Friendship is a great joy that one must nurture like a fragile and delicate flower. Water it with thoughts of your friend and fertilize it with worthy deeds. Always remember: losing a true friend is easy, but finding a new one is insanely difficult.

  Take, for example, Yuri Malygin, my childhood friend and now a lawyer. Although he was a bit withdrawn as a child - seeming almost as if he lived in his own world - now he can easily pick up a girl of easy virtue and spend the whole day with her, eventually booking a hotel room or taking her back to his place.

  He treats his work carelessly; he is often late or doesn't show up at the office at all, citing some 'important business'.

  "Once Yura told me that his priority was freedom and his personal life, and that money was just a tool—like a garden shovel. Granted, there were moments when he went against his own words and would sit at his desk, rummaging through folders of documents until late at night.

  Whenever I had a couple of free hours, I would drop by his office to have a cup of instant coffee with caramel and engage in some idle talk.

  'You know,' Yura started this time, 'an old friend of mine is supposed to stop by. We studied at the institute together - Alexander Pikalov, or "Pika," as I usually call him.' He took out a couple of mugs and switched on the electric kettle."

  "Settling into one of the office chairs near the lettuce-green wall, I asked, 'Interesting, and where is he coming from?'

  'From Voronezh, I think… Yes, Voronezh,' he mused.

  I remembered that just recently Yura had told me about this friend; he said that Alexander had somehow saved him from prison.

  It happened when a rather pretty young woman, accompanied by an elderly pensioner, approached my friend to obtain a power of attorney over the old woman’s property. The girl assured him that the woman was lonely and seriously ill, and that she was her only guardian.

  Yura believed the fraudster and issued the power of attorney without verifying the authenticity of the certificates. With that, they left."

  "As it turned out, the relatives of the 'lonely' elderly woman soon appeared and immediately filed police reports. The fraudster was sent to jail.

  Yura was also facing prison time, but thanks to Alexander and his connections, he got off virtually scot-free, though he did lose his law license for a year.

  'Is this the same friend who saved you from prison?' I asked.

  'Yes. I’d like to introduce you to him. You’ll see, you’re going to like him! I’ve invited him here tomorrow for coffee,' he said.

  'Of course,' I replied.

  The next day, I was already in the office by noon. We ordered a couple of pizzas, sushi, and some Cola."

  "Yura quickly cleared the clutter from his desk. The courier brought the food much earlier than promised, so I rushed outside to meet him and pick up the order.

  Upon leaving the building, I saw a young man walking slowly, swaying slightly from foot to foot. For a moment, I closed my eyes to see him with my mind's eye. He emanated warmth and a joyful tranquility; there was no tension in him - he seemed completely natural. Later, I found out that this was Alexander Pikalov.

  If I had encountered him in a city crowd, he wouldn't have stood out at all: short, thin, looking like a monk - but a rosy-cheeked one with a large, sensual mouth. The gaze of his blue eyes was imperturbable and attentive, yet his mouth was soft and nervous."

  "In general, he looked like a person intoxicated by life itself; he didn't need booze—he was carried on waves of self-created euphoria.

  I took the pizza, sushi, and Cola, paid the courier, and returned to the room.

  At that moment, Yura and his friend were arguing loudly about something, when Alexander suddenly burst out laughing in mid-sentence. Seeing the surprise on his friend's face, he calmed him down:

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  'I wasn't laughing at you, Malyga, I just couldn't help myself. I don't care at all which of us is right. I am just too happy at this moment.' He spoke slowly, as if rejoicing in his own words. Then he admitted that he had only come to see us because Yura promised him a good lunch.

  He laughed infectiously, and his voice was caressingly warm."

  "- Meet Alexander, Dilyar! - Yura said, immediately taking the food from me. He set the pizza and sushi boxes and the Cola on the table, then began untying the colored strings on the packaging.

  In response, Alexander looked at me appraisingly, acting as though we had been acquainted for ten years and had last seen each other that very morning in the kitchen.

  I didn't dwell on this, although his behavior didn’t please me at all.

  The young man immediately sat down and began to tell his story:

  "- Yesterday evening I stayed up until late at night watching an old movie. Actually, I’ve watched it fifteen times already; the heroine reminds me too much of my wife, Anzhelica. It was a movie about a woman who lied all the time. She lied and lied, and - damn her - she turned those lies into truth in the end.

