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“Sveta, can you please explain to me like a normal person why you need a third pair of winter boots? They all look exactly the same!” Denis stood in the bedroom doorway holding a large shopping bag with the logo of an expensive shoe boutique. He stared at his wife with that peculiar mixture of […]

Darya Nikolaevna was the last person to leave the public services center. The streetlights were already reflected in the windows of the neighboring tax office, and behind her, the security guard turned the key in the glass door. Inside her handbag was the official order appointing her head of the department. The HR employee had […]

“I can’t live with a pensioner anymore,” Igor announced as he buttoned his jacket in the hallway. His suitcase was already waiting by the door, packed in advance while I was at work. I was holding his mug—the one with the chipped rim that he had drunk tea from for thirty years. My hand didn’t […]

“Denis, where did this unbearable smell of lavender soap come from on my underwear shelf?” Anna stood in the middle of the bedroom, holding a delicate lace nightgown in her hands. Until recently, the fabric had smelled of expensive laundry conditioner. Now it gave off the heavy, suffocating scent of an old wardrobe. Denis looked […]

“Regina, where do you keep the folding bed? There’s only one bed in your mother’s apartment.” Lyudmila Borisovna was already standing in the middle of the kitchen, still wearing her coat. She set the pie she had brought in a mesh shopping bag on the edge of the table. “What folding bed?” Regina asked, peeling […]

I heard Alla’s voice before I had even fully opened the door to the banquet hall. Sharp and loud, like one of those overly cheerful morning radio hosts. She was standing in the middle of a small group, holding a glass of juice. I was half an hour late. Kostya had been held up on […]

She washes the dishes as if the fate of humanity depends on it. Her back is straight, shoulders squared, elbows moving with the force and rhythm of factory pistons. The sponge scrapes across the plate with a sound that makes it seem as though she is not cleaning away leftover sauce, but scrubbing off proof […]

Elena slammed the heavy ring of keys onto the kitchen table so hard that the lid of the sugar bowl scraped sideways. Viktor did not even flinch. He finished chewing his potatoes, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and looked at his wife with the lazy irritation of a man whose television program had just […]