Like a whirlwind, Iva rushed into the room and before I had time to even blink she was already without her clothes. We were bringing our job to an end, when the phone arrogantly rang.

‘Don’t pick it up!’Iva suggested, giving my ear a voracious bite.

I managed to tear myself away from her sweet tongs, because I knew this was a call from my wife – she would like a report about the guests’ degree of readiness. While I was explaining everything was going according to plan, Iva, to spite me, was doing with me whatever she wanted. After the phone call I refused to go on and she was quite right to become furious and in a minute, to slam the door behind her back, while in the meantime I was pretending to be mad, when I was simply worn out.

I fooled around the flat and there: time had arrived for the first guests. The sound of the doorbell came through the corridor. On their way here, Maria and Evgeni had visited the hospital, and picked up my wife Jenia.

‘Have you been sleeping, sweetheart?’ Jenia asked, slapping my cheek as a rightful owner should do.

‘Please! You are welcome in hell, pardon, our home! And you!’ said I to Jenia and tried to slap her bottom, but she quickly moved away and my hand, with involuntary strength, planted itself on Evgeni’s soft behind.

‘You have a strange way of saying hello to your friends, Segrei!’, mumbled Evgeni in confusion.

‘Slap me, too!’ proposed Maria, Evgeni’s wife, and shook invitingly her playful ass

‘I’m ready to do it, but not now, not in front of such an envious audience, you naughty girl!’

‘You’ll do so, when I go on a business trip, sweetheart!’ Evgeni uttered sternly behind his shoulder, pulling his wife selfishly closer. The idea flashed through my mind: I knew it’ll happen exactly that way; the question was only when.

I welcomed them most politely and when we entered the living room, I noticed Iva’s bikini on the chandelier. I turned red, horror seized me and I set a secret hope on the possibility that nobody would look up and see them. Only minutes later Iva arrived, together with her husband, Vesso, my childhood friend. The situation became desperate, because it was already getting dark. If not me, my wife would soon switch on the light and everyone would see the damned bikini that was hanging so brazenly on the chandelier! That moment came soon.

But I already had a plan.

A few seconds, and my wife wouldn’t have got ahead of me. Alas, I had just stepped on the chair in the corridor and was reaching to get the fuses out; when she switched on the light in the living room. Still, I managed to turn it off, because I pulled out the fuse, my fingers shaking, and then I ran to the kitchen, carrying the chair, to leave the fuse in the kitchen and then to sneak into the living room. There, already a few lighters were flickering.

‘The chandelier! I’ll fix it in a second!’ I cried, rushing forward enthusiastically. I stepped on the small table, but it crushed under me and I ended up on the floor, covered all over with glasses, plates and cream from the sweets.

A volley of laughter and mockery came down on me. My idea was to snatch the bikini, to thrust it in my pocket and pretend that it had just occurred to me that reason might be the fuses. I was lying and thinking what could I do in this newly-created situation, when absolutely unexpectedly, the chandelier in the living room got light.

My energetic wife had guessed the cause of the misfortune. However, had she understood that it was myself that had taken off the fuse? The ladies rushed forward to remove all traces of the devastation I had inflicted on our table. I lowered my head in despair. Any moment, someone would look up and shout:

‘Look there! Bikini on the chandelier!’

I was thinking furiously and could think of nothing. I threw out the imbecilic idea to light up candles.

‘Nonsense!’ Iva retorted. I felt like smothering her with my bare hands.

‘Rot!’ my wife backed up. May be I should throw her down from the terrace?

I bowed down my head guiltily, waiting for the deserved punishment. The evening closed as usual: our friends first drank, then sang, at one point did both, and failed at each, until at last they remembered they are at work the next day; and sneaked out, lurching, hiccupping, reeling and singing from time to time.

The moment we saw them off, I snatched my wife and carried her in a lively trot towards the bedroom. I imitated a mad fit of love for her. She, however, was unmoved; she tore away from me, and rushed into the living room.

‘I have a headache!’ the terrifying remark of all family creatures; the phrase that could make the hairs of the whole army of men on the planet stand on end.’It must be that vodka, they foist such poison on us nowadays!’ and she opened wide the door to the terrace.

