Maybe it's just that kind of day. One of those when the city, usually gray and wrinkled like an old man under the pressure of boots, suddenly sheds several decades and for a moment feels young again. The sun, as if it accidentally found a crack between the clouds-rags, poured viscous, honey-like gold onto the sidewalks. And then I saw her.

She did not walk, but swam through that thick light, and the air around her seemed to quiver, refracted in a thousand rainbows. Hair - a river of molten copper, eyes - a lake after a storm, in which lightning still reflects. And in my head, in that abandoned farmhouse, where usually only drafts heal old grievances, suddenly all the lights turned on.

Here we are already drinking coffee in a small, cramped cafe, the windows of which are decorated with paper snowflakes, although outside the window is the ripeness of summer itself. She laughs, her head thrown back, and I understand for the first time in my life what the phrase "loud laugh" means - it really does ring, it bounces off the walls, the glasses, against my chest, and I want to catch it, seal it in a jar and put it on the shelf for the darkest days. And now we are already fighting, angrily, ugly, over some small thing, maybe because of the unwashed dishes, or maybe because I was silent for too long again, and in her eyes the same storm lake is pooling, only this time - right before the rain. But I know how to calm her down, I know that in an hour, maybe two, we'll be sitting on the sofa, huddled together, watching some stupid movie, and I'll be thinking again that the world without her is just a black and white drawing. The years fly by like train cars, I see us a little older, with the first silver threads in her copper hair, growing tomatoes on the balcony and still arguing which one of us loves more.

She passed.

Everything. Just disappeared into the crowd.

The great romance that lasted exactly thirty-four of my steps. Here is the full movie. There weren't even credits. And suddenly I felt that the sole of my right shoe was unpleasantly leaking moisture. Will have to take it to the cobbler.

Or maybe she's not like that at all. Maybe she sneezes loudly and doesn't like coffee. Maybe today is just the kind of day when the sun turns anyone passing by into a Hellenistic goddess.

I turned the corner. The sky clouded over again. The city put on its usual mask. But somewhere deep in his chest, that laughter still sounded. Like an echo in an empty jar.