Valse Melancolique

The Second Step

I got out of the underground and took a few steps to the side, catching my breath after climbing the stairs. A cold, bone-chilling wind blew under a warm pink scarf and coat. I cringed and went forward. There was a little left; the office wasn’t far from the subway.

A high-rise building met me gloomily, flickering and variegating with all shades of grey and black. Monday. Even the buildings did not want to work.

The office of the publishing house where I worked occupied the entire first, second and third floors. I had never been on the third floor and, in a year, hadn’t determined what they were doing there. But on the first floor, I was always met by Mrs Olga, who politely took my coat and asked how my weekend had been. Other people—utterly unfamiliar to me—passed by me. Most likely, they worked on the higher floors.

After taking off my coat, I felt defenceless for a second. The bag, although it seemed small, still dragged my hand unpleasantly.

"I was only thinking about you all Saturday because you like lemon pies, I remember that," said Mrs Olga sternly. I shrugged my shoulders and tried to smile as sincerely as possible. Otherwise, Mrs Olga will not believe me.

"I only like your lemon pies," I said and went to the stairs to the second floor next to the elevator. The latter was more often used by gloomy gentlemen from the upper floors. So I forced my legs to endure and warm up.

“You flatter me, Nastya!”

I had already reached the stairs when a familiar voice behind me stopped me, "So you are Anastasia."

On the third step, I turned around, meeting the gaze of the brown, caramel-like eyes. That nice guy from the coffee shop. That's right.

He tugged at the red scarf around his neck. It looked exactly like the teddy bear’s scarf that Kate had put on the piano. Did he work here? Or on the upper floors? Maybe, life had decided to play a joke on me again? But I knew that it didn’t have funny jokes. I didn't like them at all.

"I didn't hide it," I said and ran up the stairs, stomping almost mechanically to my office. More precisely, it belonged to the director’s assistant and me. I had been placed there six months ago because there had been no more room for one more editor.

The door was open, and a thick white light poured from it, falling on the corridor floor. So, Nick is already in place.

I allowed myself to look around for a second before flying into the office and slamming the door behind me. And I had clearly seen that the strange young man was still walking behind me. Did he follow me, or did he really work here?

I wouldn’t find answers that simple.

Lean as death, bone-rattling Nick glanced at me and waved, barely knocking his coffee onto the keyboard. He hissed, pushing the papers away.

"If you say it's my fault, I'll take your head off," I said and threw my bag on my chair, turning on the computer. -

“You took my words right out of my mouth.”

“Out of your mouth with an incredibly long tongue," I added, baring my teeth at him.

Nick put his sharp elbows on the table and grunted, “Didn't you learn to joke over the weekend?”

I snorted, accidentally clicking the mouse, “Sorry, no, my clown teacher is lost somewhere.”

Nick sipped his coffee sadly, snorted and looked at me, “Well, the morning moment of hatred is over. We can start working.”

I sighed heavily, remembering what I had been doing on Friday. Opening the file with the half-revised and corrected novel, I involuntarily recalled how that yesterday’s handsome guy had scared me on the stairs.

Did he work here or not?

After an hour of staring at the screen and clicking monotonously, the letters and words merged into one continuous black-and-white stream before my eyes. I pushed away with my legs and moved from the table onto a chair. Nick glanced at me, also distracted from his work.

“Stacey, I'm scared when you look at me like that.”

“You are not a head honcho to be f*******n to look at you. Moreover, I have a question,” I ran my tongue over my lower lip and thought about how to say it nicely so as not to give off the strangest and most unwarranted attention to a stranger.

“When I was climbing the stairs today, I met some strange young man. He came to our second floor. Although, I haven’t seen him before here. Have you seen him?”

Nick's lips stretched into a thin smile. It even didn’t mean to hide his disdain.

“Higher powers, Stacey, there are oodles of people hanging around here. How can I know if I have seen the same strange young man as you? Maybe he wasn't so strange to me. By the way,” he raised his eyebrow, “why are you interested?”

