Intertwined Fates. Ariana Bazhenova

to talk about its magnificence while looking out the window at the beautiful architecture of St. Petersburg?

      – Not at all. I don’t like Moscow, it’s too noisy there. I’ve lived in St. Petersburg since birth and I love this city. Sometimes I go to Petrogradka on business, it’s a pleasant nostalgia, I used to teach there at the university.

      We chatted a little more and fell silent, listening to the presenter. Half of the first lecture was over, and the participants split into teams, completing the task. We, the speakers, remained in our seats, left to our own devices, and huddled together.

      – We need to pour some tea, – Leo stretched, turned and looked at me. Tenderness flashed in his gaze – he dared to show it, asking patronizingly. – Should I bring you some tea?

      I nodded contentedly, he returned from the common table with two glasses and sat down next to me again. A colleague standing next to us glanced at us and said with deliberate innocence:

      – Leo, you participate in everything here. How does your wife even let you go? Do you only come home to sleep or something?

      – Well, yeah! What? – Leo smiled broadly and laughed.

      I grinned slyly and looked up at my colleague, Nikita. Our eyes met. At the last meeting, where I blurted out an inappropriate mention of a book, he, looking at Leo and me sitting next to each other, suddenly brought up the topic of cheating and mistresses. The members of the meeting immediately picked it up, and the air was filled with general merriment and jokes – instead of adults, their inner children were sitting at the table, giggling at the opportunity to discuss a forbidden, sensitive topic. Their glances kept returning to us. I laughed boldly along with everyone else – I was flattered by the thought that Leo and I were causing them such associations, because we were not, in fact, lovers. Today the situation repeated itself. Perhaps, when we were close, we had already seen each other and felt like one whole, and the force of attraction between us was obvious to everyone?

      Then the conversation of my colleagues turned to a professional channel. I loved being around smart people, with a sparkle in their eyes discussing their work, and I tried to understand their scientific lexicon, but so far I was not doing well.

      – Well, in general, our programs are not something new! We simply modernize existing solutions and resell them, – concluded Nikita.

      – And how ethical is it to sell such a program under the guise of a new one? – I cut into the conversation, catching a familiar wave about ethics.

      – If you correctly present the benefits to the user, then it is ethical. You know about the placebo effect, right?

      – I know, – I nodded. – People are cured of dummies by faith in their effectiveness. Self-hypnosis.

      – Exactly. And in this case, faith in the best outcome plays a role – when you launch the result of long work, only this remains.

      «Maybe Leo’s openness to me today is also self-hypnosis?» flashed through my head. I glanced at him again, sitting next to me, and felt some vague changes in him. «No, today he clearly behaves differently. It doesn’t seem to me.»

      Leo and a couple of other employees continued discussing programming, going into the wilds of scientific terms. Standing up to stretch, I slowly walked around the room, looking at the hard-working groups of participants. Nikita and another employee, Nina, a young girl like me, with a sly look, with whom I sometimes crossed paths in the workshops and politely smiled, slowly approached me.

      – And why are you dressed up like that today? – She asked ingratiatingly.

      I was confused. Once a friend from my department relayed a conversation between her and Nina, during which I learned that she also liked Leo, and if it weren’t for her fiancé, she wouldn’t have restrained herself. Now I could clearly see it in her behavior – when we were alone with her and Leo, she would start flirting with him, and her movements would become emphatically languid. But, to my inner glee, he always showed that he preferred me, and she would briefly retreat into the shadows, slightly pursing her lips in annoyance. What was this – a desire to hurt him no matter what?

      – Well… Today is the performance, – I shrugged, unable to come up with anything more intelligible.

      – Here? – Nina grinned, crossing her arms and looking down at me.

      «What are you getting into? Not only is Leo married, but you’re engaged yourself,» I frowned and clenched my jaw. «You’ve been working with him longer than I have, and if he was interested in you, he would have shown it. You should just envy me silently.»

      «Here,» I said, nodding with satisfaction and not making any excuses.

      She turned to her colleague and asked pointedly sarcastically:

      «Nikita, why aren’t you dressed up today then?»

      «He doesn’t need to, he’s always handsome anyway,» I got ahead of her maneuver and stretched my lips into a playful smile.

      «Oh! Thank you! It’s nice to get a compliment from such a girl!» Nikita blurted out in surprise, smiling sincerely at me.

      I bowed playfully and returned to my seat, next to Leo. The lecture began again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him move slightly closer to me. Suddenly, I felt him take my forearm and gently pull me towards him. He leaned down to my ear and whispered a dirty joke, and I couldn’t help but let out a small giggle from both of us. I looked up and saw my boss staring at me, but I couldn’t quite place what she was looking at. I looked down and noticed how Leo had been fidgeting with the ring on his finger since the event began, as if it had been bothering him, like an annoying inconvenience that he had to put up with, and he wanted to get rid of it. «He doesn’t like being married. At least not yet,» I noted to myself.

      «Where are you going for lunch?» he whispered in my ear.

      «I don’t know yet, why?»

      «Let’s go somewhere? I’ll show you.» They serve good shawarma there, – he added in a whisper, and I nodded eagerly, wanting to prolong the minutes next to him.

      It was time for lunch. In front of the employees, we stood up and left the room together, taking a colleague from his department with us. We were crossing the street filled with cars and people, when suddenly my phone rang.

      – Where are you? – the boss’s voice sounded – without emotion, which did not bode well, but I was so excited that I did not pay attention to it.

      – We went to eat shawarma, we will be back on time, – I answered emphatically calmly and hung up.

      – What, surveillance? – Leo laughed.

      – Yeah, – I nodded.

      The weather had cleared up, the winter sun was shining brightly. Joyful excitement was in the air. I put the phone down and confidently walked forward, when suddenly I felt someone put an arm around my shoulders, stopped me and turned me in the other direction.

      – Where are you going? We’re going there, – Leo blurted out, as if slightly embarrassed.

      I nodded happily, and we continued on our way. This sudden touch became another bright puzzle in my picture, which I had been patiently assembling since the summer. Having reached the place, we sat down at a table. Leo and his colleague ate shawarma with appetite, but I was so nervous before the performance that I couldn’t eat a single bite, so I limited myself to tea.

      – A new aggregate state of shawarma, – I joked and shrugged, nodding at the glass teapot with green liquid.

      Smoothly our conversation flowed into the mainstream of psychology and philosophy, in which I was like a fish in water.

      – …Schopenhauer