Bath Night

Cheap red wine splashed from a three-liter box with a garish picture into an ordinary kitchen glass and died out in it, without glowing as it does in sunny weather. Raisa sighed heavily and, taking a small sip of the drink, walked to the window of her small veranda. The view, frankly, was dreary, although earlier, probably, even it would have awakened

a good mood in the woman, but not now.

She had reached that threshold when maturity is already tilting, rolling its wrinkling and heavier body into old age. However, for the lady sipping wine by the veranda window, such a description would have been unfair and moreover—offensive.

At her… although, as a decent man I will omit the numbers no one needs, so, for her years, the woman's figure was wonderfully preserved, and the only consequence of the time lived was a small belly. But not the kind that swells like a torpedo melon right under the ribs, but a semicircle that forms below the navel, covering the slightly protruding pelvic bones and tapering off in a smooth line around the middle of the pubis. More than one connoisseur of female beauty would be found who, upon seeing such a thing, would only smack his lips or squint slightly, smiling and imagining how pleasant it would be to lie upon this warm flesh.

Be that as it may, Raisa herself met her reflection in the mirror with sadness and only sighed, seeing this very "belly." Even her slightly enlarged breasts over the years did not please the woman, but on the contrary, made her lament: "When you were needed, you weren't there, and when no one needs you anymore—you grew." And here it must be said that ladies' pickiness about their own appearance played its tragic role in this case, because, despite the numerical definition of her indeed small-by-nature breasts, the desired half-ovals combined perfectly with Raisa's slightly scrawny constitution and looked wonderful against the backdrop of a proportionally narrowed waist and the rounded lines of hips diverging from it in different directions.

Another matter is that the permanent depression taking hold of Raisa pushed the woman towards the ruinous hobby of wine, which immediately reflected on her appearance with a series of fine wrinkles around the eyes and lips.

Somewhere upstairs, a crash sounded, followed by a couple of seconds of silence, and then the house was filled with a child's cry. One of the young nephews had either fallen again or knocked something onto another.

— "Enough," — the woman complained to her reflection in the rain-speckled windowpane and was about to go find out what was the matter, but the rustling footsteps behind her announced that her help was no longer needed.

— "I'll check," — said Evdokia Ivanovna, Raisa's mother, hurrying to her grandson's rescue, — "By the way, you were going to help the neighbor with the pickling, what's his name again…"

— "Valera," — the woman answered gloomily.

And indeed, she had to go. Not that she was planning to, but when he asked, she said she would help, and now, as they say: once you take up the tug, don't say you're an Ingush.

— "Mom," — an angry voice was heard.

Raisa's disheveled daughter, Lyuba, burst onto the veranda.

— "Uncle says he's leaving in an hour. I'm going with him!"

After all, not every parent would take kindly to an apartment littered with bottles, chip bags, squid packages, and other Chupa Chups wrappers, in the middle of which lies a half-naked girl (thank God, not their daughter), who, by all indications, had been used by whoever and however they wanted. And the puddle of colorful mess on the way to, and in, the toilet, wasn't the most pleasant sight either. Well, and the final chord—a guy hastily pulling up his pants in the room of little, cute, beloved Lyubonka—the bunny—sealed the fate of the smallest and cutest.

— "Go ahead," — Raisa answered without expression and took a couple of sips.

The daughter rushed off to her room, and the mother looked out the window again—the rain seemed to have stopped.

"The sooner you start, the sooner you finish," — the woman thought and, downing the remaining half of the glass in one gulp, went outside.

It wasn't far to go, just climb over the fence and walk one and a half plots, which, although twice or even three times larger than the Soviet six hundred square meters, still weren't state farm fields. Wet blades of grass slipped here and there over her bare knees and calves, making Raisa cringe from the unpleasant touches, but it was too late to turn back. With quick steps, she made her way to a small outbuilding and knocked on the door; there was no response. A rope hung on the door latch.

"And he's not even here yet," — Raisa thought with chagrin and looked at her house and the sea of grass separating it from her.

The woman was halfway back when a sleepy voice called out to her.

— "Aunt Raya!"

She turned around; on the threshold of the porch she had just left stood a young man in just shorts, looking as sleepy as could be. His long hair was matted from sleep, and, coming closer, the woman saw large goosebumps covering his tanned skin.

— "Are we going to do the cucumbers?" — she asked instead of a greeting.