The wind rushed in, playful and tender like an inpatient lover. There was my wife, sitting, and above her head my lover’s bikini flaunt like a banner. If that was not drama, it wasn’t comedy either, was it? At last we trudged for the bedroom. I sprawled on the bed and meanly waited for her to fall asleep so that I could scamper to the living room, grasp the bikini and hurl it down from the terrace. Was it half an hour, or an hour, or maybe two that I waited for her to fall asleep, but at last she did.

I called her name tenderly, got no answer. I waited a few more seconds and tried again. Only then I got up. Being an experienced conspirator in the marriage affairs, I first made for the bathroom, stood some time on the toilet, waiting to hear any suspicious sound. Nothing came: neither an angry shout, nor villainous steps of sneaking pursuer. Only then, very quietly, I tiptoed in the living room. I decided not to light up the cursed chandelier, only pulled a little stool, perched on it and boldly reached out my hand. I got hold of the damned bikini and at that moment someone switched on the light.

First I shrieked with surprise, then with terror, and then I froze in astonishment.

My wife stood at the door, a nasty grin on her face. The wicked woman! But I kept a brave silence.

‘Are you hanging another pair of bikini up there?’ my wife asked sternly.

‘Some idiot must have played a joke. . . ‘I mumbled guiltily, still standing on the little stool.

‘Hardly. The moment we came here, they were hanging up there, and you have been trying to put them down the whole evening. Secretly! Clumsily!’ said my wife with tender reproach in her voice. Then she asked: ‘Interesting, if the bikini had ended up on the chandelier, where you must have been?’

I kept a stubborn silence, my head bowed.

But my wife, being an experienced and completely professional inquisitor, went on with her questions: ‘Where Iva must have been?’

I understood I’m completely out.

‘I was thinking . . .’I started fearfully, but then I decided the good offence is the best defense, and bravely asked: ‘How do you know the bikini is Iva’s?’

‘We were friends, intimate, of course!’ my wife uttered ominously.

‘You are lying!’ I cried spitefully.

‘All right, then – I was her husband’s friend and he used to borrow me her bikini always when he happened to tear up mine because of his wild passion. . . . ‘She said dreamily and gave a laugh ‘Which one do you prefer?’ It was stupid to continue standing on the stool holding the bikini. I stepped down, kicked the terrace door open and threw them down, God curse them.

My wife withdrew, smiling ominously.

Desperate, I lit up a cigarette. I hadn’t even gone through the half of it, when the doorbell rang. Dismayed, I looked at the clock – half past three. Enraged, and confused, I went to the door and uncertainly looked through the peephole. It was the house manager. Something must have happened, said I to myself and generously unlocked the door. The first thing I saw was the damned bikini. This terrible woman, against whom I performed constant military operations, thrust the bikini in my face.

‘Get your wife’s panties!’

‘They are not hers!’ I managed to cry in panic and tried to slam the door shut.

But the wicked creature had already thrust her powerful leg in the wide opening.

‘They almost hit my head and your window is the only one lit! So you have thrown them!’ her logic was indeed incontestable.

Silently, I reached out, took the damned bikini and immediately slammed the door with the slim secret hope I was going to pinch her damned long nose that she was always poking everywhere. Regretfully, I failed; she was protecting it well. What came through the door was her ominous chuckle only. Tomorrow, the whole block would be informed that in the dead of night, female panties had been flying over our terrace. . . I snatched the scissors, shred up Iva’s bikini and burnt them in the ashtray. I heaved a content sigh and was about to set off for the bedroom. I guessed my wife had already fallen in a real sleep.

At that moment the phone brazenly and defiantly rang. I hesitated whether to take the call, but in the end I did it. I heard the cloyingly familiar giggle of Iva and then her question followed:

‘Did you see I left my bikini behind . . .at your place?’

‘Yes. I’ve just burnt them.’ I hissed.

Someone took gently the receiver from my hand and suddenly I heard my wife’s voice. She had sneaked like a cat behind my back.

‘Iva, I’ll buy new ones for you and I’ll get your husband to give them to you.’

And she hang up ‘Let’s hug, sweetheart!’ my wife suggested and laughed.

I understood I was forgiven, but something else flashed through my dizzy mind, too – that I would never again be unfaithful to her. At least not with Iva.