I Would Have Married You   by Stoyan Valev      Dec 2003
           Translated from Bulgarian by: Nevena Pascaleva                          

    "Is there something more horrible for a girl to be eighteen and pretty at the
same time?" asked Reny, red with anger.
    "Yes. To be fifty and to look like me, sweetie," growled the barman, who amazingly
resembled a well-fed bulldog.
    She had got herself a job as a waitress, because there was no other way to pay the
university taxes. Both her mother and father were unemployed. The work wasn’t heavy,
although souses were something usual there. The problems would come later, after the men
had got their load – almost everyone suggested she spend the night with him.
    "How much?" asked a handsome man, about thirty, probably a businessman. His mobile phone
was always ringing. He would arrive riding a white Mercedes, a chauffeur on the driver’s seat, who
stayed in the car and waited for him to drink his whisky.
    "Why is it you think a waitress means a prostitute?" asked Reny indignantly, taking a seat next to him.
    "Have I said anything like that?" he snapped, looking her right in the eye, "However, sex is like any other business – you have a good to offer, you set a price on it, and I pay, if I consider it worthy."
    "But sex is not like business!" Reny got heated. She even stomped angrily her foot.
    "No? What is it, then? Everything’s business, my beauty!" His phone rang again. He stopped speaking to listen and when he saw her getting up, said quickly: "One second! My offer needs a response, my beauty!" And continued speaking. He pronounced figures, percents, custom fees . . .
    She walked away.
    "I know how to wait!" he shouted quickly after her and started speaking over the phone again.
    One evening, when she went home and flicked the switch to turn on the light in the corridor, instead of light there came to her the quiet voice of her mother: "We were cut off. We hadn’t paid . . . ."
    "Why didn’t you ask the money from me?!" asked Reny in the darkness.
    "I was ashamed," the mother admitted and started crying. Her father’s cough sounded in the corridor. "He has no money for cigarettes and he’s hacking all the time . . ."
    On the next day the businessman, as always, threw out: "The offer’s waiting, miss!"
    Reny took a seat in front of him and asked in a businesslike manner: "How much?"
    The man turned red. He hadn’t expected her question, but still he managed to utter coolly: "One thousand dollars!"
    She had never seen so much money at one time. Why ever not? Still, she decided to take a risk. "Two thousand."
    "Agreed." He nodded after a brief thinking and asked, "When?"
    "Tonight. After work. I finish at twelve," she whispered and bowed down her head.
    "My chauffeur will wait for you outside, ok?"
    She nodded and stood up, made for the bar, her legs shaking with agitation. She grasped the plot with both hands and closed her eyes.
    "Did that guy insult you, sweetie?" the barman whispered and fingered the bat he always kept by his side, placed in the corner.
    "No," she answered, avoiding his eyes.
    When, in the evening she had completed the polishing of the tables, she glanced at the clock on the wall – fifteen minutes had passed after midnight. She nodded goodbye to the barman and left.
    The white Mercedes waited for her before the entrance. The chauffeur, standing by the car, immediately opened the rear door for her. With the speed of lightning, he sat behind the wheel. Before turning the ignition switch, he turned back, and handed her a big envelope.
    "For you."
    Surprised, Reny took the envelope. Her fingers felt it impatiently. Banknotes, a lot of banknotes!
    She didn’t realize when the car had driven off, or when it stopped. She sat on the back seat, pressing the envelope to her breast. The chauffeur quickly sprang out of the car and opened her door. Trembling, she climbed out and looked around – but, for some reason, the car had parked in front of her own block. She screwed up her eyes in surprise, and turned towards the chauffeur, her brows rising questioningly.
    "Shall I accompany you?" he asked politely, nodding towards the stinky dark entrance.
    "But--" she uttered in astonishment.
    The chauffeur kept smiling the same mystic way, remaining silent.
    "No, thank you! I’ll be all right!" the girl whispered and rushed for the door. She started running up the dark slippery stairs, because the elevator was out of order for months now, they had cut it off because of unpaid bills. She had reached the second floor when the light on the staircase blazed up. She gave a start, froze for a second – then she remembered. The chauffeur downstairs must have switched it on.
    At home, Reny, out of breath, long time counted the banknotes. They always came out two thousand dollars. At last, disgusted, she gathered them and carried them to the kitchen table.
    She went back to her room and couldn’t sleep all night – she was trying to work out what exactly had happened. Little as she felt like going to work, she still went. For the first time, she was late, but the barman only smiled to her understandingly, he obviously had seen the white Mercedes that had waited for her last night.
    All was like usual – men followed her with eyes greedy and burning with desire, and the barman snarled around and saw to it that their advances didn’t get close to anything but dreams and intentions.
    As always, exactly at twelve o’clock came the businessman, too. While she was serving him his whiskey, he said between his teeth, "If you hadn’t accepted the money, I would have married you!"
    He hurled a big banknote on the table and stood up, without even touching his drink.
    As she was watching his broad back disappear behind the door, Reny understood that the moment she had started to love this man, she had lost him.

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