Look for the Woman

“I sat in my newly renovated office, sniffing the smell of paint and hoping that something would happen soon. I’d come back home only a day ago.

Outside the window, cars buzzed past, sparkling in the morning sun. They were so loud it felt as if the war hadn’t ended. It was getting on my nerves. I wanted to run somewhere. But I was dressed in civilian clothes, and there was nowhere to run and nobody to run with.

Until Millicent Drin came in.

I had seen her before in different companies and knew who she was. Head of the advertising department for television films. Mrs. Drin was over forty, and she looked it. Still, in her there felt an inexhaustible energy, as if she were connected to some perpetual motion machine. And what posture! Look how graceful I seemed to be—everyone would say her every movement. Yes, my hair is dyed with henna, but that suited me, her hairstyle seemed to argue. And I wanted to believe the hair color was natural. And her eyes were green, and their color changed like the sea. “What the hell!” these eyes screamed.

She sat at her desk and said that a day ago—that is, on September 7—her daughter had gone missing…“