Her apartment was small and she heated only one room in it. She said she had to be very economical; she had to save up money. All men are like you, she said. You come and go when you please and can I rely on you? Not really.

It always rained when he walked along the street where she lived. It was narrow and dank. The facades of the houses were gray slabs of mold and old age. There were no trees in the neighborhood, but the rents were low and she was happy, she said. She added she loved the street when it rained. That particular night, she put on her old coat and went out, and he remained in the room staring at the sky. Later she told him the night and the sky were twins and she couldn't tell one from the other.

“Martha, you are out of your mind” he had said, but she just smiled at him or maybe at the mist.

What was she happy about Jim wondered. What on earth made her so happy in the cold city where no one cared for her? She came back home wet, frozen and grinned at him. He didn't ask where she'd been. Her face was pale and wan, but she said she loved him and she loved the warm room in her apartment.

I can fix you something to eat, she said, and took to cooking a lentil soup in which she put wild mint and vinegar. He waited for her meal watching her arms sparkle amidst the enormous delicious smell of her casserole.

“I love it when you are here,” Martha said. “I'm lazy and I wouldn't cook for myself. But things change when you say you are hungry.”

He ate a bowl of soup, and she told him it was good to have him about. “Look at the rain. It is coins filling your purse,” she added. “Let's go and pick them.”

They went out in the street and kissed under the silver coins of her rain, the smallest room in her apartment waiting for them. “That's a poky place,” she said. “But it changes when you are here. It feels like summer, doesn't it?”

When on the following day the sun in the sky was a yellow rusty patch among the clouds, she said, “It's an old song, that's what that sun is. Look at the street. Today the houses glow. So let's go and have a beer at the “Old Counter”. It's open now.”

The Old Counter, or the Vieux Coptoir, was the cheapest pub in Brussels . The beer in it was a magic and cost only one Euro a pint, she explained.

“Listen, I can call in sick,” she said. “Just think about it. You come to see me so rarely. I should be crazy if I let you stay all alone in that drizzly Brussels all day long.”

She worked in a translation office in Evere and she said she loved it – her office was so spacious and warm compared to her flat. She was constantly broke. She squandered the money she made on long cheap excursions to different cities in Belgium – Liege and Namur , and Charleroi , and dozens of unknown small towns.

“You should see their cathedrals,” she said. “You'll be crazy about the luminous space above them. And there's splendid beer. The guys in the old breweries know a trick. I enjoy the fog in the abbeys. Believe it or not, that fog is two thousand years old. Here, take little sip of this one. This beer is unique. I brought a bottle for you from Grimbergen.”

The beer was weak and he said it was no good.

“Why don't you ask me where I go when I'm not with you? All women want to know that,” he teased her. “I tell them about you, Martha. They are mad when I praise your lamb casserole and your lentil soup.”

“I can understand that,” she said nodding her head. “My lamb casserole is great. Well, the important thing is I'm not broke right now. You brought in so much money. We can go to Lava restaurant and eat a dinner there.”

“No Lava restaurant,” he said. “You fix me something to eat here. I love it here.”

She didn't grumble and her kitchen was soon a jungle of beautiful smells, roasted lamb, buttered potatoes, orange juice and white yeast bread she fried in a big pan on the plate. He didn't want to go to the small abbeys with their famous beer. He had seen Waterloo and the Citadel in Namur . He didn't care about the famous room with the tilting floor in the Citadel which made you feel dizzy. He wanted the sweet smell of her narrow room. Then he wanted his job and his car. He built roads and houses, he was somebody out there and he thought Belgium was a quiet place which didn't attract him. He had worked everywhere – in Madrid and in Marseilles , in Dublin and in Oostende . He had built the TV center in Amsterdam he had designed the Hayat Tower of Light in Istanbul . He built the gaudron, the endless asphalt road in Mauritania . We built one of the suspension bridges over the Maas in the Netherlands .

“Really?” she didn't believe him when he said he liked the orange curtains at her place. “This is the neighborhood with the lowest rents in Brussels . I know you come back here not because of the curtains but because of me.”

“Not because of you,” he told her. He'd always been honest to women and he hated it when they started planning and building a future for him.

”Oh, of course it's me you come here for,” she said smiling. “You just don't know it yet.” He liked her smile. “In Brussels , I make the big difference, Jim.”

“I love the smells of your kitchen,” he said. “And I like the way you spend my money. You are very economical.”