I shrugged my shoulders, “But he looked at me as if he had known me for three hundred years. That's why I thought.”

"The rooster thought so too, but it got into the soup," Nick squinted, brought his face closer to the screen and grimaced. “I am a fool. That must be here, and that must be sent to Fock.

I stared at the clock hanging above the door. The hands neatly pointed to nine o'clock. The cursor flashed between "eternal" and "autumn" on the screen. I was sure it also reigned outside the window—this eternal autumn which didn’t pass when winter came. She retreated and flickered like a dead shadow, a measured reminder of her inevitable return.

I moved back to the table and read only one word. But before I could even find the dot with my eyes, the door opened, and that handsome guy entered the office. However, he was without a red scarf and a coat—just in the usual warm jumper. He narrowed his caramel eyes, smiled and handed some papers to Nick.

"He told me to give this to Nick personally," he said. Nick hung up a little as if gears were turning in his head. Maybe he guessed that I had asked about him? I wanted to hide behind the screen but did not succumb to such a cowardly idea.

Suddenly, Nick broke into a satisfied smile, “Perhaps Nick is not me?”

I could see from here the stranger's eyebrow twitching.

“There are three of us here. I'm not Nikita, and she’s Nastya, so you're Nikita.”

Nick almost fell out of his chair, jerking towards me.

“Stacey, how long have you been called Nastya?”

I swallowed a laugh and grunted back, not wanting to play along with Nick.

“From birth. I’m not sure about now.”

Nick's cheek twitched as if he was about to burst out laughing. But he gathered himself and accepted the documents from that-guy’s hands.

“Thank you for the documents and for proving my name to me.”

He unfolded the papers and forgot the existence of two other people in the office. I looked up and met caramel eyes. I didn't have the strength to look away, as if he was using some kind of charm that I couldn't, just didn't know how to resist. Every nook and cranny of my brain was crying out, warning of danger, but I couldn't—or simply didn't want to—react.

That look made me feel warm.

That-guy came to my table and held out his hand. I cursed even more as if I was afraid of an ordinary hand.

An ordinary handshake.

“I'm Max, by the way.”

"Maxim Yuriyovych," Nick said from behind and blinked at me.

Max grunted and pursed his lips.

“I think Max is better for Stacey.”

“For Stacey?” Nick asked, but the question was more rhetorical because he started digging through the documents again, not even looking in our direction. Max apparently decided the same way because he did not answer Nick's question.

I leaned back in my chair to appear further from the caramel eyes. Max stretched his lips again in a smile, but this time it was different—rather sad and melancholy.

“I hope we will see each other again.”

"Yeah, okay," Nick finally stapled the papers together and waved at Max. And when the door closed, he looked at me with an overly smug smile.

“What?” I grumbled. The warmth from the caramel eyes did not want to shake off and fly away like leaves from a tree.

“Nothing. I thought you wanted to ask something.”

"The rooster thought so too, but it got into the soup," I answered with gloating. Nick rolled his eyes at the ceiling, "You dare to use my spells against me?"

“It is not written on them that they are yours.”

We heard someone's quick steps outside the door and fell silent like spies on a mission. I was curious, no, I was dying to know who Max was and how Nick knew him, so my fingers tingled with impatience.

“Well, what's there?”

“This is Fock's son. I have seen it several times here, at the publishing house, so I know. However, it seemed to me he worked abroad. He must have returned.”

He clicked the mouse two times, the screen light shining brightly on his face until it turned white.

“I didn’t know that Fock had a son.”

“It would be strange if you knew. You don't go and gather rumours about the publishing house.”

I sighed heavily and returned to the novel. It sometimes seemed to me that the editing process killed all the joy of enjoying reading and the text in general. But that time, I corrected it almost automatically without reading deeply. All thoughts, as if cursed, revolved around caramel eyes and a red scarf, the owner of which was called Max.