“No,” said the Girl, and there was a familiar note in her voice. Painfully familiar. “No parking!” “Keep off the grass!” “Occupied!”

“Oh, come on,” thought the Boy – who by now wasn’t really a boy anymore, but a short-cropped, greying little man. “It was ‘no’ the other day, too, and look how that turned out. A test – it’s all just a test.”

“No,” she repeated, as if she’d read his mind, then shook her head. A little stubborn lamb. “Don’t touch me or I’ll butt you! Baa-a-a!”

“Alright then, we’ll talk later,” he tried to steer around more distantly. Patience, just patience. It’s all just a test. “Come on, let’s go for a walk. Just look at those stars – big as pinecones. Try finding stars like that in Boston. You won’t.”

He deliberately leaned on the words “try finding,” counting on her keen ear. She was sharp, she’d understand on her own. Last night, last chance. You’d have to be a complete fool to let something like this slip by. And this girl was anything but foolish.

Carefully, he wrapped his arm around her waist, tense with anticipation. Ah, thank God – her body still responded, still sent out a different signal. “Vacant, vacant, vacant.” Some things really don’t change.

“Alright, just go slow now – don’t mess anything up.” The Boy kissed her gently behind the ear; she shivered for a second, smiled dreamily, but kept walking. He skipped after her.

“Listen, are we going to play tag all night?”

Wrong move! A red light blinked in front of his eyes. Wrong move, wrong move!

Too late, of course. The dreamy look vanished from her face. She glanced at him with wary eyes. Rectangular creases appeared at the corners of her mouth.

“Sorry.” He reached out to hug her again, but just then a stinking car whooshed past and enveloped them in a small poisonous cloud. The wrinkles at the edge of her mouth deepened. Incredibly – but true.

“Alright then, if you don’t want to go to the hotel, we can go to my place. Mom … she’s probably already asleep, she won’t hear us.”

Only now did he realize what he’d just said – and froze. A woman in his house, in his room! Right next to the other room, the one where his mother’s breathing was distinctly audible! His mind spun like a shattered kaleidoscope – images and fragments of images: Mum squatting over the chamber pot, “What are you staring at, you little brat? Just let me finish and I’ll box your ears, you little pisspot!” Big brother giggling somewhere in his hiding place, finally they’re going to smack the little one too, why should he be the only one who always gets the belt? The boy screams in terror, “But I didn’t mean to! I didn’t mean to! Please, please, it wasn’t on purpose!”

Shame came for him and, as usual, pelted him with a hail of slaps, the kind you can’t dodge, not that he didn’t know them by heart, but...

“What’s wrong? Why did you go so pale?” She looked at him curiously, even a little concerned.

“Maybe it’s the rakia,” he mumbled. “They probably gave us some bootleg stuff. Actually, maybe it’s better if we do go to the hotel. It’s nicer somehow. Cosier.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” she replied calmly but firmly. “I told you already: not tonight.”

“But why?” Only now did he start to believe her – the chill of her resolve pierced him like a microscopic ice chisel. “Don’t you love me anymore?”

“Oh, stop it! You know we don’t have time for those kinds of talks. Tomorrow I’ll be far away again – what difference does it make whether I love you or not? It was really nice, even wonderful! But now that’s enough. Time to wake up.”

“Anyway, the stars really are beautiful,” she added more gently, having seen the despair creeping across his face like a cold front on a weather map.

A wind sprang up. Coastal town – what else can you expect? The Girl shivered and wrapped herself tighter in her long knitted cardigan. September, and already this cold. Strange weather – probably the global warming.

“Then why did you come at all? You should’ve just stayed in Sofia!” said the Boy, and the reproach – until now kept at bay – rang out in his voice like a scythe striking stone.

The Girl looked at him without anger. He dove into her eyes, bathed in them, and felt his rage diminish and vanish – as it always did when he looked into those two lakes the color of crude oil.

“You know,” said the Girl, “once in Harvard I met a guy who claimed he could teach me to live on nothing but light – no food, no water. He’d been living like that for years, he said. Can you imagine what a miracle it would be if everyone suddenly learned to do that? No hunger, no wars, no suffering…”

The Boy snorted with contempt. Those Westerners – they’ve totally lost it. Even in Harvard. Pretty soon they’ll start flitting from flower to flower. Like bees.

“If that’s what they’re teaching you at Harvard… What a waste of a scholarship.”

“Enough – you’ll jinx something,” she cut him off, placing her hand gently over his mouth. The warmth of her palm darted through his body in swift, stealthy steps. He closed his eyes and tried to seal the moment in his mind. His lips began to gently nuzzle her fingers; she smiled and pulled her hand away.

“What’s this, can’t you take no for an answer?”

“I don’t understand anything anymore,” he replied nervously. “This is our last chance – how can you not see that? Or are you already getting ready for… more interesting people?”

“Oh, don’t start with that nonsense! We’ve got absolutely no time for it.”

“Then why? Why did you come?”

“To see you. One more time.”

“And that’s… that’s all?”

“No. There’s something else.”

He looked at her with renewed hope, eyes widening with expectation.

