Slim girl with sharp elbows

  They were sitting in the park. On the bench.
   More precisely, he was sitting on the bench, and she was comfortably nestled on his lap.
   There was especially nowhere to go, and there was no need - she obviously did not want sex.
   So he thought.
   It was nice for him to think so...
 
   Usually, Jacob suffered from smells. His bosom friend, Shura, always smelled bad. Frequent washing of feet and changing of socks did little to help. And the funniest thing is that Shura enjoyed excellent success with the female sex.
   Some masochism!

   Most of all, Jacob hated the smell of young blondes.
   Sharp, wild.
   He hadn't sniffed old blondes yet.

   In his native Odessa, everything smelled bad.
   Almost everywhere.
   Sometimes it just stinks.

   In this sense, a wonderful place later turned out to be New York City. Almost no smells for you! True, the flowers and fruits also did not smell, but what can you do. You enter the subway, full of very different people and no one stinks!
   Unless you're lucky to run into a lathered Russian tourist…
   
   But Yakov had all this in the distant future. In the present, there was a slowly decaying Soviet Union, a business trip to Kharkiv, and a girl's breast, easily and trustingly, like a bird lying in his right hand.
   Soft and elastic.
   And the sweet smell of a child.
   Yakov wanted to prolong these moments for years.
   It never crossed his mind that this magical creature, this angel, could want something else...

   It was a business trip to Kharkiv.
   Jacob is twenty-seven.
   Engineer.
   Single.
   Jew.

   Noon in a city.
   Yakov goes down Sumskaya to the ticket office.
   For a ticket to Odessa.
   In the course of an imposing walk - only Odessans walked like that - he tries to think about his life.
   It turns out bad.
   Sick of all.
   Gray streets, faded shop windows, sleepy workers' and there peasants' faces. Normal landscape of Brezhnev's "real communism".

   The Soviet Union still had about twenty years to live, but Yakov did not know about it.
   He didn't even guess.
   He didn't even dream.
   Nobody did.
   The Soviet Union towered like a granite rock!

   The queue for tickets was small, about twenty people.
   In front of Yakov stood a rather tall, very thin girl with sharp elbows, defenselessly sticking out of the short sleeves of a frankly domestic dress.
   A thick dark braid did not hide the tender girlish nape.
   "From young and early!" - Jacob thought with unexpected anger.

   It turned out that they took tickets for the same train, in the same compartment.

   Yakov caught up with her.
   - So we're going to Odessa together?

   He was never afraid to start a conversation with any nonsense.
   Timbre was important.
   And text.
   And smile.
   - No, tickets for mom and sister. Visited a student.
   
   That is, not quite a girl.
   - And where do you study?
   - In university.
   Not a girl at all.

   They entered the first square along the way.
   Sat down.
   Lit up.

Jacob, out of habit, tried to be interesting. He was asking questions from his favorite idiocy test.

   Yakov himself flew in five answers out of twenty-five, which was not so bad. He personally knew the guy who flew all twenty-five questions!
 
   Some questions were outwardly complex, such as the distance between points A and B is such and a car left point A for point B at such speed, at the same time a car left point B towards point A  with some other speed; at the moment of departure from the first car towards the second one a fly flew with such a speed and, having flown, turned back, and again, and so it flew until the vehicles met. How far did it fly?
   There were simple questions, such as: the night watchman died at home during the day; will he be paid a pension? Or: can a man marry his widow's sister?

   The girl quickly and correctly answered all questions.
   - You must have heard it all?
   - No, why?

   Yakov was smoking on the corner of Sumskaya, lazily examining the girls passing by. He absolutely did not understand why he made this date with a Moldavian, as it turned out, the girl with sharp elbows.

   But the point was great. For some fifteen minutes, at least ten ladies passed by Yakov, causing a lot of good feelings. Probably somewhere very close were student hostels. The next lady was just a star, you couldn’t take your eyes off her, and only when this star was one step away from Jacob did he realize it was his number.

   In a cafe, automatically eating ice cream, Yakov caught himself in the fact that for forty minutes he could not tear his eyes away from her face, from her lips in colorless lipstick. From her shining gray eyes. At the same time, he continued to carry something smart, enjoying her instant adequate reaction. It seemed that she knew in advance what he would say at any given moment and at the same time managed to enjoy what she heard.

     At first, Jacob had some thoughts about her clothes and jewelry, probably collected from all over the hostel, about her fingers, of incredible nobility and grace. About the phenomenon of unexpected filling of the neckline, but then all this was gone and Yakov took off. He had never had such a feeling of flight, such a lightness of being. Jacob was overwhelmed with delight and peace, the aching sensation of arriving at his destination.

   No doubt something similar happened to her, for when he lifted her from the bench in the park to put her on his lap, she weighed nothing. He could lift her with one finger.

   The evening must have been chilly, but he could feel nothing but the warmth of her skin and the gentle scent of her baby.

   The next day, with a bouquet at the ready, he stood for more than an hour on the same corner. All the passing girls seemed surprisingly rude and unsympathetic. Yesterday's feeling of flight slowly disappeared. As it turned out, forever..

   She never came.

   And the next day, Yakov found himself in the same compartment with her mother and sister. Mother was an ordinary goyka, like a rural teacher, her sister when she grows up, will be clear even cooler than her older sister.

   Mother turned out to be garrulous, and the conversation in the compartment easily turned to the subject of the eldest, the student. The little girl stared straight into his eyes.

   In those years, Yakov absolutely did not notice twelve-year-old girls and, trying with all his might not to betray himself, sympathetically listened to a detailed mother's alignment about the frivolity of her daughter, who, going on a date, did not wear anything warm either from above or below and fell ill as a result of such frivolity with a severe cold.

   Trying in vain to breathe, Yakov jumped out of the compartment and returned late at night when the neighbors were already asleep. Never before had he made such a difficult choice. Growing up overnight, he realized that he would forever bear the weight of that choice.

   And he took it for granted.

   Over the years, Yakov forgot her face, remembered only huge shiny eyes and lips covered with a colorless lipstick. But the feel of her skin was forever on his fingertips.
   And a baby smell.

   In his old age, he loved to pet children.