“Don’t Put on a Show for Me”
“Don’t put on a show for me, Tanya,” Alexey said, as if she had not asked him about the water on the floor, but demanded that he take a loyalty test.
Tatiana stood in the bathroom doorway, watching a thin puddle spread across the pale tiles—for the third time that week already. The puddle was almost beautiful, if it had not smelled of dampness and someone else’s confidence.
“A show?” she raised her eyebrows. “Alyosha, we have water running across the floor. Across the floor. I’m not asking who’s to blame for the fate of Russia. I’m asking why there’s a flood in my home again.”
Alexey, wearing his eternal sweatpants, scratched the back of his head. As if on purpose, there was a stain on his T-shirt—like he was in a hurry to prove that household details did not deserve attention.
“Well… the faucet probably wasn’t tightened properly. Those people… what are they called… from emergency maintenance. You were messing around here yourself yesterday.”
“I was messing around?” Tatiana slowly turned her whole body toward him, like a schoolteacher turning toward a list of failing students. “I touched the faucet exactly once: when I washed a cup. And imagine that—I managed to turn it off. An amazing ability for an adult human being.”
He sighed like a husband who was already tired of his wife, even though she had not really said anything yet.
“Tanya, why are you starting this? Your wedding is in… how long now? You’re winding yourself up. These are just coincidences.”
“Coincidences,” she repeated silently.
The word was smooth and convenient, like a rubber mat in the hallway: you could blame everything on it and keep your shoes clean.
“Coincidences?” She nodded at the wet trail. “Then explain another coincidence to me. Why does someone ring our doorbell every day? First ‘gas inspection,’ then ‘treatment,’ then ‘meter check,’ then ‘you submitted a request.’ And every time they say, ‘A man said he lives with you.’”
Alexey looked at her sharply.
For one second—honestly, like during an exam when you realize you did not study the topic.
“Because… the building is old. Because… utility services have become more active.”
“They’ve become active specifically in my apartment?” Tatiana smirked. “Oh, how nice. I’m practically chosen.”
He stepped closer and lowered his voice, as if there were witnesses around.
“Don’t dramatize. You’re smart. Think about it: who would need this?”
Tatiana looked at him for a long time.
Before, she would have said, “No one.”
Before, she would have stroked his hand and apologized for her tone.
Before, she would have believed him again—because life was easier that way.
But now, standing among wet tiles and the smell of dampness, she suddenly heard a foreign voice inside herself—her mother’s voice, strict and without tenderness:
If there are too many “accidents,” it means someone is doing it on purpose.
“So I am thinking, Alyosha,” she said quietly. “Who would need this?”
He jerked his shoulder.
“Think, then. Just without hysterics. I’m going to work.”
And he went into the kitchen as if the matter were closed.
But for her, it had only just opened.
“You Had a Request”
At the office, Tatiana pretended she was living an ordinary life: spreadsheets, payment orders, calls to suppliers, and the endless “Tanya, something doesn’t add up again.” She even smiled when necessary—in accounting, a smile functions like a stamp: you put it on, and the document seems legitimate.
Svetka from HR, a woman with a nervous laugh and eternal chocolate in her desk drawer, sat down beside her at lunch.
“What’s wrong with you?” Svetka asked, looking straight at her, the way only people who know too much about other people’s divorces can. “You look like someone who opened a utility bill and realized someone had cheated her.”
“That’s exactly it,” Tatiana said. “Only the deception isn’t in the bill.”
“O-oh,” Svetka perked up. “Is the fiancé acting strange?”
“The fiancé…” Tatiana felt something clink inside her. “The fiancé, it seems, is arranging a tour of attractions for me called ‘Guess who will come to your apartment today.’”
Svetka whistled.
“Listen, are you sure he isn’t… well… one of those men who likes to ‘prepare’ for family life?”
“What do you mean?”
Svetka leaned closer and whispered, as if there were security cameras nearby.
“My cousin… anyway, her husband did that: first ‘everything breaks by itself,’ then ‘let’s transfer it to my name, it’ll be easier,’ and then—bang!—he’s the master of life. And my cousin suddenly has no rights even to her own wardrobe.”
Tatiana slowly chewed her salad, which had suddenly turned rubbery.
“Svet… does it happen that this isn’t paranoia?”
“It happens,” Svetka nodded. “It’s called experience. A very unpleasant thing, but truthful.”
Tatiana came home late. The entrance hall smelled of something sharp: a mixture of cleaning product and someone else’s “we’re here on business.” Shadows flickered through the peephole. She came closer—and noticed that the door was ajar.
Her heart did not drop like in the movies. It simply became heavy and cold. As if someone had placed keys inside her chest.
