As I stepped out of the elevator onto my floor, I nearly broke my legs tripping over two enormous leopard-print suitcases.
That morning I had left a quiet apartment, and now I had come back to a branch of a free homeless shelter set up right there on the stair landing.
My mother-in-law, Zinaida Markovna, was enthroned on her trunk like the Queen of the Sea. Beside her, leaning against the wall, stood my thirty-year-old sister-in-law Zoya, enthusiastically working away with a nail file.
“Anya, hurry up and open the door, we’re tired from the road!”
I had barely frozen in shock in front of the door when, the moment the lock clicked, this landing party of freeloading enthusiasts brazenly pushed me aside and marched into the hallway as if they owned the place. Zoya’s sickly-sweet perfume made my eyes water in the cramped corridor.
“Zoyenka and I will stay with you for a couple of weeks. We’ll start settling in right now,” Zinaida Markovna announced, kicking off her shoes.
I silently took off my raincoat.
My husband was delayed at work, wrapping up the last tasks before our big vacation. So I had to face these uninvited guests alone.
“Good evening. And warning me first?” I crossed my arms over my chest and disgustedly pushed Zoya’s bag out of the way with my foot. “This isn’t a free sanatorium.”
“Oh, what formalities could there possibly be!” Zinaida Markovna waved me off. “I came to visit my own son. I have every right.”
“To my apartment, which I bought and paid off before marriage,” I calmly reminded her. “Still, why two weeks? And why all the trunks?”
Zoya finally tore herself away from her manicure and gave me an appraising look.
“I’ll put your cheap creams in the bedroom straight into a drawer,” she said carelessly, glancing around the hallway.
“I’m allergic to chemicals, so I need room for my elite serums. And tell my brother to buy fresh trout, avocados, and asparagus tomorrow. I’m not going to live on store-bought dumplings.”
I slowly lowered myself onto the little ottoman in the hallway.
“Trout and asparagus. You don’t ask for much, do you?” I smirked. “And where exactly are you planning to sleep?”
“In your bedroom, obviously. I have scoliosis!” my sister-in-law snorted.
“You’re young. You’ll manage on the sofa in the living room. Just buy dark curtains. The sun bothers me when I sleep.”
“Interesting.”
I laced my fingers together and looked at my mother-in-law.
“Zinaida Markovna, why aren’t you at the dacha? You spent half a year bragging to everyone about how beautifully the nightingales sing there.”
A sly, purely merchant-like gleam flashed in my mother-in-law’s eyes.
“Anya, money is tight for everyone right now. We rented out the dacha and the apartment. They’re paying triple! It would’ve been a sin to miss out on that little profit. And you have spare square meters sitting empty anyway. We save money, and at the same time we’ll see what kind of homemaker you are.”
The puzzle clicked into place.
They had rented out their own property to make money, and they had come to eat expensive fish and sleep on someone else’s orthopedic mattresses at my expense. A perfect parasitic scheme.
“We prefer breakfast at nine,” Zoya added in the tone of a spoiled princess.
“And iron the bed linen on both sides. Misha said you just stare at a monitor all day long.”
“Zinaida Markovna,” I said very quietly. “Saltykov-Shchedrin has a wonderful character — Judas Golovlyov. He also loved robbing his relatives while hiding behind holy concern. Tell me honestly, when was the last time you picked up the classics?”
Zoya angrily shoved the nail file into her jacket pocket.
“How dare you talk to me like that?!” she squealed.
“I’m merely applauding your greed,” I smiled. “But in your brilliant calculations, you missed one tiny detail.”
“What detail?” my mother-in-law narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
“At eight tomorrow morning, a cleaning crew is coming here, and in the evening, the technicians arrive. The apartment is being connected to a monitored security alarm system.”
My mother-in-law flushed a deep red.
“What security?!” she roared, nervously tugging at the strap of her bag. “Where are we supposed to live? We already gave the keys to the tenants!”
“I can give you the address of a cheap hostel near the train station,” I offered politely. “And your elite asparagus can be perfectly steamed there with an immersion heater right in a glass jar.”
Zoya began to shake.
“You made that up on purpose, you bitch!” she shrieked. “Call Misha! Immediately! Tell him to cancel the security.”
“Call him.”
I took out my phone, unlocked the screen, and tossed it onto the cabinet in the hallway.
“Right now. And put it on speaker.”
Zinaida Markovna grabbed the phone with trembling fingers. The long rings sounded deafening. Finally, my husband answered.
“Misha!” my mother-in-law wailed tragically. “Your wife has gone insane! She’s throwing us out onto the street! She made up some security system, she’s mocking us! Put her in her place right now!”
A heavy, irritated sigh came from the speaker.
“Mom, are you completely out of your mind?” Mikhail asked harshly.
“I told you in plain Russian last week: we won’t be here for the holidays. We’re flying away on vacation. The apartment will be locked up.”
“But we rented out the dacha…” Zinaida Markovna’s voice deflated into a pathetic squeak. “We wanted to save money…”
“You created this rental mess behind our backs, so now get yourselves out of it,” her son snapped.
“And most importantly: you are currently on Anya’s property. Whatever she decides, that’s how it will be. I’m in a meeting.”
The short beeps sounded like a sentence.
Zoya clutched her leopard-print trunk with white fingers. Zinaida Markovna swallowed convulsively and looked into my eyes with a fawning expression.
“Anechka… well, we were joking about the trout. We’ll go to the store ourselves. And I’ll iron the linen. Why quarrel over nonsense? We really have nowhere to go…”
I slowly rose from the ottoman, stepped toward the front door, and opened it wide.
“I’m giving you exactly one minute. Take your belongings and get out. The clock is ticking.”
Their packing was lightning-fast, especially since they hadn’t managed to unpack anything yet. No one mentioned the bad back or the elite allergy anymore. Silently, snorting with anger, they dragged their trunks back out onto the stair landing.
And there, the final surprise was waiting for them. The elevator doors opened, and out stepped our neighbor Aunt Ira — the main and most sharp-tongued gossip in the entire building.
“Oh, Zinaida Markovna!” the neighbor exclaimed joyfully across the whole entrance hall, glancing at their suitcases.
“Moving out already? But you were bragging to everyone in the yard that you’d come to your daughter-in-law’s for a whole month to put things in order! Got kicked out, did you?”
My mother-in-law found no answer. Silently and hunched over, she shoved her trunks into the saving elevator cabin, hiding her face, red with shame.
Never allow arrogant relatives to turn your kindness into a convenient parking spot for their shamelessness.