Pushkin Hills

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AT NOON WE PULLED INTO LUGA. We stopped at the station square and the tour guide adjusted her tone from a lofty to an earthier one:

“There to the left are the facilities…”

My neighbour pricked up his ears:

“You mean the restroom?”

He had been nagging me the entire trip: “A bleaching agent, six letters? An endangered artiodactyl? An Austrian downhill skier?”

The tourists exited onto a sunlit square. The driver slammed the door shut and crouched by the radiator.

The station: a dingy yellow building with columns, a clock tower and flickering neon letters, faded by the sun…

I cut across the vestibule with its newspaper stand and massive cement urns and instinctively sought out a café.

“Through the waiter,” grumbled the woman at the counter. A bottle-opener dangled on her fallen bosom.

I sat by the door. A waiter with tremendous felted sideburns materialized a minute later.

“What’s your pleasure?”

“My pleasure,” I said, “is for everyone to be kind, humble and courteous.”