Anton came for the shoes the following Wednesday, on the dot of opening, and the first thing he did was take out the money instead of saying hello.
"Ready?"
"Ready. Igor reglued the counters as well, that's free."
He ran his thumb along the edge of the heel tip, quickly and confidently, as though it were not the first time he had checked such a thing, nodded and began packing the shoes into a bag. Last time he had stood at the counter for twenty minutes with nowhere to hurry to.
"How was Sunday?" I asked.
"Sundays are run-throughs now." He knotted the bag. "My wife invites eight people at a time, they eat and fill in forms. Out of five. Useful, actually, you see straight away what isn't working."
I asked what he had cooked last time.
He answered at once, without thinking: four items, the order of serving, the cost per portion, and all of it fitted into one smooth sentence he had clearly not delivered for the first time. About the brawn that gets started on Saturday evening he said nothing.
He did not get tangled once and did not laugh once.
"We're looking at a place on Gogolevskaya," he said from the door. "Expensive, but there's footfall."
"And is it enough for the rent?"
"We'll put in my mother-in-law's money and it'll be enough." He thought. "Enough for a year and a half for certain."
"And if it doesn't work?"
"It'll work." He said it quickly, the way one answers a question that has already been asked at home. "We've done the sums. Thirty covers a day, we know the average bill, the rent is known. It all adds up as long as we don't go into the red in the first year."
I asked who had done the sums.
"My wife did. She understands that sort of thing, she's at a bank."
He stood a little longer, fastening the bag, and added that he would do the cooking himself and his wife would take the dining room and the paperwork, and that this was right, because everyone should do their own thing.
"And Sundays?"
"What about Sundays?" Anton didn't understand.
"Well, you said Sunday was the one day nobody assesses you."
He looked at me and laughed, but not the way he had last time.
"But that's exactly what's become the business. What's the point of saving it now."
I thought the man's venture was going well, and that this was good, and that I should ask him later how the opening went. I think I was even pleased.
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