Tension. Dating story no. 20

It all happened at an advertising agency. Sasha and Nastya were the leading specialists in the business of making things beautiful, and eternal rivals who were destined either to raise the agency to heights it had never seen before or to sink it for good.

Nastya was stunning: regular features, a lively look in her eye, stylish outfits, beautifully done hair and a mesmerising love for herself. Not vanity — precisely love for herself, a sincere admiration for her own person and her own body, which was infectious to everyone around her. Nastya could find the right approach to anyone at all and could sell any project, which was why she was so often sent to negotiate. She had built up a huge network of contacts; people recognised her and ran after her. She seemed to give off some sort of fluid that enchanted everyone around her and gave them a sense of the unreal, of a fairy tale quality to existence...

“That is all rubbish! Pretty eyes are not enough to create an advertising concept! For that you need a brain!” Sasha would announce as if in passing, forcibly bringing everyone back down to this sinful earth. “So those of you whose brains have not yet switched off, kindly turn your attention to the presentation!”

And it was not that Nastya was stupid — quite the opposite, professionals of her calibre are hard to come by. It was rather that Sasha was altogether too fond of underlining how very clever he was, which sometimes reduced the younger trainees, especially the gentle, dreamy young women, to tears and hysterics.

Clever he undoubtedly was: one of those who had caught the tail end of a Soviet education, which gave them the right to feel superior to all the poor benighted rest. What set him apart was goodness knows how many diplomas, the ability to quote some Nietzsche or other at any hour of the day or night, the broadest knowledge of history, philosophy, literature, psychology and advertising, the ability to squeeze three pages' worth of meaning into a three-word phrase, a sharp and sarcastic line in abuse of politicians and businessmen and, naturally, the ability to come up with creative solutions that blew the minds of clients and colleagues alike. All in all, had he not been so brilliant he would have been drawn and quartered. Naturally Sasha had fewer fans than Nastya, but even those who could not stand the sight of him enjoyed watching him work.

“I agree with our Koshchei the Deathless,” Nastya said smugly — Koshchei being the gaunt, bony villain of Russian fairy tales — glancing at her smirking colleagues and at Sasha, who was clearly pleased to accept the “compliment” — he really was lanky and angular. “Do note that the concept developed by my team has been approved by the target groups and by the client, and the first launch is planned for next week.”

Skirmishes of roughly that kind livened up even the dreariest meetings and planning sessions, magnetising the air with intellectual pheromones and honing the wit of both stars of the agency. Until one day the agency landed the job of a complete rebranding for one of the country's leading mobile operators: a contract worth a million that was going to take the agency to a whole new level. And that was no laughing matter: Sasha and Nastya both stiffened like hunting dogs on point, determined to do anything at all to have the job assigned to them. And the moment the starting shot was fired, the duel of the millennium began.

Work boiled away in both teams: surveys were run, preferences researched, brainstorms held, drafts and sketches ripped mercilessly to shreds; the tension mounted and the air grew thick. At every meeting Sasha and Nastya exchanged jealous glances and rather haughty remarks. As the final presentation drew closer, every last resource was thrown into the battle; staff crawled home from the office on their last legs, and the coffee supplies in the kitchen began to vanish at record speed. Sasha and Nastya were the first to arrive at the office and the last to leave, and neither of them paid the slightest attention to advice to rest or take their mind off it.

One more late evening, having sat in the office far too long, Nastya realised that if she did not get a breath of fresh air right now she would simply faint. She went up to the floor with the conference and meeting rooms, slipped out onto the balcony and drew in the fresh air with the delight of a traveller half dead from thirst who has finally got hold of a full flask. The city spread out beneath her in all its beauty, blinking with lights, shimmering with advertising banners, flowing with cars and pulsing to a musical rhythm of its own. It was mesmerisingly beautiful, alluring — and it was then that she saw what advertising concept she could offer: this very beauty, mesmerising, breathtaking, so close and so invisible to those who scurry about down there like ants, unaware that they are part of a creature so great and so alive, merciful and merciless, mean and generous all at once. This was the moment for which all that running about, all that fuss and chaos had been arranged. It was a moment of illumination, almost of orgasm, of the highest pleasure and the greatest clarity.

“It is a pleasure to see you this happy!”

Nastya jumped in surprise: it turned out that Sasha had been sitting on the same balcony all along, watching her with interest.

“What are you doing here?”

“I am hoping that access to oxygen will help my brain work better.”

“Right...” Nastya wisely decided not to mention that the method had just worked for her.

