Lydia Grigorievna had no taste for dacha life, so she stayed behind when, one September day, Nina and her father went to visit their plank cottage ostensibly to do some small repair jobs and sort out some old stuff which was kept there, but actually, to have some together time. On the neighboring plots, bonfires of old leaves were being burnt spreading bitter-sweet smoke, and everything was like old times – except that mama was not there. On their way back, Nina’s father suggested uneasily that it made sense to sell the dacha. Nina gave no response to that, and he dropped the matter.

For a couple of years, things got more or less settled down. Nina’s father worked a lot, and the company expanded. When Nina visited him at his place, he would have a couple of drinks and talk enthusiastically about his plans. He looked young and happy. Lydia Grigorievna did not stop them from seeing each other but she was always present at their meetings and took every opportunity to show – by some word or gesture – that it was her home and her man. Nina detested her as before, but deep inside, she accepted the woman and reconciled herself to the fact that her only family – her dear papa – had to be shared with someone else.

At work, she was doing fine. Within a short period of time, she distinguished herself from a group of young business school graduates who had been recruited as the company had expanded. At first, they all were attached as trainees to experienced analysts and loaded with routine, technical operations. Nina’s mates complained about the work load, resentful at not getting a chance to show their true worth. They all were ambitious and fancied themselves financial geniuses. Nina was ambitious, too, but she never complained. Instead, she kept grinding through heaps of standard computations, polishing her skills to perfection and mastering computer software. In the evenings, she ploughed through specialized financial literature focusing on the construction industry finances. Soon Nina was marked out by her superiors who started charging her with independent tasks.

For a long time after her divorce from Dima, Nina did not have anyone. She did not feel any need for sex – Dima had not wakened her to that. The idea of going to bed with a man was neither repugnant nor exciting to her. In her narrow world, there was no room for anything but work. She did not consider herself deprived in any way, neither was she interested in the opinion of her friends whom she was seeing two or three times a year at somebody’s birthday. And yet… One evening, as she was walking through a park to her house, she saw a kissing couple. It was an incident of no importance, of course, but a hot wave spread suddenly in her breast. Nina quickened her pace, went up to her apartment, took a shower, had some supper and got down to her financial surveys. However, her mind refused to take in the numbers and graphs; instead, it kept picturing two intertwined bodies in the evening dusk. It was at least half an hour before she could get to the meaning of what she was reading. Ever since, she would turn away painstakingly from any couple that she saw in the street or in the underground, be it a couple which were quite innocently holding hands.

One night, somebody called her by mistake. It was a late hour, and Nina was in bed preparing for sleep – relaxing her body and brain by a special technique that she had picked up from some book. The idea was to talk to each of her organs in turn – to thank them for the day’s work and bid them good night. It was her heart that she was talking to when the phone rang. Bewildered, Nina answered. A deep male baritone said, “Ninochka, baby, is that you? … At last! How are you, pet?” Somehow, Nina was slow to realize that it was a mistake, and then it took her some time to make the man realize it. He kept saying, “Hey, baby, stop kidding me. You’re mad at me, eh? … Don’t be mad, sweetie. I love my pet.” On hanging up, Nina snorted. ’Baby’, ‘pet’… How vulgar! What kind of woman allowed a man to call her that? Nina resumed her going-to-sleep routine but it did not work as it should – she lay awake for a long time afterwards although she had talked to each of her organs for three times. When it was well after midnight, she admitted to herself that she did not mind being called ‘pet’ – even by someone who did not possess such a velvety baritone.

Then Igor happened in her life. About ten years older than she, he was a section manager in the same company. Nina had never dealt with him work-wise and hardly knew him. The two of them hooked up all of a sudden at a celebration of the company’s tenth anniversary. Nina found herself next to Igor at the table. He was attentive to her, entertained her with incessant jokes, and drank a lot. Nina also drank – too much by her measure. They danced, took part in some contests and games. Then they drank again. Eventually, Igor wound up in Nina’s apartment. Both of them were very drunk, hardly able to move, so sex was out of the question. Nina bedded Igor down on a cot she had put up in the kitchen and collapsed right away onto her bed without even changing into her nightie.

