Entrance A, Fourth Floor

If you had passed through Borik that January evening, between the bakery that stays open until midnight and the parking lot by the sports hall, you might have seen a man in a fur coat and a fur hat walking up and down in front of a twelve-story building and looking at the windows as if he were counting them. It was Vukašin Jovanović, tax inspector, fifty-four years old and twenty-two years married. The snow was falling in big wet flakes, the kind that falls in Banja Luka when winter cannot make up its mind.

It had all started with a message. Zorica's phone had been left on the table at lunch, the screen lit up, and Vukašin, not of his own free will but out of the habit of a man who has spent his life reading other people's papers, read: Tomorrow at eight, at my place, entrance B, fourth floor. Bring that cream, I'll take care of the rest. The message was from someone called B. The next day Zorica said her sister had asked her over to Lauš. Vukašin said that was nice and to give her sister his regards, and an hour later he was sitting in his car around the corner, headlights off, watching his wife walk into a building in Borik instead of onto the bus for Lauš.

The trouble was that the building had two entrances, A and B, side by side, with the same glass doors and the same broken intercom, and while Vukašin was locking his car he had missed which one she went into. While he was thinking it over, a young man in a red scarf came out of the dark and stood beside him under the same awning. He was looking at the same windows. "Excuse me," said Vukašin, in the voice he used on inspections to ask for fiscal receipts, "you didn't happen to see a lady in a fox-colored coat?" The young man looked him over. "I've seen five of them. It's winter in Borik." "This one had red boots." "I don't look at other men's wives' boots," said the young man, and Vukašin concluded at once that he was lying.

They talked like that for ten minutes or so, each convinced the other knew more. Vukašin explained that he was not looking for his own wife but for the wife of a friend, who was ill and could not come himself. The young man, who introduced himself as Nemanja, said he was waiting for his sister, who was late because, well, that was how she was. Vukašin asked him what floor his sister lived on. Nemanja asked him what the friend's name was. They both said the fourth, and they both frowned at that. Then on the fourth floor, above entrance A, someone switched on a light and switched it off again at once, and when Vukašin turned to point it out, the young man in the red scarf was gone.

Vukašin decided it was a sign. He went in through entrance A, because the glass door was propped open with a brick, climbed the stairs to the fourth floor so the elevator would not give him away, and found the door of the apartment on the left ajar. Later, when he talked about it, and he talked about it only once, he said that at that moment he was not thinking. He pushed the door. The hallway smelled of sarma and lavender. From the living room came the voice of a television announcer and an older man's voice arguing with him. From the kitchen came a woman's laughter. Vukašin concluded that he had arrived just in time. Then he heard footsteps coming toward the hallway, and the only door beside him was the bedroom door.

The bed was wide, old and high, with a lace cover that reached the floor. Vukašin crawled under it in his fur coat and hat, head toward the wall, and bumped his shoulder against something soft that said, "Ow." "Who's that?" Vukašin whispered. "Who's that?" whispered the voice. In the dark he felt a scarf. It was wool and, he was sure of it, red. "You," said Vukašin. "You," said Nemanja. "What are you doing here?" "What are you doing here? This isn't your bed." "It isn't yours either," said Nemanja, and Vukašin heard more confidence in that than he liked.

Before they could clear anything up, a couple came into the room. From under the lace Vukašin saw two pairs of slippers: one a man's, plaid, with white ankles sticking out of them, and one a woman's, with little feathers. They were not Zorica's. Zorica did not wear feathers on anything. Behind the slippers a small dog ran into the room, white as a ball of wool, and stopped in the middle of the rug. "Smiljana, is the apartment locked?" asked the old voice. "It is, Momčilo," said the woman's voice, a little too quickly. The bed creaked under two people and sank down onto the back of Vukašin's neck.

Under the bed began the quietest quarrel in the history of Borik. Vukašin whispered that he was here because of a woman. Nemanja whispered that he was here because of a woman too. Vukašin whispered that his wife was an honest woman and that all of this was a misunderstanding. Nemanja whispered that his was honest too, she just happened to be married to a man of seventy-seven who was supposed to be at the Banja Slatina spa until Sunday. Only then did Vukašin understand who Smiljana was, and why the door had been left ajar, and for whom. "Move your knee," whispered Nemanja. "That isn't my knee, it's my hat." "Take off your hat." "I won't. It's cold under the bed." Above them retired judge Momčilo Stojanović was reading aloud from the newspaper about electricity prices.

All this time the dog had stood on the rug, looking under the lace. Her name was Mici, as both of them learned when Smiljana said, "Mici, go to your place." Mici did not go to her place. She came closer, pushed her nose under the cover, found Vukašin's nose and barked, in a thin voice that rang like a bicycle bell. "What is she barking at?" asked the judge. "A mouse, I'm sure," said Smiljana. "There haven't been mice in this building since the nineties," said the judge, and, groaning, he began to get up. "I'm going for the broom." "Momčilo, leave it." "I'm going for the broom and the flashlight."

When the plaid slippers went out into the hallway and the kitchen door opened, Nemanja wriggled out from under the bed first, on one side, and Vukašin, his fur coat caught on the lace, on the other. Smiljana was sitting on the bed in a nightgown buttoned to the chin, watching them without a sound. First Nemanja, then Vukašin, then Vukašin again, as if she were trying to place him from some service counter. She pointed them to the door. Mici, however, thought a game had begun. She ran after Vukašin barking, and he, not knowing what else to do, bent down, picked her up and tucked her under his coat. Mici went quiet at once, licked his chin and burrowed into his armpit as if she had always lived there. On the stairs Nemanja said neither thank you nor goodbye. He raced down the steps, three at a time, and the red scarf stayed behind him on the railing of the third floor.

Vukašin got home by taxi at half past nine. Zorica was at home. She was sitting in the kitchen in her bathrobe, drinking mint tea and watching a quiz show. Her eyebrows were new, thin and dark, and the skin around them still red. "Biba is a real artist," she said without turning around. "Entrance B, fourth floor. I told you my sister had asked me over, but she sent me to Biba, because I couldn't go to your brother's slava looking the way I did. And where have you been?" Vukašin stood in the kitchen doorway in his wet fur coat. He did not know what to say. Something moved under the coat.

Zorica turned around just as Mici poked her head out between two buttons. "Vukašin," she said. "What is that?" Vukašin looked at the dog. The dog looked at him. In twenty-two years of marriage he had never brought her anything except the car keys and the electricity bill. "That," he said, "is for you." Zorica put down her cup. She came over, took Mici out from under the coat, held her up to her face like a baby and burst into tears the way she had not cried even at their wedding. That night Mici slept between them, on Vukašin's pillow. Vukašin did not sleep at all. He lay there listening to the dog snore and wondering how you return someone else's dog to a building you can never go back to.

In the morning, over breakfast, Zorica showed him her phone. In the Borik residents' group, which she had joined because of the bakery, a post had appeared from judge Momčilo Stojanović: Missing, white Pomeranian Mici, entrance A, fourth floor, last night around nine, reward for the finder. Below the post, twenty minutes later, from another profile, there was only one comment: Whoever took her, please keep her. It was signed Smiljana Stojanović, with a heart. "You see how good people are," said Zorica, and gave Mici a piece of a crescent roll. Vukašin looked at the comment for a long time. Then, while Zorica poured the coffee, he added a heart of his own under it from her phone.