— "Yes, of course."

The guy sleepily bustled about, clearing the bachelor-cluttered table and bench, and Raisa watched his still awkward, sleepy movements with a light half-smile and gave commands: Need a bucket, bring currant leaves and dill umbrellas, garlic needs to be crushed, do you have coarse salt, get it… And so on, and so forth.

In the end, a five-liter bucket of cucumbers with all the seasonings and preparations was set under a weight in the shade of the house, and the woman was about to go home, but the rain started up with renewed force.

— "Aunt Raya, why don't you sit for a while, no point in getting wet for nothing?"

— "It's just to go…" — the woman replied, however, not stepping out from under the porch canopy.

— "I'll make some tea," — Valera said, not so much persuading as simply informing.

Here there was tea, and at home—wine, but between the woman and the wine was rain, and she really didn't want to walk in it.

At this point, I am forced to make a small authorial digression, for the reader may have already formed a false impression that Raisa Pavlovna was some kind of alcoholic… , and I tell you—NO! A firm and resolute—no, no, and once again NO! We all strive to relax, and everyone does it to the best of their abilities, capabilities, and desires. In this case, wine was merely an option, because rainy weather outside, compounded by heart-wrenching longing for years gone by, leaves, I swear, few outlets to drown out spiritual turmoil and longing for the past. Especially for a woman who felt for half her life that she was behind her husband's back, as if behind a stone wall, and then, to her horror, discovered huge breaches in that wall and found out that the stone had long since turned into rotten wood, eaten away by insects.

Raisa lowered her eyes, sighed, and closed the front door from the inside.

The rain continued to tap out its dreary melody for a little over an hour, and the simple neighborly conversation lasted even longer. An infrequent visitor to these parts, Valera turned out to be completely unaware of the vicissitudes of life at the native dacha, and therefore there was much to tell and also to discuss.

— "And the Losevs finished their bathhouse," — Raisa said in response to some construction topic.

— "A bathhouse is good," — Valera answered wistfully, — "I've been sitting here for a week, and because of the cold and rain, can't wash at the lake…"

— "Well, you could come over, we heat it every weekend."

— "Yeah, it's kind of awkward," — the man muttered gloomily.

— "Nonsense," — today we'll heat it and wash. Otherwise, when my husband heated it, I didn't feel very well, and I didn't wash either.

After some token refusals and bashfulness for propriety's sake, Valera agreed, and then they also noticed that the rare drops falling on the roof weren't coming from the sky, but from the foliage overhanging the outbuilding. They finished their tea, and while the man washed the dishes and dealt with other household chores, Raisa lit the stove and pumped water into a specially welded tank above it, fortunately not having to carry buckets due to the reliably excellent work of the old but brisk pump.

Then the woman got caught up in household chores as well, and she only occasionally managed to add firewood, but completely lost track of time. The two nephews, led by Evdokia Ivanovna, went to wash, the daughter left home with her uncle, and tired Raisa sat in an armchair and skimmed a couple of chapters of some novel, either a ladies' one or a crime one, though this pulp had long since been poured from the same barrel, like Georgian wine in the famous joke. The book was soporific, and the woman drifted into a doze, the snares of which fell away only upon the return of her mother and two nephews red as boiled crayfish.

— "Why heat it so much?!" — the grandmother feigned indignation for propriety's sake, entering the house and herding the grandchildren into their room, intending to read to them before bed.

Raisa didn't answer, went to her room, took fresh clothes, and was about to freshen up, but remembered she had to call the neighbor.

In principle, a married, essentially elderly woman shouldn't go to the bathhouse with a strange, essentially male, man, but a number of reasons forced Raisa to ignore this thought.

Firstly, she wanted to finish washing quickly and go to sleep; secondly, Valera, as such, wasn't a stranger, because Raisa had known him since almost preschool age, when she herself was about the same age as he is now; thirdly, finally, what could happen there, in that bathhouse? Especially when her whole face is wrinkled and her belly is like a ripe watermelon!

It should be noted that such reasoning was only partially fair, and that part concerned only the first two points, but let's leave female suspiciousness to women.

Clutching the clean change of clothes in her hands, Raisa trudged to the neighbor's porch, wincing from the still cold-wet caresses of the grass, and knocked again.

— "Yes!" — came from behind the door.

The woman entered.

— "Are you coming?"