She entered and saw two men in coveralls. They were packing a toolbox, calmly and confidently.
“Who are you?” Tatiana asked.
One of them did not even turn around.
“Treatment. By request.”
“What request?” She took a step forward and positioned herself so they could not pass by her as if she were a stool.
The second one, taller, held out a paper.
“Here’s the report. Your address, your surname.”
Tatiana took the paper, and for a second the world became flat: her address was printed neatly, and the signature… the signature resembled hers, only a little clumsier. Whoever had written it had seen her passport more than once.
“Who called you?” she asked.
“A man. Said, ‘I live here.’ Asked us to do it properly.”
Tatiana slowly raised her eyes.
“What was the man’s name?”
“Alexey. I don’t know the surname.”
She suddenly found it funny—not cheerful funny, but the kind of funny that comes from something too obviously vile. She stepped aside, letting them reach the door.
“Leave,” she said calmly. “And don’t come here again without me. If someone tells you again, ‘I live here,’ answer, ‘Show me a document.’ It’s good for your health…” She stopped herself and corrected it: “It’s good for a peaceful life.”
When the door closed behind them, she called Alexey.
“Alyosha. Did you call those people?”
“Yes,” he answered as if he were talking about a water delivery. “So what?”
“So what? I didn’t call them. And the signature isn’t mine.”
“Tanya, don’t make a tragedy out of it. I wanted what was best. We have… well… unpleasant guests sometimes. It was necessary.”
“What guests?” Tatiana was already speaking quietly so she would not snap. “No one comes here except you and me.”
“Exactly. That means we needed prevention.”
The word “prevention” was one of those words used to cover any kind of filth. Like “optimization” or “family values.”
“I see,” she said. “Then I’ll have my own prevention.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked warily.
“You’ll find out.”
And she ended the call, though before she had never done that. Before, she had always listened until the end. Before, she had always tried to be “proper.”
The Notebook
The next day Tatiana bought a thick school notebook. The most ordinary kind, squared paper. For some reason it seemed important that the object be as simple as possible: no beauty, no drama—like a report.
On the first page, she wrote:
“Facts. No emotions.”
And she began writing everything down: dates, times, who came, what they said. Even the little things—because someone else’s scheme is built out of little things.
Meanwhile, Alexey lived in her apartment as if it were the natural continuation of his biography. He made noise in the kitchen, left crumbs, swore at the television, called her “darling” when he needed to ask for something, and “Tanya” when he was irritated.
His mother, Galina Petrovna, started appearing more and more often. She always had something in her hands: a box of chocolates, a new rag “for the floor, Tanechka, since your tiles are light,” or advice that sounded like a sentence.
“Tanyusha, don’t be offended,” she would say, entering the room without invitation. “I’m practically family. A wedding is a serious matter. Everything needs to be arranged… properly.”
Tatiana smiled thinly.
“Properly how?”
Galina Petrovna sat in the kitchen as if on a throne and began:
“Well, so that later there won’t be… well, you understand… men need to feel secure. Because today there is love, and tomorrow—boom!—a suitcase.”
“A suitcase is reliable,” Tatiana said. “At least with a suitcase, you know what’s inside.”
Galina Petrovna did not catch the irony. She was generally bad at detecting other people’s irony—she believed the world had been created for her bluntness.
“That’s what I’m saying, Tanya. Alyosha needs to feel that he has a home. And a home isn’t just walls. It’s security.”
“Security in what?” Tatiana looked up. “In my apartment?”
Galina Petrovna laughed loudly, like at a company party.
“Oh, why do you take everything so literally? I’m talking about family! About trust!”
About documents, Tatiana translated silently.
And then one day, returning from the store, she saw them near the entrance. Alexey was standing beside a car—black, too expensive for his “temporary jobs.” Galina Petrovna was next to him. They were speaking in low voices, but the courtyard was quiet, and the words flew straight to Tatiana, as if on purpose.
She slowed down and hid behind a tree—not because she wanted to eavesdrop, but because her legs chose shelter on their own.
“…just a little more, and she’ll give in,” Galina Petrovna said. “I can see it—she’s already nervous. We need to press her harder.”
“We’ll press her,” Alexey answered. “Slowly. So she suggests it herself: ‘Let’s put it in your name, it’ll be calmer that way.’ Understand? So she thinks it was her idea.”
“The main thing is not to scare her off,” Galina Petrovna giggled. “She’s stubborn, but stubborn people can be broken too. Domestic life breaks everyone.”
Tatiana stood there and felt something strange: not tears, not horror—but cold clarity. As if someone had flipped a switch and the room became bright, and there it was—the dirt on the floor she had not noticed before.
