Dunja chose a silent weekend because her customer service job had filled her head with other people's sentences. At the mountain house she received a room, a walking schedule, and instructions to speak only when necessary until Sunday breakfast. The man opposite her immediately spilled his tea. As he gathered the wet napkins, he raised his eyebrows with such despair that she laughed. It was their first infringement.
The next morning she found a dry napkin folded into a clumsy bird beside her cup. There was no message. His hand was too large for that tiny piece of paper, the thumbnail blue from some earlier accident. That afternoon Dunja saved him a chair in the sunshine. Whenever he looked toward her, they both quickly turned away, although they had no task beyond sitting and watching the trees.
By Saturday evening she had decided he was gentle, patient, and probably witty. His name was Adis, according to the label on his suitcase. She had watched him fetch a cushion for an older guest and wait for a snail to leave the path. From those few scenes she constructed an entire personality. Before bed she imagined his voice, low and slow, perfectly suited to the sentences she was preparing herself.
On Sunday Adis began speaking before he sat down. He spoke quickly, rather loudly, and almost without commas. He managed a sales team, enjoyed impersonating sports commentators, and had paid for the silence after a bet with his brother. Dunja stirred her cold coffee. The man in her head disappeared in less than five minutes, leaving a friendly stranger at the table who was explaining an amusing breakdown at a car wash.
On the steps he noticed her disappointment. "Were you imagining somebody else?" he asked. She admitted she had been. He said he had taken her for a shy painter. Dunja burst out laughing so loudly that their host turned around in the doorway. She told him about her job, a customer who had demanded the return of a used battery, and how she actually never knew when to stop talking once she felt comfortable.
The bus would arrive in forty minutes. Adis offered coffee at the village shop, solemnly promising not to imitate a commentator. Dunja did not ask for a promise. She wanted to hear the end of the car wash story now that she had stopped waiting for a different voice. At the end of the path he took her hand. It was the same large hand that had made the bird. She still liked that.