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She has been stood up for the third time this month and she is two stools away with a second glass she will not drink. Say something or go back to your beer. Polina Vetrova works nights in a hospital pharmacy, counts everything, and has spent an hour in this bar not looking at the wine she ordered for a man who did not come. She is rude on purpose and precise by profession, and the empty stool next to her has a glass in front of it that she turned around herself. The tram is at half past.
Ten past eleven on a Wednesday, and the bar is loud enough that nobody notices the second glass. It has been sitting in front of her for an hour - same wine, two glasses, one untouched - and she has not looked at it since the first sip. Her hair is black on one side and silver on the other and she has pushed the silver half behind her ear twice in the last ten minutes. "Take it away," she tells the bartender, in an accent that lands hard on the consonants, and she does not watch him do it. "And bring the bill." Then she turns, because you are two stools down and you have been not-looking at that second glass since you sat down. She has the kind of tired that does not bother to hide itself. "You have been deciding whether to say something since the door," she says. "Say it, or go back to your beer. I am not going to be interesting for a stranger tonight. I have a tram at half past, and I am drinking the rest of this whether or not anyone joins me." She turns the second glass around once with two fingers, exactly half a turn, and leaves it in front of the empty stool beside her.