Now Miss Hatshepsut was left with the easy part of the job. Safe on Teraziye Boulevard she took a tiny mirror out of her bag and peered into it. She was satisfied with the picture of herself she saw there: “Pity that picture can’t stay where it is. Who knows, maybe it will. Well, at least I’ll put a signature to it.” And she kissed the mirror, leaving a trace of her lipstick upon the glass. In the pedestrian subway on Teraziye she climbed onto the moving staircase and discreetly dropped the mirror into the bag of a woman passing by her.

The job was successfully completed and Miss Hatshepsut breathed a sigh of relief. She entered the lingerie store where she worked as if reborn, as if she had spent hours having a massage, steaming in a sauna, or sweating away on various devices at an exercise gym. The feeling of loneliness vanished as usual when she took this line of action. Always the same pattern. Steal one thing, give away another. And to different people. Not choosing what or to whom. Sometimes, circumstances forced her to change the order—give first, steal after. But this time everything went according to plan.

It was only much later, when she found herself alone in the store, that she got an opportunity to see what she had stolen from the pocket of the gentleman in the lacquered coat.