“O, shut up,” she said. “You should say I'm pretty and you can't live without me. Tell me you can't smoke without me. My heart will melt like a candy if you say that.”

“But you are not pretty and I can smoke quite well without you,” he said. “And besides what will you do if your heart melted?”

“Come to think about it I'd rather take you to the warm room.”

“I'd rather you made an apple strudel for me,” he said.

“Aha,” she said. “I know what you are up to. When you start speaking of apple strudels the next thing you do is pack up all your things. Then you are gone. Let's go to the warm room.”

He didn't object. He liked her skin. It smelled sweet like her kitchen. He liked the way she went to sleep easy, and he liked her question “When will you come back? If I know the day in advance, I'll make a broccoli quiche for you.”

“I'll tell you what you'll make for me when I come,” he answered.

What she didn't know was that his favorite vacations were the time he spent with her. When his friends asked him “Where were you Jim?” he'd answer, “I stayed with my mother for a week.” His mother cooked like her.

“If you have an important letter to send me, which says you miss me, send it to my mother,” he told her and gave her the old lady's address. “Don't write too often though. My mother collects my correspondence for me and grumbles if she has to walk to the post box twice a day.”

He half expected she'd get angry. She smiled at him and said, “Okay. Thanks for giving me that precious address.”

“And what was the weather like in Rome ?” one of his colleagues wanted to know after Jim came back to work. Jim had not visited Rome . He was in her warm room, with the miracle of her lentil soups.

“It rained all the time,” he answered thinking of the gray streets. But the silver coins of the rain were still in his purse. He remembered the asphalt squares of Brussels . They are the color of the eyes of a man in love, Martha had said.

“I love the town,” she said. “It's so clean, and I like the sun. I even like Gare du Nord and its noise when you are here.”

“It's because I leave you a lot of money,” he pointed out.

“Yes,” she agreed. “I'm not broke. In fact I am the richest woman in the neighborhood. Where have you been all this time? In Lisbon or in Athens ?” but she didn't wait for him to answer. “You look good. You do. You feel like broccoli quiche?”

They walked in the rain. Her street was mercury she said, and he'd better keep his eyes open. One didn't see such a street every day.

As always, he went away without warning.

“ Brussels women are easy going,” she wrote in a letter Jim's mother received. “There's endless spring washing away my blues. You know, I was sick a week ago. I thought I'd die. I wished you were here. Thank It was nothing serious. Next time I'll fix you a pumpkin pie. They make nice pumpkin pies in Leuven and I got the recipe from an old lady. I look forward to baking it for you.”

The next time when he came to Brussels it was raining again. There was so much mercury in the streets that the gray houses were ready to run - to Namure maybe. The oldest brewery in Belgium was there.

He looked forward to her quiche, and to the orange curtains on the windows. He looked forward to her skin that had the Brussels rains in it.

He rang the bell at the front door and waited. No one showed up, but he was not worried. Often, she was not at home on Sundays. She rode her bike along the canal to Anderlecht where the shops for used cars were. She'd been constantly on the lookout for a cheap old Peugeot. He had half a mind to buy her one so she'd stop babbling about vente et achat des voitures, buying and selling used cars.

She was sure to come back home soon. Jim went to have a drink in the Vieux Comptoir where the barman nodded to him. No one opened the door when he tried the bell after a couple of drinks more. He loved the quiet pub she'd taken him so often. Jim noticed she had not drawn the orange curtains. He wondered who he could ask after her. He didn't know anybody in Brussels but her silver rain.

After a week he visited his mother. A letter waited for him. He recognized the careful oval outlines of the words. She had tried to teach him French spelling in the Vieux Comptoir and he said her handwriting was a string of clouds.

Her letter said, “Dearest Jim,

I will not live in Brussels any more. I'll marry Honore. I translated one of his novellas and he said he liked my translation.

I don't enjoy making apple strudels for him.

I loved every minute of your time with me.

There will be no silver in rains.

I was afraid of living alone, you know. I often think we didn't have time for your broccoli quiche.

Loving you,

Martha.”

Zdravka Evtimova, was born in Bulgaria, but now lives and works as a literary translator in Brussels, Belgium. A short story collection "Bitter Sky" was published in 2003 in UK by Skrev Press. A second short story collection "Somebody Else" was published by MAG Press, USA, in 2004. A further short story collection “Miss Daniella” was published by SKREV Press, UK in April 2007.