would close her eyes, forgetting herself with the sweet poison of infidelity.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she whispered defensively. — This is my first time… God, God… what am I doing!

Before she knew it, she was in his apartment. All she remembered was какthrowing her clothes around without taking off her shoes or stopping kissing, and indulging in debauchery, and everything was like a dream. And for a long, long time her phone rang, and it must have been her impatient tyrant husband on the other end, and she, drunk with revenge, writhed under the caress of another man, giving herself to him in some animal and unthinkable poses that no decent woman could afford. When Adam had finished, she lay still for a minute, staring at the ceiling with unblinking eyes. Shadows from the headlights of passing cars moved across the ceiling. I could hear the neighbors ' TV blaring. There was some kind of soap opera, where the characters were arguing about something, figuring things out, and these shadows crawling on the ceiling scared her, and she saw that she was not alone in this fear. The room was crawling with cockroaches, red, nasty, disgusting, and they hid from these wandering shadows somewhere behind the edges of the torn wallpaper and the brackets of the cornice. But where could she hide? Julia’s phone made a faint beep: it was discharging. Adam stroked her in vain, and listened to her weak heart beating softly, while she mechanically stroked this strange man, whose name she could not even remember, on his shaggy, tousled head, and held him like a child. She already felt as if nothing had happened between them, and she even tried to convince herself of it. She suddenly wanted to leave, and she pulled away…

“I have to go…”

“Go!” he said slowly.

She got up and gathered up her clothes as she went, then opened the front door herself.

“Don’t think -" she was saying something. “There was nothing between us, and there can’t be! I’ll tell my husband everything.

The door slammed shut, but he could still hear her hurrying up the stairs without even waiting for the elevator, her uncertainty returning, her trembling response to someone’s insistent phone call saying she was shopping, and he smiled ruefully.

The temptation

When he rode the subway and looked at the well-fed and contented faces of people, he felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He gave his breakfast of two eggs and a piece of bread to the children. His wife did not even deign to kiss him, but he was used to her behavior, justifying it with pregnancy. Yes, it’s his own fault that the family ran out of money, yes, life punished him for his pride, and now he is a courier who travels around the capital from morning to late evening for a dubious income. Today, there’s only one order, which means that the money is barely enough for milk and bread. And here he is, young and handsome, with two college degrees and even a once-successful business, and if it weren’t for a couple of credits and his faith in people, he would be on horseback right now, pr