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her in advance should that happen again.
    At night she was supposed to attend prep courses at the university. Sasha did not go. She lay on her bed, textbooks thrown aside, and thought.
    What’s the purpose?
    The world did not work the way she imagined before. The visible connection between different events—objective laws, consistent patterns, accidents, and regular days—all this simply served as a Chinese screen for another existence, invisible and incomprehensible.
    If the man in the dark glasses exists, really, truly exists, if his hands hold dreams, reality, accidents… What is the purpose, then, of going to school? Entering a university? When at any moment everything could disappear, be destroyed, simply because Sasha’s alarm clock did not go off on time?
    Mom returned from the office; she asked worried questions, took Sasha’s temperature, shook her head in despair.
    “Did you overexert yourself already? It’s a bit early, it’s only October, and the school year is just starting. I told you to go for a walk on Sunday! Go to the movies, call your classmates, you do have friends, don’t you?”
    “Don’t worry,” Sasha’s answers came as if taped previously, “It’ll be fine.”
    She added to herself, “Of course, as long as I demonstrate enough discipline.”
    Before bed, she set up three alarm clocks: her own, mom’s electronic one, and one more, an old one, her grandmother’s. Throughout the night she fell into chunks of sleep, woke up in cold sweat, and glanced at their faces: one in the morning, quarter to two, half past two…
    At half past four she was almost glad she could get up.
    ***
    In November the weather suddenly improved. Unexpected, conditionally autumnal, but quite tangible warmth returned. The sun came out every day—not for long, but it was generous enough. Dried-up leaves rustled underfoot and smelled fresh and tangy, sad but not without hope.
    Sasha would wake up at four thirty, one minute before the alarm clocks’ roll call. She deactivated them one after the other, like mines, pulled on a warm jogging suit, a jacket, and walked to the park. In one month, she learned all the minute details of the path. She knew where the asphalt was touched by erosion, the places where puddles collected after the rain, knew all the slopes and all the flat spots. Running along the dry alleys, jumping over the piles of leaves gathered by the park rangers, she used the time to repeat her English dialogues, plan that day’s chores and silently sing a song that she heard on the radio the day before. Finishing the third and then the fourth circle around the flowerbed, she knew for sure that nothing bad could happen to her, or to Mom. From that, she derived bitter, detached, autumnal joy.
    ***
    Unexpectedly, “the days of rest,” spent without the morning jog, turned out to be the most excruciating in the last few weeks. Sasha continued to wake up at half past four, and lay without sleep until seven, listening to the waking up sounds of her building: the rumbling of the dump truck, the din of the elevator, fights between the street cleaners. The ritual was broken; Sasha imagined her fate stretched out like a thread, pulling, drying, about to break. Every day she got more and more nervous, until the morning finally came when she could pull on her sneakers and, leaving footsteps on the frosted grass, walk into the November sunrise.
    Then Valentin arrived.
    Sasha came back from school for a minute, to drop off her bag, grab a bite to eat and run to her lesson. A stranger sat on the bench near the entrance to her building. She said hello (she always said hello to anyone sitting on that bench, just in case) and only then recognized the pale-skinned, thin non-stranger.
    “Hello,” said Valentin. “I noticed no one was home.”
    “Mom will be back by six,” said a bewildered Sasha. “And I… um..”
    “I’ll wait.”
    It was half past two. Sasha glanced at her watch, then at Valentin.
    There was