Everything Happens as It Does by Albena Stambolova

imperfections of the performance.
    That Margarita had gathered enough courage to play in front of an audience was a miracle. It had never happened before. She played at home, he knew she also played at their father’s place, but that was all. How many times they had begged her to play. Something had changed.
    Valentin could not tell if it was good or bad that Margarita had played the piano. He wanted to believe it was good.
    In the same train of thought he remembered Raya and realized that he had neither seen her, nor spoken to her for more than a week.
    He grabbed his coat and rushed down the stairs. The telephone booths by the university looked deserted. For a fraction of a second he considered going back home, to Maria’s. Her white house, impossible to miss, was only a couple of stops by tram, on the corner of Stambolijski Boulevard and Samuil Street. No, he decided to go there later. Now he wanted to hear Raya’s voice.
    The little Ralitsa, his five-year-old daughter, answered the phone. He told her he had presents for her and they agreed that he would come over to bring them.
    Raya opened the door and Valentin could immediately see that she had been drinking.
    Her eyes were shiny, her words tripped over one another. Like a spoiled child, she slurred her syllables and paused after banalities like “of course,” “whatever you say,” or “okay.”
    Their daughter was running around the rooms, hugging the plush monsters he had brought her. He managed to understand that Raya was planning to spend New Year’s Eve with some girlfriends, and he left, feeling oppressed by the smell of unwashed clothes, the dirty dishes, and the reigning chaos. What a nightmare. What had happened to her house. How much he needed her house the way it was before, how much he needed it now when he no longer wanted anything from her. How much this house could help him, if only she could be happy again.
    He left with a sense of hopelessness, thinking that in spite of all her qualities and her mild temper, Raya was never going to find a man for herself.
    And that was all he wanted—to know that there was a man to take care of her and the child.
    He asked himself why. Why this torment, this riddle. The solution seemed to be just around the corner, sitting like a sphinx, beckoning. It had scared him at the time and he had decided not to deal with it. But the thing was still there, waiting. It didn’t seem like it was going anywhere.
    What the hell, Valentin thought to himself and suddenly cheered up. Raya needed a man. It was easy. All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Ergo…
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40.
Love Stuff
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    Their story seemed unfinished and weaving a pattern of its own. Raya was not showing interest in anything, Valentin was pursuing his studies, their daughter was growing up. But there were two things that resembled knots in the whole affair. One was out in the open—Raya was drinking; the other was hidden—Valentin was unable to make love. This, in a strange way, brought them together, as neither was doing anything with anybody else.
    Raya gravitated toward journalism. She hung around radio stations, newspapers; wrote freelance news reports, interviews, reviews of the foreign press. She could speak many languages—French, English, German, Italian. But she neither cared to define herself as having any particular profession, nor wanted to make herself in some way irreplaceable. She had languidly accepted Valentin’s attentions, then his lovemaking, then his child. When he had bristled at the news of her pregnancy, she had realized that she was in love. That she could not live without him.
    He secretly admired her daring, her charm, which was winning her so many friends. Admired her flexibility in changing from one thing to another. Until he felt the weight of that lightness. And it filled him with inexplicable fury. He blamed himself, but pushed Raya away anyway.
    At that moment, Raya was