The tax refund was smaller than Vesna had hoped, but larger than zero. She immediately allocated it in her head: repairing the kettle, replacing a curtain, a gift for her partner's work anniversary. She planned nothing for herself. That part of the calculation had disappeared so long ago that she no longer noticed.
She entered the department store hungry. All morning, she had organized other people's schedules at the office. Before that, she had driven her partner to an appointment and left lunch for his mother. Beside the till, she touched a plum-colored silk scarf. The assistant asked whether she wanted to try it. Vesna almost said she was only looking, then stood before the mirror.
With the scarf, her face did not look younger. It looked like her own. She bought it and sat in a café she had previously visited only for business meetings. She ordered a lunch meant to be eaten slowly. For about ten minutes, she answered no messages, and nobody suffered any serious trouble because of it.
An older man at the next table had a cinema program. He asked whether she knew where the second screening room was. They discussed a film she had long wanted to see. When he left, Vesna bought a ticket for the same screening, but they sat separately. In the dark, she belonged for two hours to a story she did not have to organize.
On the way out, her partner's colleague saw them. She greeted Vesna in the slowed-down voice people use when already preparing a question for someone else. By evening, her partner Darko knew she had been seen "with some gentleman." He greeted her with a casually delivered question about where she had been. Vesna removed the scarf and described her day without omissions.
"You could have invited me," he said. She replied that she could have, but that day she had wanted to make her own decisions. That hurt him more than the story of the unknown man. He sat down and admitted he could not remember the last time he had asked what she would enjoy doing. Vesna did not ask him to repay her Tuesday with a grand apology.
They agreed on a new division of responsibilities and time each could spend without justification. On Friday, Darko went to collect his mother, and Vesna finished early. She called him from town and invited him to a late film screening. He accepted, although the title promised him nothing interesting.
Outside the cinema, he recognized her by the scarf. While finding the tickets, he noticed her smiling to herself. He asked why. She pointed to the poster: it was a bad comedy neither of them would ever have chosen in advance. They went in anyway, ready to spend an evening on something nobody needed.