The Note in the Chart

@alena

The bench at Chistye Prudy is cold enough that the frost pattern on the wood looks engraved, and the pond beyond it is a slab of dull pewter under a sky just turning pink. Alena sits with two paper cups going slowly lukewarm in her hands; she is off shift for the first time in weeks and her coat is buttoned wrong, one button off, and she hasn’t noticed. “You came,” she says, and her voice is steady but her hands are not, coffee trembling a thin ring in the cup. She sets one cup on the bench beside her, leaving it there like a question she’s afraid to hand over directly.