The sky, bloated with daws, screamed humanly. She covered her ears and closed her eyes, but the sky did not disappear, and the jackdaws screamed even louder.

“Well, I got drunk again ...” She thought.

The doorbell swung it back into reality. Jackdaws turned into a crowd of guests, and the sky - an old plaster. She went to open.

Of course, it was Kakadu - asexual, nosy, all of colorful patches sewn on a live thread of chatter. Nobody took him seriously, starting with him. Therefore, he was all loved and accepted everywhere.

- All garbage, baby, except for a good piston! - he liked to say to his interlocutors, regardless of gender and age. "Babes" melted, especially those that are older ...

She kissed Kakadu heartily and was about to close the door when she discovered that the old parrot had not come alone. His friend, like a plumber, stood with the look that he had the wrong address.

Kakadu could bring someone suitable for himself, everyone knew his habit and long ago accepted it. Therefore, she was not surprised, inspected the guest for something worthy of attention.

Nothing of the kind was found, and She returned to the party in order to habitually dissolve into it.

The Plumber, who is not one of the poets, musicians, artists, or just geniuses, did not dissolve in the crowd, but precipitated and sat down at the table, in a corner, and took out a bottle of vodka. He looked around for a drinking companion, but the table was empty, and the fashion designer who slept behind him, looking like a broken mannequin, did not count.

It is not known why, She wanted to drink with a gloomy stranger, and She sat down at the table opposite. He without words poured two piles, and they quietly clinked glasses. On closer examination, the guest stopped being like a plumber, in his eyes, looking at the guests over Her shoulder, something cold and stainless was cast.

She became interested. And she was angry that the guest was examining the guests behind her, not paying any attention to her. So it seemed to her. She got up, went around the table and sat down next to him.

- Interesting people, right? - She asked, legally proud of the ability to gather a loud company.

“Do you know them all?” - He asked in response. The voice was good, but too uneven, to her taste.

- Yes. For example, the one you are staring at is a famous singer in narrow circles.

- Sings well?

- Not. But brings here musicians who play well.

- Interesting.

- You're lying. You are not interested in anything.

- Good. I'm lying. - He smiled. - Not interested. Have another drink?

She shook an invisible helicopter and shook her head, throwing off the extra hops.

- With pleasure. - She was intrigued by a man who, with a click, threw off all of Her world. She regarded his behavior as a challenge and accepted him. - What are we drinking for?

- For your city. I love him very much, although I am here less and less often.

- What is it?

- Job.

- And where do you work? Europe? America? Or maybe Japan? Now it is fashionable. You have a kind of narrow specialist.

- Under Murmansk, - said a narrow specialist with an emphasis on "a", - So, according to your classification, probably, Europe.

“Wow,” She said, and imagined Russia, which started beyond the ring road and consisted of rusty rebar protruding from snowdrifts. She shivered. - And how do you live there?

- Come - see. In a nutshell you can not tell.

“What else?” She shivered. - I'd rather you to us.

- Let's drink, however ... - A steel glint flashed in his eyes. He knocked over his glass and set it on the table like a cartridge case.

- Do not be offended ... - She felt guilty and put her hand on his fingers. Fingers burned Her neznamo than, and she withdrew her hand.

- Good. I will not. What are you ... living like that?

- How - so? - She was surprised.

“Well ...” he hesitated. - Noisy or something ...

- You want to say - stupid, senseless, stupid?

- I did not say that.

- But they thought.

- Not. I think ... About a friend.

- About what?

- About your lips.

- Is that so? - She felt a trump card in her hands, the phrase was from her world. - And what do you think about them?

- Imagine how they will look without lipstick.

She smiled, took a napkin from the table and carefully wiped her lips.

- Well, how?

- Handsomely. - He smiled and reached for the bottle. On the way, he touched her elbow, and she was electrocuted again.

- You are shocked like an electric ramp.

- This is ... This is a static voltage. A year without movement creates something similar.

“Are you working as a mannequin? ...” She glanced at the sleeping fashion designer.