  She wanted to be an actress, so she made up a story about having an affair with one of the most famous actors. She described their love so convincingly, in such vivid colors, that the actor himself couldn't stand it and came to confront her. Of course, she explained why she’d done it, all while playing out 'scenes' that had supposedly happened between them. She did it with such charm that he stayed with her, and everything she had spun came true - as if she had turned out to be a prophet.

  "— So Anzhelica, in some strange way, got hold of the money for my trip to Almaty. Just don't ask me how she did it. After all, she doesn't work anywhere! Every time I tried to find out, I ended up in such a muddle of inventions, intrigues, and miraculous twists that I couldn't understand a thing. She would just say, 'Sasha, do you want to go to Almaty? Alakazam! I found a way. Everything is paid for.' I felt that all her stories were false, damn it, but they were so perfect that there was nothing to poke holes in. Anyway, why am I talking about her in the past tense? She’s coming here in a couple of weeks after all - and he waved his hand.

  Here I saw two sides of Alexander's nature: his submissive acceptance of life and, at the same time, his anger and indignation at everything happening to him. I realized that he is patient for the time being, but sooner or later, he will find out the truth and try to take revenge - either by starting an affair or by leaving her altogether.

  Alexander was enjoying everything: the food, the conversation, and the drinks that Yuri produced a bit later from his stash under the desk - three cans of Heineken.

  'She’s a total enigma,' the young man continued. 'Even the story of her childhood was told in various versions. At one point, she said her mother sang in a restaurant and her father played guitar there. Then, it turns out she was born on the road—her parents were in showbiz and were constantly moving from place to place. Her father was a circus magician, and her mother worked the trapeze.'

  "It became clear to me then that the young man had been involuntarily drawn into this labyrinth by his own curiosity and love for facts. Like a simple-minded photographer, he believed only what he saw. But here, he found himself in a hall of mirrors, with countless, dissimilar images reflecting back at him until he was utterly confused.

  Anzhelica resembled those mysterious, faceless white figures that stood in the middle of the street not far from Yuri's office.

  'Should you really be chasing after this woman? Is she truly the one you were looking for?' I asked.

  He fell into a muse.

  There was a primitive desire in Alexander to be a conqueror. From the very first day, he was hooked, deciding that a duel was unfolding between reality and illusion. After all, Anzhelica had chosen the labyrinth for her own safety.

  Driven by a desire to understand their story and to grasp Alexander's obsessive urge to get to the bottom of it, I attempted to give him a sense of Anzhelica’s true essence. To which he replied:

  "And yet, you are nothing like her.”

  “Maybe she thinks that as soon as she gives up her stories, you’ll lose interest in her? In general, as long as we feel like an unread book, there will be a world of mystery in us.”

  “But it’s exactly the opposite!” he almost shouted. “I feel that the day she tells me the truth, I will love her for real, and she will truly be mine. To me, lies are loathsome.”

  “But you are still with her, aren't you?” I mused. After all, Alexander doesn't seem to consider the question: why did she surround herself with such mystery in the first place?

  "Before Anzhelica appeared, all women seemed the same to me; they were merely objects of desire. I had no desire to get to know them better; they were just sexual objects and nothing more. But then Anzhelica appeared, and my attitude changed. I became interested in something that had never concerned me before - individuality. Anzhelica was creating a fog around herself, and I felt a drive to get to the bottom of it.”

  I took a piece of pizza. “What was it that captured your attention? Was it her more voluptuous body, a more thrilling voice, or perhaps a more dazzling smile compared to other women?"

  "With her appearance, everything turned upside down. I craved more communication with her; I thought constantly about our meetings, our walks together, and the bed…”

  Then I realized that they were welded together by his striving to uncover the truth - to expose the illusion - and her necessity to create that very illusion. It was a satanic union. One of them had to triumph, but the question was: who? The realist or the mythmaker?

  Alexander turned into a detective, searching for what was hidden beneath the veneer, while Anzhelica presented her mystery as the natural flowering of mature femininity. I felt that he had already drawn me into his investigation as well.