“Excuse me, is it your turn?”
She asked for some oil, then spilled her change when paying for it. An old man behind her in line helped her pick it up. Maybe she could ask someone for help?
The dark man stood at the counter watching Sasha. His stare made her thoughts scramble in her head. Embarrassing, but she really needed to use the bathroom now.
Should she scream for help?
Nobody would understand. Nobody knew why Sasha felt terrorized by this fairly ordinary person. So his face was pale. Then the dark glasses. But what was really happening to her when he stared from beneath those opaque lenses?
Squeezing her shopping bag in her fist, Sasha stepped out of the store. The man followed her. He did not bother pretending. His movements were direct, determined and business-like.
Once out of the store, she sprinted. Gray pigeons flew from underneath her feet. She crossed the street and dashed toward home, wind screaming in her ears, to her mother, into the familiar courtyard…
She had never seen this place before. Sasha looked around—the “peacock” trees bloomed as before, and the sidewalk was covered by random designs in colored chalk, but the entrance was completely different, and the bench was in the wrong place. Was it a different courtyard?
The dark man did not run—he simply walked, each step bringing him five feet closer. Losing her head in sheer terror, Sasha threw herself into the entrance hall, she should not have done that and she knew it, but she ran inside anyway. A door slammed downstairs. She sprinted up the stairs, but there were only five stories. The staircase ended in a row of locked doors. Sasha rang someone’s doorbell, the sound could be clearly heard inside, ding-dong, but no one opened the door. It was empty. The man stood next to her, blocking the exit, blocking her escape.
“It’s a dream!” she screamed the first thing that came into her head. “I want it to be a dream!”
She woke up in her foldaway bed, in tears, her ear painfully pressed against her pillow.
“I can’t believe I had this nightmare.”
They left the house around eight, as usual, bought some yogurt on the street corner. Skillfully, Sasha made her mother cross onto the other side of the street, the opposite of the one with the tourist booth.
And she was right. The dark man stood under the large poster of the Swallow’s Nest Palace. He watched Sasha from behind his impenetrable lenses.
“I can’t take it anymore. It’s psychotic…”
“Now what?”
“There he is again, he’s watching me…”
She wasn’t quick enough to stop her mother, who turned and crossed the street, and walked right up to the dark man, and asked him something; the man answered still staring at Sasha. At the same time his face was turned toward her mother, and his mouth looked natural and quite friendly… if there were such a thing as a friendly mouth.
Mom returned, simultaneously pleased and annoyed.
“Relax; he’s on vacation, just like you and me. I don’t know what your problem is. He’s from Nizhnevartovsk. He’s allergic to direct sun rays.”
Sasha was silent. At lunch time, coming back from the shore, they stopped at the market, and Sasha took great care to make sure they didn’t forget anything. They returned to the empty apartment, took turns with an improvised shower of a bucket and heated up water (water was scarce during the day), and started making their lunch.
That’s when they realized they were out of salt.
The dark man sat on the bench in the courtyard. Sasha saw him as soon as she poked her head out of the building.
She withdrew her head.
An orange cat with a damaged ear lapped up cream left by some nice person in a small bowl. The cat slurped and licked its chops. Its yellow eye stared at Sasha; the cat continued licking the bowl.
Sasha did not know what to do. Go back home? Proceed as if nothing was wrong? It’s psychotic…
The hallway darkened. The man in the blue cap stood in the doorway blocking the light.
“Alexandra.”
She jerked as if shocked by electricity.
“We need to talk. You can run from me forever, but there is no joy or point in it.”
“Who are you? How do you know my name?”
Immediately, she thought of all those times her mother called her by her name, on the street, on the beach, everywhere. There was nothing surprising about him knowing her name. It wasn’t really difficult.
“Let us sit down and talk.”
“I am not… if you don’t stop following me, I will… I will call the police.”
“Sasha, I am not a thief or a murderer. We need to have a serious discussion, which will influence your entire life. It will be better for you to listen to me.”
“I am not going to. Leave me alone!”
She turned and ran up the stairs. Toward the black faux leather door number 25.
All the doors on the second floor were dark brown. The numbers on the small glass plates were completely different. Sasha froze.
Behind her back, unhurried steps were getting closer. The dark man moved up the stairs.
“I want it to be a dream!” Sasha screamed.
She woke up.
“Mom, what’s today’s date?”
“Twenty-fourth. Why?”
“But yesterday was the twenty-fourth!”
“Yesterday was the twenty-third. It always happens on vacation—the dates get all mixed up, days of the week slide by…”
They came down into the courtyard, into the windless and fragrant white-as-milk morning. The “peacock” trees stood still like two pink mountains covered with apricots. A happy multitude of beachgoers poured down The Street That Leads to the Sea. Sasha walked on, more or less convinced it was yet another dream. A young married couple stood by the kiosk studying the routes and prices. Their little boy—bubblegum-filled mouth, knees painted by disinfectant—was trying on scuba-diving goggles. The dark man was nowhere in sight, but she still felt the presence of a dream.
They bought a few ears of corn. Sasha held the warm corn while her mother pulled their beach chair out of the hut and placed it on the rocks. The soft yellow ear of corn tasted salty, delicate kernels melted on their tongues. Sasha placed the trash into a plastic bag and carried it to the trash can near the beach entrance.
The dark man stood far away, in the midst of the crowd. He looked at Sasha through the impenetrable glasses.
“I want it to be a dream,” she said out loud.
She woke up in bed.
“Mom, let’s go home today.”
Shocked, her mother nearly dropped a plate.
“What? Where?”
“Home.”
“But you were so anxious to get to the beach…. Don’t you like it here?”
“I just want to go home.”
Mom touched her forehead.
“Are you serious? Why?”
Sasha shrugged.
“Our tickets are for the second,” said Mom. “I had to reserve it a month in advance. And this place is all paid until the second. Sasha, I don’t get it, you were so happy.”
She looked so confused, so upset and helpless that Sasha felt ashamed.
“Never mind,” she mumbled. “It’s just…nothing.”
They came down into the courtyard. The “peacock” trees spread their scent over the sandbox and benches, over somebody’s old car. Down The Street That Leads to the Sea the beachgoers marched heavily, carrying their inflatable devices. The tranquil, scorching, unhurried summer morning of the twenty-fourth of July continued.
The tourist booth was deserted. At a nearby café, under the sickly palms, a group of teenagers drank beer and argued over their next trip. All of them were tanned and long-legged, both boys and girls. All wore shorts. All carried half-full backpacks. Sasha wanted to leave with them. She wanted to throw on a backpack, lace up a pair of sneakers and hitch the rides along the dusty Crimean roads.