She reached the apartment like an automaton. Opened the door, took off her shoes, put the bag on the table, and wrote in the notebook:
“Conversation at the entrance. Words: ‘press her,’ ‘put it in your name,’ ‘she’ll suggest it herself.’”
Then she sat down.
And for the first time in all this time, she allowed herself not to be good.
“Well then,” she said aloud. “We’ve played enough.”
The District Officer and Tea Without Sentiment
The morning began with a phone call.
“Tatiana Nikolaevna? This is District Officer Golovin.” His voice was tired, like that of a man who listens to other people’s family performances every day. “There’s a complaint against you. From your… citizen Kuzmin. He writes that you are ‘evicting him,’ ‘threatening him,’ and ‘breaking his personal belongings.’”
Tatiana was not even surprised.
“Let him write,” she said. “Let him practice.”
“I’ll come by,” the officer continued. “We’ll sort it out. But right away: no shouting, no theater. I get enough of that in the district.”
“My theater is closed,” Tatiana answered. “Now I have accounting.”
Golovin came closer to evening: a man of about forty, in uniform, with the face of someone who knows what other people’s lies look like in different price categories.
Tatiana poured him tea. She was not trying to make him like her—she simply understood that a person needed to stay on his feet, and tea helped better than morality.
“Well,” he said, looking around the kitchen, at the neat jars of grains, at the towel hanging straight. “Tell me.”
Tatiana opened the notebook.
“Here is the list of visits. Here are the names I managed to write down. Here are the dates. And here is the main thing: I heard a conversation. He and his mother planned to wear me down with domestic problems so that I would suggest transferring the apartment myself.”
Golovin grunted.
“A classic. Only people usually realize it after it’s too late.”
“I was lucky,” Tatiana said. “I hear well.”
“Do you have a recording?”
“No. But I’ll make them think I do.”
He looked at her with interest.
“And how will you do that?”
Tatiana smiled dryly.
“With calm. The scariest thing for people like that is when the victim stops being a victim. When she doesn’t get hysterical and doesn’t justify herself.”
“That was nicely said,” the officer remarked. “Almost like in a TV series, only without music.”
“The music is inside me,” she replied. “And it isn’t for dancing.”
That same evening, Tatiana wrote a message to Galina Petrovna:
“Your scheme is known. Don’t come here. Don’t play with documents anymore.”
No emojis, no exclamation marks. Even.
An hour later, Alexey called. His voice was no longer masterful.
“Tanya… what are you doing?” he spoke quickly, nervously, as if his mother were standing beside him and prompting him. “Why are you involving the police?”
“Because you involved strangers in my life,” Tatiana said calmly. “And I’m putting things in order.”
“But we… we’re almost family!”
“‘Almost’ is the key word, Alyosha. You lie to me even about the grocery list, so what kind of family can there be?”
“I’ll fix everything,” he breathed.
“Fix it. Disappear.”
She ended the call and, for the first time, felt pleasure from the silence.
Andrey from the Management Company
A few days later, a man came straight to the office, to the accounting department. He was tall, slightly balding, wearing a coat the color of wet asphalt, and he looked as if he had not come to “sort things out,” but to “apologize”—a rare breed.
“Are you Tatiana?” he asked, approaching her desk.
“Yes. And who are you?”
“Andrey. From the management company. I was sent to you once about a ‘request.’ Remember? The pipes.”
Tatiana tensed, but he immediately raised his palms like a person who understood that he looked suspicious.
“I’m not here about a request now. I’m here because of my conscience. Back then, I didn’t understand I was being used. And then…” He paused. “Then I saw that it wasn’t an emergency. It was a performance.”
“And what do you want from me?” Tatiana asked directly.
“Nothing. Just…” He coughed. “I just don’t like it when people do nasty things in a building and then everyone pretends, ‘Well, these things happen.’ We have a lot of stories like that. But usually no one says it out loud.”
“I say it,” she answered. “I’m tired of being silent.”
He nodded.
“If you want, I can help you in a human way. Legally. Locks, papers, statements—all of that can be done so that no one ever bothers you again by ‘verbal agreement.’”
Tatiana looked at him carefully.
There was no sweetness in him, no pressure. Only exhaustion from other people’s tricks and the habit of doing work properly.
“All right,” she said. “Only no heroics.”
“I’m not a hero,” he smirked. “I’m a utilities worker. Heroics end quickly for us when the entrance hall collects money for a light bulb.”
She unexpectedly smiled.
A Return With No Right to a Role
Alexey did not disappear immediately. He still tried to “return to the script”: he called, wrote messages, came by “to pick up his things,” although his things had been packed long ago—he simply wanted to check whether she would waver.