- Not. I'm about other moves.

- Unclear.

- Well, I will say so that it was clear. A year without a woman.

- Aaaa ... - She sighed in disappointment. Everything turned out to be easier than she thought. Then She looked into his eyes and realized that everything was confused again.

He poured vodka into piles, and they drank one more. This glass, like a knocked-up stool, hung it in a drunken prostration, where tenderness and delight coexisted with nausea and nothing came from longing.

The middle of the evening passed unconsciously. She came to herself only in bed. The stranger was lying nearby, also naked. The windows were starting to get light.

They made love with the fervor with which they met rushed to the platform of a very late train. The guest was still in shock, but now it was by the way. He was not distinguished by his mastery of the capital in respect of indecent kisses, in his tenderness there was something provincially old-fashioned. Through the tenderness now and then broke through a rough, not knowing quenching, hunger. He had big, strong hands and a powerful lever, on which she hung again and again with the limpness of skinned carcass. They barely spoke, and, having only crouched in convulsions of dreary delight, She shed tears and words, the meaning of which she did not understand herself ...

Then She asked herself how many days, months or years this delight lasted. And where have all the guests gone ... (then it turned out that he put everyone out the door, including Kakadu and the sleeping handsome man, whom he personally carried on his hands in a warm basement). And yet ... She could not understand what this man with steel eyes did to her ...

Chronicle of further events.

The next morning the guest went to his place in Tmutarakan. She barely pulled herself together and called Kakadu for explanations where he picked up his amazing friend and how to get in touch with him. The old parrot replied that he had met a guest at the Stoleshnikov brewery and did not know where to look for him now.

She began to mourn and began, like a schoolgirl, to slowly love her random fellow traveler. The former entourage seemed bored to her, she dispersed the guests and lived alone, on a diet of memories. A month later he received a letter from him - warm, old-fashioned and very serious. In the whole letter, she was most interested in two lines - the return address on the envelope. There was the name of some military unit and the town nearby.

She collected her belongings, called Kakadu and sat with him in the kitchen for half the night for a bottle of vodka, saying goodbye to him and to herself. Then they went to bed and tenderly, in a friendly way, caressed each other on the road.

The next morning she went to the town indicated on the envelope, and, after a long search, found her needle in a stack of human hay. He was an officer in the middle ranks, lived in a dull garrison and looked like a strong, healthy and unhappy man. Seeing her, he visibly staggered and for a long time could not come to his senses. Fortunately, he had neither a wife nor children (an option that simply did not occur to the crazed city thing).

Her arrival created a sensation in the garrison, whose despondency was only emphasized by perfect purity and order. Breaking into the monochrome everyday life of people who were laconic and exhausted by drunkenness, She painted them in every way.

Her life with her lover was laconic, calm and happy. She regained consciousness after half a day after nightly fun, the rest of the time she was preparing for their evening repetition. Polar night fell in love with her owl character. Her body was in peace and harmony, which She did not know before.The soul, deceived by the body, lasted affectionately for a whole year, but at the day and hour of the first sunrise, the soul started and looked around with drunken, ill-lit eyes.

With these new eyes, She looked at her new salon, which, of course, consisted of the color of the local officers and began to assemble a week after her arrival. Meticulously choosing a little man who was a local, military variety of the Kakadu, She started an easy flirt. After a short time, flirting buried in a dead end of betrayal, which became known to all ...

The Chronicle ends with an event as old-fashioned and does not fit into any framework, like everything that preceded it. This event is called a duel, and it happened in a stunted grove just five minutes ago. Husband killed on the spot, he lies in the snow with rusty dead eyes. Lover is wounded. She came running to the scene too late ...

... The sky, bloated with daws, screamed humanly. She covered her ears and closed her eyes, but the sky did not disappear, and the jackdaws screamed even louder.

“It's all bullshit, baby,” said the pistol in the voice of Kakadu, “except for a good piston ...” © Mr. Kiss, One Hundred Splinters of One Sense, 1998–1999