“We have worked ourselves into the ground; we notice nothing except this damned project...” Sasha got up and came over to the railing. “And meanwhile life goes on, life races past...”

Nastya looked at Sasha almost tenderly: for once he had dropped his armour of sarcasm and was simply thoughtful, attractive, a little mysterious. And then, against the background of all those illuminations and events, something happened, and the whole world turned upside down. The beauty of the city, and the reflections of the night lights in his eyes, and the warmth of his hands...

“And how do you want to live from here on?” Sasha asked half an hour later.

“Well, this is all nothing serious, is it? I mean, not that serious...” she stammered.

“No, right, just letting off the tension...” he answered. “By the way, did you know what the lads in the department have come up with? The SaNa-meter.”

“The SaNa-meter?”

“That is right, the Sasha-Nastya-meter — a gauge of the tension between us, which is supposed to tell them when the two of us will finally finish each other off.”

“Witty...”

“Yes, and their SaNa-meter is done for now, well and truly done for!” Sasha smirked.

In the morning Nastya could hardly wait for her colleagues to arrive so that she could set out the lines of work. Drafts with sketches and notes were scattered across the table, and Nastya was glowing brighter than ever. Against the background of her brilliant concept nobody paid this much attention and, still less, connected it with the fact that Sasha's barbs and digs at her expense had become an order of magnitude gentler, not to say tender.

The work boiled on, beauty was being born, taking shape and acquiring form and content, the hours flew by at supersonic speed, and after work Sasha and Nastya managed to fit in a restaurant or a bar. At the office there were those wonderful “secret” signs of attention that everybody could see, the half-glances, the half-touches, as if by accident, as if by chance. Sasha became a frequent visitor to Nastya's part of the firm, consulting her and tossing in ideas — until he happened to see what she had been working on.

“Well, that is it, I have lost!” he admitted, without any great disappointment.

“Not necessarily, you are such a genius after all!” Nastya protested, to the considerable astonishment of the colleagues walking past.

“All I can do is believe in magic — and you have created it.”

In due course Nastya's concept was received with delight by the company's representatives, the staff breathed out in relief, and Sasha gave Nastya a well-deserved “honeymoon week”. Life settled back into the old, familiar groove, without overtime and without stress. Routine broke into Nastya and Sasha's relationship as well. There were no more deadlines, no more tension, no more running about. What remained were obligations, expectations, restrictions and all the other delights of family life once the honeymoon is over.

Nastya expected finer courtship, more presence, more attention and care, as befits a beautiful and stable relationship. Sasha seemed to escape into his work, throwing himself headlong into the next project and all but ignoring Nastya. For a while she ran after him, invited him to events, and then at some point she would grow tired of running after him, lose her temper, get upset, decide that she was not good enough, suffer and start avoiding Sasha. Sasha would get furious, complain that there was no point playing the victim like that, start being caustic — and then, having pushed it too far, would become incredibly romantic, would start winning Nastya back and asking forgiveness not in words but in deeds. Nastya would melt, take him back, they would spend time together, and once again Sasha would begin to feel stifled. Not by Nastya, no — she, in fact, gave him complete freedom. It was rather the awareness of that routine, the awareness of having constantly to do something for this relationship. And off he would run into the next project.

Any pendulum, however hard you swing it, sooner or later slows down and stops. So it was with them: each time, the attempts to run away and to catch up grew weaker, and the sex more routine and less frequent. Sooner or later they no longer quite understood what it was that used to set them alight in each other, what it was that had brought that spark into their relationship. Were they really destined to become a grey, ordinary couple like most others, with nothing remarkable or striking about them, Nastya wondered, doing her utmost to rekindle Sasha so that it would be the way it had been before. Alas, neither of them knew how to bring back to their relationship the brightness and intensity it had had at the beginning.

And then their agency landed another big job, this time from a major sportswear manufacturer. It was yet another enormous commission full of opportunities and prospects, the kind you can make a name for yourself around the world with. Nastya felt an incredible surge of enthusiasm: at last she would be able to show what she could do, to get away from this routine and from all that utterly baffling running about with Sasha. Somehow she straightened up of her own accord and smiled... And felt someone's intent gaze on her. Turning unerringly in Sasha's direction, she met his eyes. They were burning with the old excitement, the excitement she had not seen in him for a long time. But along with the excitement there was passion. He was ready for a new fight, he thirsted for it, he was looking forward to their new contest. And besides that she saw in his eyes an incredible desire, almost as it had been long ago at the start of their relationship. Her own look was probably just the same. And she already knew in advance that after the negotiations they would both urgently need to slip away, because the tension was already mounting. And the project promised to be very, very intense.