from the entire world, a few thousand of them, then maybe you can make it work. Maybe.” She looked up at him. “Do you get it?”
She stood up. The remains of the doll lay in her hands.
“I am sorry,” she said, looking into Aspirin’s eyes. “Have I upset you?”
“Goes in the trash,” Aspirin said, still not sure what he was being told.
Obediently, she went to the kitchen, and he heard the shards of porcelain hit the bottom of the empty trash pail. She came back holding the doll’s blue dress gently with the tips of her fingers.
“May I have it?”
“You may,” Aspirin said. “Who are you?”
“You should have asked me right away.” The girl gave him a shy smile.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I kept waiting for you to ask who I was, and in the meantime you figured I was a beggar, a gold digger, or something worse.”
Aspirin plopped down on the sofa and crossed his legs.
“But I did ask you your name.”
“But a name isn’t who someone is, right?”
He didn’t know how to respond to that. After a beat, he asked again, “Who are you?”
“I—”
She opened her mouth as if about to recite a memorized, well-prepared lesson—then suddenly she paused and stopped smiling.
“What is that?” she asked nervously.
“Where?”
“That sound.”
A mere second earlier the neighbors upstairs had switched on their audio system, heavy bass making the walls vibrate.
“Neighbors,” he said, shrugging. “They are music lovers . . . of a sort.”
“Are they deaf?” the girl asked after a pause.
“They love their bass.” She was distracting him with these interruptions. “Tell me where you ran away from.”
“I didn’t exactly run away,” the girl said, scrunching her eyebrows again. “I just left.”
“Escaped from a music school in a prison facility?”
“No,” she said, scornfully. “From this . . . from a very nice place.”
“A very nice place?”
“Yes. I’d like to return there someday.”
“Return now!”
The girl sighed. “I can’t. Mishutka and I have something important to do.”
She picked up her teddy bear and pressed her cheek to the short, light brown fur. A horrifying moment later, Aspirin realized she was crying.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s scary here,” the girl said. “Back there, last night—I was so scared.”
“That’s not surprising,” Aspirin said, though he didn’t remember her seeming all that scared in the alley. After a pause, he added, “Me too. But we are doing just fine now, aren’t we?”
“No.” The girl shook her head, still hiding her face behind the bear. “We’re not fine. You’re afraid of me.”
“Nonsense.” Aspirin came over and crouched down next to her, quelling the terror from seeping into his voice or through his eyes. “Hey. Don’t cry. Do you want a cup of tea? I have cookies.”
She nodded, still not looking at him. Aspirin went to the kitchen and filled a teakettle with fresh water. If nothing else, he would feel much better if his unwanted guest had enough to eat and drink before she left.
At least no one will accuse me of being a bad host.
They waited in silence until the teakettle purred, growled, and switched off with a loud click. Aspirin took out a box of tea bags and put one in each mug, filling the mugs with the boiling water. He put a plate of stale cookies in the middle of the table.
“What about Mishutka?” The girl’s voice was weak from crying.
After a moment of hesitation, Aspirin reached for the third cup. The girl placed the bear at the table. Aspirin sighed and filled the bear’s mug with hot water and a tea bag.
“Actually,” he said, moving the sugar bowl closer to the girl, “I am not afraid of you. Why in the world would I be afraid of you? Drink your tea. I just got angry when you took my passport.” He was almost convincing himself of what he was saying.
“It was on the table in the hallway.”
Now Aspirin remembered having to bring his passport to the post office and then tossing it on the hallway table. Which meant she hadn’t been rooting around in his apartment. Still . . .
“This is not a good reason,” he said firmly. “You cannot just pick up someone else’s documents, especially a stranger’s, in their apartment . . .”
“I needed to know who you were.”
Aspirin shook his head at her naiveté. “I told you my name. What exactly have you learned from looking at my passport that I didn’t already tell you? My age? Why would that matter?”
The girl hung her head.
“Don’t take it personally, but there are rules, after all,”