— "Oh, yes, just a moment," — Valera bustled again, having been sitting until then in a high chair with a tablet and pencil.

Setting aside the objects of his recent activity, the guy scampered into another room, almost knocking over a cup of tea standing on the table, and shouted from there.

— "Just a sec, I'll just get clean ones."

Raisa nodded, though not paying any attention to the fact that the neighbor was unlikely to see this gesture, as he was behind the wall. Curiosity pushed the lady to peek at the strange-looking tablet that had recently been in Valera's hands. Approaching with small steps, the woman first saw a sheet of A4 paper, and then a pretty girl, smiling seductively at the viewer and completely unashamed of her nudity.

If one can put it that way, the picture once again stepped on Raisa's sore spot, as the young lady depicted there had very rounded and distinctly protruding shapes in places where the woman never had them and, conversely, smooth, flat lines where "it" had swelled.

Longing for what never was and for what had passed once again aroused a hot desire to take a drink from the three-liter box, and Raisa headed for the exit.

At the room door, she saw a figure out of the corner of her eye and turned to say she'd stop home for a couple of minutes, but, stunned, froze. The quick but careless and slightly feral man had forgotten to close the door tightly, and it had opened, leaving a gap of about fifteen centimeters, through which it was perfectly clear how Valera was rummaging in the closet, standing before it in his birthday suit.

The woman involuntarily appraised the toned body. Not exactly muscular, but sinewy, slender, still youthful. Outlined buttocks and calves, a deep, even hollow across the back, shoulders of medium width, divided in half by hair tied in a ponytail. And an even, approximately uniform tan all over the body.

Her husband had long since grown fat, spread out, and stopped taking care of himself, gradually drinking himself into a stupor. Her lover had left, driving her into depression with his justifications, and looking at Valera, Raisa involuntarily smiled. Yes, not an Apollo, but youth nourished her gaze and wounded soul with every movement. How can one convey this admiration to an insensate sheet of paper? Just as a ballet lover admires a first-class ballet dancer, a horse breeder admires a pedigreed stallion, a philatelist devours a coveted stamp with his eyes, inserting it into his album and assessing how it looks in its place, and a mother watches her growing child frolic nearby.

It has no name and many names: tenderness and joy, and most of all desire, but not that vulgarized, carnal one, but a spiritual one. As if you're looking at an image and can't get enough, unable to tear your eyes away.

Only, unfortunately, Valera was unaware that he should have turned into a statue for a while. Instead, he turned around and, not noticing he was being watched, began rummaging in a pile of laundry lying on the sofa.

Raisa blushed like a girl and, slipping to the door, shouted:

— "I'll stop by home, so get ready and go straight to the bathhouse, and I'll come later."

— "Okay, Aunt Raya."

All the way home, the image of the naked man's body stood before her eyes, as if imprinted on her pupil like on photographic film. The shadows fell on the turned Valera in such a way that spots of light favorably emphasized all parts of his body, retouching the flaws with shadows and making them unnoticeable. The hollows of the eye sockets deepened slightly, leaving only a mischievous glint of the pupil and even arcs of eyebrows visible; the slightly crooked, not small nose gave the face masculinity, while narrow cheekbones and slightly full lips diluted it with neatness and even a slight femininity.

The head, outlined by a black line of hair above a wide forehead, was transformed by a halo of the same hair that had escaped the ponytail and, in the light, played with brown shades, like nougat and chocolate in American candy bar commercials. All this was crowned by a moderately long neck with a pronounced Adam's apple. The shoulders were even, but in the oblique light, the collarbone and the hollows under and behind them became clearly visible. The chest, sunken at first glance, also stood out with even contours, and when moving, even played with muscles. The abs, smooth-looking in daylight, were covered with an indistinct grid of cubes. Exactly the kind a normal man who doesn't overdo the gym should have.

A narrow trail of hair led straight down from the dark circle of the navel, gradually widening and spreading in two along the inner sides of the thighs, split, like water by a bridge support, by the long, even in a calm state, member, which seemed to emerge from the surrounding slightly curly vegetation that ended neatly at its base. Below the phallus was an equally clean, childishly hairless scrotal sac. However, only in this did it resemble a child's, as the size of what it contained was the most adult there could be.

The streams of hair spreading over the thighs gradually shallowed and disappeared somewhere towards their middle, leaving the clearly protruding muscles of strong legs free from their burden. Long and incredibly slender. The following contours