“I’m pregnant,” she said quietly, wrapping herself once more in her cardigan. The words slipped from her mouth, fell to the pavement, and started bouncing around like little firecracker-frogs. The night suddenly filled with lights and sounds – colorful and blaring – like a travelling carnival. Only many moments later did the Boy realize he was staring at her with his mouth open.

“Really?” he asked dumbly, then, against his own will, added: “And… who’s the father?”

“I don’t know,” she lied quickly, stifling the scream of pain rising inside. “And I don’t care.”

He bristled, got about halfway there, pricked himself on his own thorns, and settled down.

“And… what will you do now?”

“I’ll have it somewhere in Mexico and sell it,” she blurted out vindictively, then – seeing the raw pain on his face – added, “Nonsense. I’ll keep it, of course. It’s my child.”

“And yours too, you idiot,” she thought. “Can’t you see that with your heart?”

“But that… that’s going to be very hard. In America, with a child… all the stress. And the money…”

“In Boston the Democrats are in charge,” she said, trying to sound carefree. “There’ll be some social program for me, surely.”

“Social program, my ass! Like getting a letter from the dead!”

“Got a better idea, then?”

He puffed himself up slightly, stayed silent, staring at his feet. Then said:

“A child needs a father. Like any child.”

Images flared again in his mind. “Go away, go away, I don’t want to see you anymore! … These are my children, mine alone! Go away! Go away!”

“And how exactly do you picture all of this?” she asked, glancing back at him, half sad, half mocking. “I drop out of school, we get married, and move in with your dear mother? Sentimental education, Bulgarian-style. Is that what you’re offering me?”

“We could go somewhere else,” he offered timidly.

“Where? Teach in Kardzhali? Or apply for an Australian visa?”

“That… doesn’t matter,” he said with effort.

The wind picked up his words, balled them up, and kicked them along the empty street. Somewhere from the direction of the Sea Garden, music drifted in. Bono’s nostalgic voice repeated:

You’ve got stuck in a moment
And now you can’t get out of it

“Do you hear that?” she asked. “How much clearer can they say it? ‘Stuck in the moment’ – that’s what we are. Stuck up to our necks. Without hope.”

“The world isn’t the Titanic,” he replied. “And we don’t have to save ourselves at all costs, each in our own way!”

“I’ll write that one down,” she said coldly. “Probably sounds great over dinner.”

“I didn’t… I don’t deserve that,” he said through clenched teeth, his voice riddled with anger. “And… I probably don’t deserve you either. But we both knew that from the start, didn’t we? ‘Made in Bulgaria’ probably sounds in America like ‘gone fishin’.”

A small dusty whirlwind spun up not far from them, strained to grow taller, failed, and blew down the pavement with a hiss. The Boy followed it with his eyes until it dissolved. Another win for reality over illusions, crossed his mind – but this time he chose to keep the aphorism to himself. All along, he’d had the sense that standing in front of him was Reality itself – if not entirely naked, then close. Which, frankly, didn’t seem to help her much.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want us to part like this,” the Girl said after a while. “Maybe it would’ve been better if I hadn’t told you.”

But the Boy had already told himself that the time for illusions was over. And since, for him, things only existed insofar as they could be grasped in clear colors, untainted by half-tones, his world now became the world of a realist. From that moment on, everything in him was fixed and definite – the short, polite, and cool phrases that filled the space between them like a flock of paper swallows; the permanent smile on his face, folding and waterproof; the precise movements designed to eliminate even the shadow of ambiguity; and the mechanical parting hug, during which he managed to kiss the air a few centimeters from her cheek – resisting the temptation to whisper “goodbye.” His anger had covered the world in a thin but impenetrable veil of ash – and nothing could pierce it, not yet, not until the sobering light of morning had arrived. Which, he already knew, would surely come before he’d slept a single minute.

***

“No,” said the Boy – who by now had started going bald and, out of vanity, shaved his head. “Sorry. That’s impossible.”

The Girl – who had since turned into a refined lady in a simple but expensive beige suit – discreetly adjusted her slightly tousled hair and said she understood. The silence between them sizzled. It smelled of scorched oil.

“How’s life in Florida?” he asked uncertainly, not quite sure he wanted to hear the answer. He already knew it anyway.

“Oh, everything’s wonderful,” she replied with a smile that still retained a trace of natural warmth. “James is the best husband I could imagine. And the best father. He works a lot, so we don’t see each other very often, but that’s normal there. And I’ve started painting.”

“Painting?” He looked at her with surprise, genuinely interested for the first time. “But your degree was in…”

“Yes, yes, but it turned out I had to choose between a career and a family. That’s not such an easy decision there – sometimes you’re forced to make hard choices… And as you can see, I chose family.”

“I understand,” he murmured. “A wise decision.”

“Listen, let me give you my address,” she said, suddenly in a rush. “You never know, life spins in all directions. Maybe we’ll meet again.”

“Maybe,” he replied, hiding his eyes behind a glass of expensive white wine. The bottle had cost half his monthly salary.

She rummaged through her purse, pulled out a stack of business cards, and handed him one. Her name began with “Doctor,” and he thought to himself that her name wasn’t Doctor – it was Rumyana.

Just before she left, she turned around and looked at him for a long moment. He imagined he saw tears in her eyes.

He stayed behind and finished the wine.