The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

then:
    “Puss?”
    “Hmm?”
    “I love you.”
    And that’s it, and I don’t need to know anything else. Such a bright, solid wave of warmth. I grin like an idiot to the golden rectangles on the snow, and the grandly overturned cubes of the trash bins deeper in the yard, like a stage set for a Greek drama. And look, Lolly—too bad you can’t see this!—look at the offended dignity of that humongous black cat crossing the yard toward the overturned stage set. Who could ever make such a perfect creature go out in the cold, his whole manner begs, as clearly as if the words were spelled out in the air above in a comic book bubble? I’m so full of feeling, I honk sending him dashing away, all that dignity instantly forgotten, like a small-time thief caught red-handed. It’s so funny; I can’t help laughing. Lord, how beautiful the worldstill is, and how beautiful it is to be living in it. My dear girl, fear nothing, no one can do anything to us, just keep loving me, you hear? Just don’t leave me alone.
    “Who’re you honking at there?”
    “I’m saluting. In your honor. Now I’ll just go twist my Mykola Semenovych into a German knot, so he won’t be in our way, and place his mortal remains at your feet.”
    “You seem to be getting pretty aggressive. Is that because night’s falling?”
    “Lolly. You little wonder, my Lolly, I miss you already.”
    “You’re the wonder. Alright, I’m going to The Cupid.”
    “And I’m flying. On wings of love. Wheels up already.”
    “Wheels? Is that what they now call it?”
    “Fie, you shameless wench.”
    “Be careful, the roads are slick.”
    “I will, I promise. Mua.”
    “Same to you.”
    My fingers aren’t shaking anymore—turn the key and my trusty Golf tears off the spot with a happy squeal, as if it got bored waiting for me. At the street exit, under the arch, where I have to brake, the cat, flat to the ground, like a yogini, head pulled between his shoulders—didn’t get very far!—watches me with a mistrustful gaze much like Yulichka’s. Takes all I have not to wave at him through the window: So long, beastie!

From the Cycle
Secrets: I Killed Her
    T hey’re humming along, Aidy and this weaselly looking gentleman with a mournful mouth and thin colorless hair interspersed with bald patches (What’s his name? I forgot already.); Aidy pulls out a file folder, rustles papers, and the gentleman produces his glasses and perches them atop his nose—all this as if behind a glass wall. I can’t, I don’t have it in me to listen, to participate in the conversation. I just sit here guzzling my wine like water, and every so often, when the gentleman blinks at me uncertainly from under his glasses, I convey the peaceful nature of my presence with a wrung-out smile—the habit of controlling my face for the camera helps. I wish he’d go already. His shirt collar is soiled.
    “Why aren’t you eating anything?” notices the solicitous Aidy.
    Why? Because I feel sick to my stomach already, and without any food. It would be just physically difficult right now to swallow pieces of another creature’s roasted flesh. Bits of some innocent calf that went under the ax in the bloom of his youth. It’d be like dropping boulders down into my stomach where they’d remain lying, dead weight forever. I smile silently, this time apologetically, and reach for my wineglass again—like for the rail in a rocking subway car (this place is just as crowded and smells exactly the same, too—of wet clothing and cigarettes). This is how people drink themselves to death.
    Vadym wouldn’t have given me the meeting if he had known what I wanted to talk about. No doubt about it: he’d have hidden and wouldn’t have answered his phone. He’s been avoiding me lately anyway—did he possibly think that I hold him accountable for Vlada somehow? Right away, as if to justify himself, he rushed to tell me about Katrusya—that he’d seen her just the other day,and had taken her to Switzerland for a skiing vacation; how nice of him. As if I didn’t know about this already, from Nina Ustýmivna. He just kept on talking, as if afraid I’d interrupt him. About what a big girl Katrusya is already, and how one German boy had a crush on her up there in the Alps. Only N.U. had told me other things, too: that, besides Katrusya, he’d also taken his masseuse, Svetochka, on the trip. Well, life goes on, you can’t mourn forever, can you? A man accustomed to a monogamous