THE FORTY-FOURTH
She unlocked the door. The lock was stubborn to the new-cut key, which Martin had her copy not too long ago, and which she was using for the first time. But it turned in the end. She entered, set her bag on the floor and looked around the room. Everything was different than before. Unbearably real and abandoned: the stacks of books on the floor, the dusty monitor and keyboard, on which someone had been writing, often, and long, with unwashed hands. The mirror, the comb and the shaving things on the writing table, Alpa francovka, the cooking pot she had given him, with dry coffee grounds on the bottom, shirts in varied degrees of cleanliness on hangers in the armoire, beer bottles arranged in a row along the wall. All of this smelt of Martin, like the unemptied ashtray on
