A strong character sometimes complicates life. Especially if strength is understood as the inability to make concessions.
“Let’s break the stereotypes!” – the journalist Turaeva told the engineer Shubin when they arranged a meeting. Turaeva could afford this: she was a very famous journalist – she interviewed ministers and oligarchs and hosted a radio program. But engineer Shubin was also not easy – a month ago he invented, for a moment, a new engine for a car, the patent had already been bought by Daimler, so he is a future millionaire and a star of the technosphere.
And the conversation was like this. This Shubin probably already felt like a star and a genius, and therefore he scheduled an interview for her at 7.30 in the morning at his house. Because at 8.15 he leaves, and then everything is very tight for him. Turaeva decided to respond with impudence to impudence and gently explained that, firstly, she was an owl, and secondly, she constantly lives in the country. “So let’s, Sergey Ignatievich, meet at nine o’clock in the evening, huh?” “At ten,” said Shubin, and dictated his address.
He lived in an old house on Sadovaya; his grandfather and great-grandfather were famous engineers, “and then the engineer was like a top manager now and even cooler,” he said, showing Turaeva yellow photographs framed by mahogany. He sat her down at the table under a low chandelier and poured her tea. She took out a voice recorder and a notepad. He looked at her and suddenly said: “I’ll leave you for ten minutes,” and left the room. The front door slammed. Turaeva shrugged her shoulders, sat at the table, then walked around the apartment. No trace of the woman. She even looked into the bathroom. Nothing – no cream, no lipstick, no hair on the sink. Not to mention the pantyhose on the pipe.
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“Let’s not break stereotypes,” he said when he returned. We will do the interview tomorrow at 7.30. Here, I bought you a toothbrush.”
In the morning she saw that on the bedside table was a bronze maiden with a frosted lampshade in her hand. She turned to her right side. At the other end of the bed was a similar lamp, but the lamp was held by a young man. “What order in everything!” she said out loud and laughed. He was not in bed, only a neatly folded blanket. She got up, went naked into the corridor, opened the next door. The clock in the corner struck two quarters. Shubin, already in a suit and tie, was sitting at the computer. “Hey!” She stepped towards him. “Half-past seven,” he said dryly, without looking up. We are working, no?
So she decided that she dreamed it all.
Six months later, they collided at a car dealership.
“Where are you going? – he said. “I called!”
“Three business trips in a row: States, Vienna, London, everything is very tight.”
– “How are you today?”
“Unfortunately, I’m getting married.”
– “Well, unfortunately,” he said, “then I, fortunately, have not yet married.” He took her by the hand and led her to the exit.