“Where are you shoving your way through, lady?”
I didn’t even have time to turn around. I was standing by the entrance of the Almeria salon, waiting for Nadya, who was running late with her haircut. I had taken out my phone and was looking at the screen. And suddenly—an impact. A hard, deliberate shove with his shoulder. My foot landed straight in a puddle by the curb—that dirty reddish March slush that collects between the paving stones and the curb and doesn’t go anywhere for weeks.
I didn’t fall. I kept my balance. But the right side of my coat—from the pocket down to the hem—was already covered in that muck.
I turned around.
Young. About twenty-eight, maybe a little older. Broad shoulders, a khaki jacket—clearly not from some shopping mall. White sneakers, gel in his hair, and a lazy look in his eyes, with that faint surprise people have when they see a dog talking.
“You should watch where you’re going,” he said.
And he kept walking. Toward the neighboring building. Toward his restaurant, Brix—I knew it. For eleven years, I had walked past that place every day. I had seen them lay the foundation. I had seen them hang the sign.
I stared at his back for a second. Then at my coat.
Gray suede. Twelve thousand rubles. I had saved up for three months—little by little, from every payment. I had worn it maybe five times all winter, trying to take care of it. It was practically my special-occasion coat. A good coat.
The reddish mud on the side looked like spit.
“Young man!” I called out.
He stopped. Turned around. He looked at me with mild irritation—the way people look at someone who is holding them up when they have too much to do.
“You dirtied my coat. I’m asking for an apology.”
He snorted. Briefly, through his nose.
“Listen, things happen. Take it to the dry cleaner.”
And he disappeared behind the door marked “Staff Entrance.”
I stood there. The March wind blew cold from the archway. The suede clung to my side—it had already absorbed the water, the dirt, and that conversation.
Nadya came out. She saw me. Looked at the coat. Opened her mouth.
“It’s nothing,” I said before she could say anything. “Let’s go.”
We walked toward the metro. I carried my phone in my hand and thought only one thing: I have a very good memory for faces.
The restaurant Brix opened four years ago. I remember that summer—balloons, live music, the owner in a linen jacket greeting the neighbors on the block. A young owner, the son of someone from the construction business—I had heard that in passing from people who understood those things.
Then the linen jacket disappeared somewhere.
Instead, a Mercedes appeared—always parked across the lines. Music at night. And complaints. I found out the very next day that there had been many complaints.
A woman named Svetlana Igorevna lives in our district. We have known each other for about seven years—she is a pensioner, calm and neat, the kind of person who writes everything down in a notebook. I stopped by with a pie—not on purpose, we just hadn’t seen each other in a long time—and, of course, the conversation turned to Brix.
“That Artyom,” she pressed her lips together. “Oh, Valya.”
Artyom. So his name was Artyom.
“I wrote fourteen complaints in two years,” Svetlana Igorevna said calmly, as if stating the weather. “To the district administration, to Rospotrebnadzor, to the local police officer. Not a single proper answer. Either formal replies or complete silence.”
I drank tea and listened. She told me how the ventilation worked so badly that from April to October the residents of the upper floors breathed in kitchen smells. The staff smoked right in the utility room. The garbage bins by the back entrance stood without lids—especially noticeable in the summer.
“But the main thing,” she said, and paused.
“What?”
“One time I went in through the wrong entrance. I wanted to ask for directions and entered through the back door.” She fell silent. “There was a rat sitting there. On a box of flour. A big one. Red-haired. Looking at me.”
I nodded.
The apple pie was good. So was the tea.
I came home with a notebook in which I had written a few things down.
I have been working as a manicurist for twenty-three years. First from home, then I rented a small space in a salon, then another one. Now I have my own chair at Almeria—I rent it, but the clients are mine, and that is what matters. In twenty-three years, so many people have passed through my hands that I stopped counting long ago. Teachers, accountants, doctors, officials. Pensioners and students.
Do you know what twenty-three years of working as a manicurist gives you? Not just nimble fingers. People. A great many different people who trust you with their hands and—sooner or later—begin to trust you with their words.
Among my clients was Lyusya. Six months earlier, she had worked as a dishwasher at Brix. She left on her own: she said something bad was going on there with food storage. She spoke evasively, but I know how to listen between the lines.
The evening after my conversation with Svetlana Igorevna, I sat at home and drafted a document.
Not a complaint. A document—with a heading, dates, and descriptions. Point one: ventilation system. Point two: food storage. Point three: sanitary condition of the garbage container area. Then: staff smoking in utility rooms. Then: rodents. Then: eighteen more points, each with a date and a source.
Twenty-three points in total.
I read it that evening, reread it. Removed anything unnecessary. Corrected the wording so it sounded like a protocol, not like the complaint of an offended person. By midnight, only what could be verified remained.
Then I took the coat—that very coat—and brought it to the dry cleaner on the corner.
The next day, while walking past Brix, I slowed down near the back entrance. I took out my phone. Photographed the garbage bins without lids. Photographed the ventilation shaft—even now, in March, there was a smell coming from it. I listened.
Then I went to Almeria, took my first client, did her nails, then the second, then the third. In the evening, I opened the sanitary inspection website.
The citizen complaint form there was simple. Field: “Object address.” Field: “Description of violations.” Field: “Attach files.”
I attached the document. And the photographs.
Clicked “Send.”
I looked at the screen for a second—just looked.
Then I got up. Went to sleep.
On Wednesday morning, I walked past Brix as usual. Two white Gazelles were parked by the entrance. People in uniform vests were going in through the main entrance with tablets and folders. I didn’t stop. I walked past.
Nadya called at one in the afternoon.
“Val, did you see?” Her voice had that tone people use when the news is too good to hold in. “The sanitary inspection is there! And someone else with them. The whole staff is standing outside, smoking!”
“I saw,” I said.
“You… knew?”
“Nadya, I have a client.”
At that moment, Rita was sitting with me—she had come in for a manicure and heard our conversation.
“Is that the restaurant on the next street?” she asked. “I went there once. Expensive and tasteless.”
“That happens,” I agreed.
Two days later, a notice appeared on the door of Brix. I walked past without stopping, but I read it: “Operations suspended.” Date. Signature. Stamp.
The coat came back from the dry cleaner on the fifth day. Clean, without a stain. Eight hundred rubles. I held it in my hands and looked at that very side—gray suede without a single trace.
Cheaper than he thought.
Ten days after the closure, a post appeared in a local group. Artyom had written it. No names, but the direction was obvious: about “jealous old women with neighborhood complexes.” About “competitors drowning an honest business with denunciations.” About “a system that destroys entrepreneurs.”
There were two hundred forty-three comments under the post.
I read almost all of them. About half wrote things like, “Hang in there, this is unfair.” The other half asked whether it was true there had been rats in the establishment. Artyom did not answer that question.
Svetlana Igorevna answered. Briefly, to the point—with a reference to one of her fourteen reports and the submission dates. Her comment got one hundred eight likes. Under it, residents of three neighboring buildings added their own stories.
I didn’t write anything.
Later, Nadya sent me a message: “You stay silent more beautifully than anyone I know.”
I replied with a teacup emoji.
The coat is hanging in the wardrobe—clean, gray, without a single stain. I will wear it on Easter. And Brix is still closed.
That is the whole trial.
Just tell me this: did I go too far—or had he signed his own sentence before he ever shoved me into that puddle?