The next morning, she was woken up by a rattling sound coming from the kitchen – somebody was using the kettle there. Nina’s head was splitting. She remembered that she had a man in her home – that she had brought the man herself – but she had absolutely no idea as to why she had done that. Suffering from a terrible headache and suspecting herself of insanity, Nina dragged herself to the kitchen. Igor was in a wretched state, too – he had drunk about three times as much as she had and was having a severe hangover. The two of them made some super-strong coffee and drank it while chewing aspirin pills.

Nina asked Igor if he wanted to make a call home to tell them not to worry about him but the man waved the suggestion aside. He was married and had a son, but for a few months already he had been separated from his family. “What the hell does she want from me? Stupid skirt,” Igor said meaning his wife. “And there’s her dear mother, too… You see, they’ve totally driven me to the edge with their nagging.” Igor was staying in the apartment of some friend who had gone abroad. “So nobody’s going to miss me,” he summed up with a wry grin.

Nina took a close look at him. He was rather well-built, though with a noticeable belly. Not very good-looking at his best, he looked a real fright now that he was having a bad hangover. However, Nina realized why she had brought him to her place – as at the party the night before, she felt at ease and relaxed with that man as if they had known each other for a long time.

When they had finished their coffee, Nina saw him out. They did not as much as kiss goodbye, but on Saturday that same week he came to her place again and they became lovers.

Nina asked herself afterwards whether her relationship with Igor could be called love. In fact, she had nothing to compare it with – her marriage to Dima did not count, and she did not believe in love as depicted in movies and novels. Every weekend, Igor came over and stayed overnight. Nina got used to his visits and anticipated them. While normally managing with ready meals from the microwave, she did real cooking for Igor. She would serve him and then watch him eat with her head rested on her knuckles. Having made some tea the way he liked it, she filled a large cup which she had bought specially for him. As he was drinking his tea, she listened to his stories. Igor was great at telling stories – he remembered lots of funny episodes, and showed admirably their colleagues, the company’s bosses, and the clients. Often there was more to his stories than just empty fun – Nina learned from them the backstage ways of business, something that one did not read about in books or articles.

In the company, they were hiding their relationship – Igor wanted it to be that way, and she did, too. As a rule, things like that get out soon, but it is usually because the woman who is having an affair with a colleague babbles it out to some friend herself. Nina did not share her personal life with anyone – neither had she any friends in the company – so her intimacy with Igor remained secret.

Igor was an experienced man – there was no need to slip him brochures on sex. In bed, he employed a wide range of techniques, and Nina allowed him to do anything, although what she really liked was the prelude – their first hugs and caresses, as they were dressed yet and he was her good friend Igor rather than an expert male. Also, she liked going to sleep by his side when, having accomplished all his feats, he became human again. “Sleep well, kid,” he would say, kissing her. “Well, I guess, ‘kid’ is better than ‘pet’,” she smiled to herself, breathing in his agreeable and already so familiar smell.

Nina and her father once arranged to have a meeting after work – Yevgeniy Borisovich started to take his daughter seriously as a specialist and meant to ask her advice on some bank loan matter. Having arrived at the office building where she worked, he waited for her in the street. When Nina came out to meet him, Igor happened to be around, too. Embarrassed, Nina introduced the two men to each other, and as they were shaking hands, was struck by their semblance – close in height and hair color, they had the same voice quality, the same type of starting baldness and the same manner of smiling.

An educated girl, Nina had read about Freud’s teaching. She shuddered at the thought: could it be that, being unconsciously attracted to her father, she had found a substitute for him in Igor? She rejected the thought with indignation but was never able to put it out of her head. One evening, after a hard working day, they were sitting at table in her kitchen, drinking tea. The TV set in the corner was on, in mute mode. It showed a beatnik-looking guy who was singing to his own guitar accompaniment. “Turn the sound on, please. I want to listen,” Igor asked. “You know, in my younger days I did some singing in an amateur way, even wrote songs of my own. If you like, I’ll bring a guitar next time and sing a couple for you.” “No!” Nina cried out frightened by the discovery that Igor was like her father in that, too. Igor was surprised and clearly hurt.

Those freudist fears made it more difficult for her to make love to Igor. The inward clenching that had possessed her in her marriage to Dima was back again – as she got in bed with Igor, she involuntarily thought of her father, and her trying to drive those thoughts away only made it worse. Apparently feeling something, Igor reduced his male program – gave up his attempts to inflame her with his skill. They would sit in the kitchen chatting until late at night and then, after a brief sex, go to sleep. Nina liked it that way.