Flowers for a First Date

“A-а-again!!!” Alena angrily shouted and threw a package with a sliced-baton loaf at the kitchen wall. “You parasite!!! Just wait, Zinа!!! You’ll regret it…"

Her last words, spoken by an enraged young woman, could already be heard on the stair landing. She shot up to the top floor like a startled bird and began pounding on the door of the apartment right above her own. A couple of minutes later, the door flew open, and Alena was faced with a stranger: a man in blue, excessively shiny track pants—which immediately and unmistakably gave away their retail происхождение—and a black T-shirt, which also, no doubt, was stolen goods.

“Where’s Zina?!” Alena bellowed without waiting for an answer, pushed the Black T-shirt aside, rushed into the apartment, and stopped dead in the doorway, stunned. Zina’s room was nothing like Zina’s room. If it weren’t that Koroedova’s apartment was on the top floor, Alena would even have thought, blinded by anger, that she’d accidentally gone one floor higher.

She turned to the Black T-shirt and—somehow, for no clear reason—asked:

“Is this… really… apartment one hundred and fifty-six?”

“One hundred and fifty-six…” the Black T-shirt confirmed, confused.

“Really?!” Alena was surprised. She took one more careful look at the empty sections of the unfamiliar “wall” unit, with bulky bundles of things scattered on the floor with no rhyme or reason, and asked—though she already knew the nasty Zina wouldn’t be found among these bundles. “Then where is Zinaida Mikhailovna? You know… Koroedova…”

“Zinaida Mikhailovna… well, she moved. We exchanged apartments,” the Black T-shirt explained.

“Exchanged apartments,” Alena repeated. “So, Zina’s not here….”