In my hand, I hefted the last package of napoleon pastries available at the counter. Two of them were smashed. I couldn’t decide whether to buy Viktor’s favorite in crumbs or a cake decorated with flawless royal icing and buttercream. People came and went, but no decision materialized. Since my meeting with Lada Kravets, even the smallest decisions had become difficult, and every one of them felt like a sign that I should be able to interpret correctly or else I would turn down the wrong path. A girl giggling into her phone swept out of the staff door. She jostled me and didn’t apologize, instead continuing her flirty babbling about a wedding, and I remembered my cousin’s wedding picture with the newlyweds posing in a similar shop. The heavily pregnant bride leaned against the sausage counter, and a fluorescent lamp hung over her veil as people dressed in winter clothes made their purchases around the couple. Access to the registration office was through the shop, behind the staff door. This shot was the bride’s favorite, because she thought she was at her most beautiful.

“Get both.”

I jumped. I hadn’t noticed you.

“I saw you come in.”

Placing the cake and the pastries in my shopping basket, I pulled my fox vest tighter, as if it could conceal the pounding in my breast. In the chest pocket of the vest was a roll of dollars for sudden departures. Ever since returning from the dacha, I’d begun preparing for that eventuality almost without realizing it.

“Lada Pavlovna sent you tickets for the Kashpirovsky sessions,” you said and handed me an envelope.

“You could have mailed them.”

I wanted to get rid of you, so I took the tickets and put them in my handbag. Did I really have to use them? Did I have to attend with Daria? Did you ask Lada that? There would be disabled people there, of course. But there would also be hordes of women wanting to heal their heartbreaks or infertility. There would be men who thought they’d find the secret to wealth. There would be parents with dreams of the great therapist magically making their children healthy, restoring their sight, giving them back their hearing, or ending their drinking. The gaze of every person in line to enter would glitter with hope, including the ones who were infatuated with the hypnotherapist. If I gave the tickets to my mother, she would head straight for the night train in hope that Kashpirovsky might say something about her dead husband. I didn’t remember what Dad had done when we set water glasses out to receive the remote emanations of the hypnotherapist. Or was it Dad who put the glasses out? Had I drunk out of them with him? I struggled to remember but couldn’t. I couldn’t even recall my father’s face.

“You don’t actually have to go see the miracle man,” you said with a grin. “I’ll tell Lada Pavlovna you were delighted with her gift.”

Heading toward the checkout, I hoped that you would disappear. You had read my thoughts all too well, and it bothered me. I decided to give the envelope with the tickets to my boss. She would be excited. Any acquaintances of the Kravets family would be sure to be able to get into the back room, which would be bulging with potential clients, and Kashpirovsky would have useful contacts as well. As I began loading groceries onto the belt, you watched me as if we were shopping together. As she rattled off the total, the cashier addressed you, and I found myself being annoyed. I had my own money.

“I’ll also tell Lada Pavlovna that the recordings of the Kashpirovsky sessions have been given to Daria, and that she’s using the marigold cream daily.”

I fumbled for my credit card with sweaty palms. You couldn’t know that the jar was still at my apartment. I’d tried it after a bath and had such normal dreams that night that I didn’t remember them in the morning. Nothing had changed. Except that when I woke up, the first thing I’d thought about was you. I decided to take everything I’d left in my living room to Daria tomorrow.

The girl at the cash register wished us an affected good evening. I felt like slapping her for never having said that to me before. I barely managed to control myself and stopped at the door of the shop. Your car was parked in front, and I expected to finally be rid of you, but then you took my shopping bag to carry it for me.

“Viktor will be at the office soon,” I said.

“I know. I’ll escort you there.”

“It’s only a few meters away.”

“Your street is in really bad shape.”

I couldn’t argue with that. The puddles in the road outside the shop were treacherous. You offered your arm, and I didn’t know how I could refuse. I blamed it on the cashier staring after us. I’d been visiting that shop for a long time, at every time of day, sometimes with girls, sometimes our secretary, sometimes my boss, often clients, but never a man who didn’t belong to any of these groups. The cashier had always addressed the total due to me, and the irritation I’d experienced by the conveyor belt had changed to a strange desire to prove myself. I didn’t care what the cashier thought. Still, I wanted to seize the moment and at least for a few steps make myself look like something other than a divorcée. And lonely. I focused on the road. The chestnuts that had fallen on the ground crunched under our feet, and there were so many that no asphalt was visible under them. The lights of the Planet Grocery receded. Only one of the streetlamps was burning. I should have been focused on my upcoming meeting, but I would think about that in a moment. Once you were on your way to wherever you would be going, to whatever woman you would be sleeping next to. To someone who wouldn’t be me.

When my boss was planning to open an office in Dnipropetrovsk, this location had clearly stood out for the milieu of its charming tsarist-era street, which offered all the most important services: a twenty-four-hour Planet Grocery and the city’s only accommodations preferred by Westerners, the Park Hotel. Four stars and a good restaurant that was open late. The area was quiet, our parking lot in the back had a fence, and the security guard who sat in the booth was reliable. However, today the street looked worse than usual. That was because of the piece of Menorah marble resting on my desk, which I had stroked earlier in the day, and the arm I was on.

“Do you have any doubts about this project?” you asked. “Do you want to quit?”

Your question returned me to reality. I didn’t answer. I wondered if it was so obvious. Was I such a bad actor? A loose paving stone made me stumble, and your hand flew to grab me, and for a moment it felt like an embrace, one that didn’t fit that street or that conversation, like something that belonged to an entirely different scene. You let me go. The light shining from the windows of the office illuminated the steps and reflected from the puddles in front of them. Like the moon shining on a lake, forming a bridge of light.

“Viktor likes you. That’s a good thing,” you said.

“And what if everything goes wrong?” I asked.

“You can always call me. Whatever happens. Whenever you need me. Whether it’s Lada or Viktor.”

“Viktor?”

The image that flashed through my mind was the face of the donor Lada Kravets had assaulted with nail scissors, not Viktor. I don’t know why you only showed me the pictures of the results of Lada’s fit of rage. Maybe you thought I could believe anything of Viktor but not of his wife. She was a woman, after all, a mother-to-be. Another chestnut crunched under my shoe. Or under yours. Or under both of ours.

“You no longer have the option of backing out. That wouldn’t look good,” you said. “I’m sorry.”