One evening he came and knocked as if he had the right.
Tatiana opened the door.
Not because she was afraid.
Because she had decided: let him see that the door was hers, and the life was hers too.
Alexey stood there rumpled, angry, but already without his former confidence.
“Tanya,” he began, “you misunderstood everything.”
“I heard everything correctly,” she replied.
“It was Mom…” he tried to put on the face of an unfortunate son.
“You’re an adult, Alyosha. Don’t hide behind your mother. Your passport doesn’t have a section that says ‘under her influence.’”
He twitched.
“I have nowhere to live.”
“Rent somewhere,” Tatiana said. “You know how to make arrangements. Especially when you forge signatures.”
“You think you won?” he hissed.
Tatiana tilted her head.
“I don’t think. I see.”
He fell silent.
For the first time—truly silent.
And in that silence there was everything: anger, confusion, and the understanding that the performance had failed.
“Can I…” he swallowed. “Can I spend the night? Just once. I’ll leave tomorrow.”
She looked at him for a long time.
What rose inside her was not pity, but fatigue. The very fatigue they had wanted to break her with. Only now fatigue was her weapon: she no longer wanted to waste strength on hatred.
“In the kitchen,” she said. “One night. In the morning, you leave. No conversations.”
“Thank you,” he breathed.
“Don’t confuse this,” Tatiana answered coldly. “This isn’t ‘thank you.’ This is a control viewing of the finale.”
That night, she barely slept. She listened to him walking, opening the cabinet, trying to breathe quietly to seem invisible. And she thought: here he is, the person who wanted to take her life—and here he is, the same person who cannot even spend one quiet night without leaving a trace.
In the morning he left.
Without a scene.
Without “I understand everything now.”
There was a note left on the table:
“You turned out not to be someone who can be pressured. I won’t come again.”
Tatiana read it, smirked, and threw it into the trash without any doubt.
Paper is paper. Something else mattered.
What mattered was that the apartment was quiet again.
Peace Is an Expensive Thing
A month passed.
Then another.
No one rang the doorbell anymore “by request.” No one came to “inspect” anything. Life in the apartment suddenly became boring—and boredom, as it turned out, was a luxury.
Andrey helped change the locks, advised her on how to properly file statements, what papers to collect so that any “verbal residents” would no longer carry weight. He did not lecture her and did not play the rescuer.
One day, when he finished working on the door, Tatiana said:
“Strange. I thought after something like this I wouldn’t be able to see anyone for a long time.”
“You can see people,” he answered, wiping his hands. “The main thing is not to hand control of your life over to those who are used to living by cunning.”
“Are you talking about Alexey now?”
“About everyone,” Andrey shrugged. “Yours just had talent. A bad talent, but still talent.”
Tatiana snorted.
“And my talent, then, was believing?”
“Was,” Andrey corrected her. “Now you have another one. You’ve learned to check.”
She looked at the kitchen: clean, warm, ordinary. At the kettle, which boiled without surprises. At the window, beyond which the courtyard lived its own life: someone was arguing over parking, someone was carrying grocery bags, someone was discussing store prices.
And suddenly she understood: for the first time in a long while, she did not want to look over her shoulder.
“You know,” she said, “I really could have broken then.”
Andrey nodded.
“You could have. But you’re not that kind. You’re an accountant. Everything has to add up for you.”
Tatiana laughed—briefly, genuinely.
“That’s true. If the numbers don’t add up, I start digging. But here—it was the people who didn’t add up.”
He looked at her attentively, without pressure.
“And the wedding…” Andrey began cautiously.
“There will be no wedding,” she answered calmly. “I’m not planning celebrations now. I’m planning my life.”
“That’s smarter,” he said.
And after some time, he started coming by more often. Then he left a screwdriver at her place “just in case.” Then a spare T-shirt. Then slippers.
There were no solemn confessions.
No “let’s talk about feelings.”
There were conversations in the kitchen—long, normal, adult conversations. About money, about parents, about how easy it is to deceive a person if they want too badly to believe.
“Have you become angry?” he asked her one day.
Tatiana thought about it.
“I’ve become precise,” she answered. “Anger is when something is still holding you. Nothing is holding me. I simply remember.”
Andrey raised his mug.
“To memory that makes us smarter.”
Tatiana clinked her mug against his.
Outside the window, rain was falling—ordinary city rain, without tragedy.
And she was not “happy” in the cinematic sense.
She was calm.
And peace, as it turned out, is an expensive thing.
It cannot be transferred into someone else’s name.
It cannot be given away to anyone at all.
