"Are you a seer?" Natasha asked. And in her own mind she screamed: "What a fool I am!"

Dasha nodded. She bent down and extracted a pair of rubber slippers from a tangled heap of footwear. The most idiotic slippers ever invented-the kind with all those rubber points sticking out on the inside. A yogi's dream. Some of the rubber prongs had fallen off long ago, but that hadn't made the slippers any more comfortable.

"Put them on!" Dasha suggested joyfully.

As if she were hypnotized, Natasha took off her sandals and put on the slippers. Goodbye, pantyhose. She was bound to get a couple of runs, even in her famous Omsa tights with their famous Lycra. Everything in this world was a swindle invented by cunning fools. And for some reason intelligent people always fell for it.

"Yes, I'm a seer," Dasha declared as she attentively supervised the donning of the slippers. "I got it from my grandma. And my mom too. All of them were seers, they all helped people, it's in our family… Come into the kitchen, Natasha. I haven't tidied up the rooms yet…"

Still cursing herself for being so stupid, Natasha went into the kitchen, which met all her expectations: a heap of dirty dishes in the sink, a filthy table-when they appeared a cockroach crawled lazily off the top and underneath. The windows had obviously not been washed for the spring, and the ceiling was fly-spotted.

"Sit down." Dasha deftly pulled a stool out from under the table and moved it over to the place of honor-between the table and the refrigerator, a convulsively twitching Saratov.

"Thank you, I'll stand." Natasha had made her mind up not to sit down. The stool inspired even less confidence than the table or the floor. "Dasha… That's Darya?"

"Yes, Darya."