We need cash. I wrestle on a jacket, mask and rubber gloves to go to the only ATM in our neighborhood. It is strange to feel the pinch of sneakers on my feet. Outside, birds are chirping and the street is still wet from last night's rain. People are wandering in twos and threes, with children in strollers. There are over 10,000 new cases every day here at this point and it feels like a lazy afternoon, a normal day outside our apartment door. Only a few people wear masks, and most have them tucked under their chin - as if they put it on to please someone at home but the second they got outside they yanked it off their mouth. The expressions are the same - looking forwards, not at (as if no one exists but them).
There is one person waiting outside the ATM, and she is protected just like me. I would offer a kind word but stand in the gutter instead as old people wobble past leaning on canes, and young women sip from takeout cups of coffee stabbing at their phones, bracelets dancing around their wrists. I am dressed far too warm, but in my defence it was still snowing two weeks ago. That's the Moscow trick. Spring arrives in two weeks. The trees are already thick with leaves, as if they grow in the middle of the night.
I am next, and an old lady steps past me, to go into the ATM. I tell her I am on line even though I am standing two meters from the door and she oggles me, a look of disgust and anger painted across her red lipstick. She babbles to the young women sipping coffee and they manufacture bland smiles for her. The old lady is saying that every idiot wears a mask, that she will not suffer fools like me. I don't have the words to explain to her that mask or not, I was next and that innocent old lady trick has nothing to do with a virus. I am sure she would try the same on a normal day, but instead I just hold my hands up in the air and fend her off, waving for her to step aside. She does not wait behind me, stalking off down the busy sidewalk instead.
Inside the ATM the air is hot and still. I almost forget the passcodes, it has been so long.
On the way home, I grab a dandelion jutting out of the earth as if to remind myself that it is Spring when I am back inside.
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