Long past midnight - the moon and the stars are running across the sky with their own, only known to them way, the crickets “singing out” their bizarre trills, the restless family of owls tirelessly drags the chicks of gapered mice and frogs, and I'm standing on the balcony. Sleep has not been coming to me for several days.

My beloved spouse Elena is just about to come to me - I can already hear the incomparable smell of her hair and light weightless steps. Come up to me, snuggle up from behind with a noticeably rounded tummy and put my lovely head on my shoulder ...

Well, here again shakes me with her touch and voice:

“Your night vigil again?” - as if she speaks with reproach. “You’ve spent more time lately with your owls than with me.”

- Yes, they woke me up again, parasites ... - I try to lie delicately, but Lena knows me as flaky.

- Do you think everything about them?

- No, that is, yes ... I'm completely confused. And I do not understand myself, but most importantly, I cannot understand you.

- And women are hard to understand at all, Volodenka. - with an elegant pen Elena puts me in order. “I’ve already become gray,” I’m thirty-three years old, “but I haven’t understood anything yet ...”

“I understood only that I was very lucky with you ...” - her palms are lost in mine and for some time we stand in silence and look at the night sky faded with bright lights.

“Enough ...” Elena firmly pulls me out of the embrace of the last summer night. - The morning is wiser than the evening.

“I was very lucky with her in life. “- under this thought and under the quiet whispers of my wife, I fall into the pool of dreams. This night the dream of our children and my dream is guarded by a fragile and at the same time strong in spirit woman ...

The predawn hour is especially quiet and cool. I again lay with open eyes. There is no sleep in any eye.

Helen is sleeping, covering his stomach with his palm. How beautiful she is in her motherhood and position!

I get out of the warm bed and quietly sneak into the kitchen, dropping into the nursery. To sleep my gavriks are little boys of six and five.

Brewing strong coffee, I look at my watch. Just a few more hours.

Various thoughts and images from the past with my head cover me and I sit in thought, holding a long-cold coffee in my hands.

It all started seven years ago. It has begun, but it will never end.

I had just turned twenty-six at that time — I had an institute, two years of work, a year of the army and several months of intoxicating freedom. Freedom from everyday exercise, exorbitant physical activity, communication with sometimes very heavy men and men who became brutal from the monotony of army life.

Immediately after leaving the citizen, I appeared in my own scientific research institute, where the desire of the immediate superiors to give me a “leading engineer” still outweighed the chronic reluctance of the institute management and the lack of money for salaries.

What else do the older “elk” need from life? Money - acquisitive, ambitions - I never intended to jump over my head, family ... That's what I wanted to do, because it was to find a good girl, play a wedding, give birth to sons and daughters, build a house, plant a tree. In general, the aspirations and desires of loved ones coincided with mine. However, this did not prevent me from still living in splendid isolation, watching, for the most part, married peers and older women, and looking at younger beauties.

And so it was May and summer months - in work, business trips and a brief evening rest in public gardens and courtyards of the city of N-ska. One of the evenings at the beginning of September was also a reward for working life and a curse at the same time. That's just for what? And damn it?

That evening I walked through a line of shady courtyards towards my house: light twilight fell on playgrounds and benches, where the children were still running and the tenants of houses were sitting after righteous works.A hand weighing heavily a packet with a screwdriver (bless my colleague Valeryich, who went through and returned the instrument to me on that very day). Our town is quiet and peaceful, so when a bit ahead of the screams of exclamation and women's cries, I tensed as the spring squeezed to the limit and sped up a step. The screams did not subside and I just felt uneasy when I saw people hurriedly leaving the courtyard who could stop what was soon revealed to my eyes.

Two hefty "foreheads" were pressing on a thin female figure. The woman was desperately trying to hold her handbag, which the cattle that was taller frantically pulled out, and the second one broke out the woman’s arms, having managed to tear off the dress.

Having assessed the situation, I prepared to act, but at that moment the freak pulling out the bag made its main mistake in this situation - he swung and swatted the woman in the face.

I did not stand and did not watch from the side. At the very moment when the fellow raised his finger, minor adjustments came into my plan. Having overcome several meters separating us, I took out the “younger brother” of the drill on the machine, I lowered the screwdriver on the attacker's head, although initially I put an eye on his collarbone. As it turned out, he turned off immediately and for a long time.

After that, I had only one chance to incapacitate a second light money lover who was taken aback from an unexpected attack by a light money lover, who released a thin figure from his paws. I profuked this chance when, by inertia, I stumbled over the body of his “resting” comrade and for a second lost my balance.

In the light of the flashlight flashed a knife. The woman standing behind the nearest birch screamed.

- Well, scum. Pray to your gods. You are dead. - the scarecrow did not barter and began to attack. I wrapped my left hand in a bag and grabbed a stronger tool.

A quick lunge of his hands and the package ripped to shreds. At that moment, a stupid thought flashed: “By, but close. ". The second lunge, the third. This scum checked me and I didn’t like the smile playing on my opponent’s thin lips.

The woman continued to call for help, shadows flashed in the windows and only flashing lights that suddenly appeared on the side suggested that her prayers were heard.

I threw a screwdriver into the head of my opponent, then went aside and swung. Just before the strike, it dawned on me that the “pebble” had not reached my head, but it did its job - it diverted attention to itself. But I could not get out of the fight, and at the same time with the pain in my right hand from hitting the golden teeth of the bull, I felt a sharp pain in my chest. The knife tangentially ripped my shirt and skin, passing across several edges obliquely.

The left arm hanging from a spasm still found the solar plexus of the enemy, but, in spite of the slack of the blow, it bent in half.

And there the valiant police arrived ...

“So, young man ...” - a blonde of forty-five was actively treating with hydrogen peroxide a surprisingly direct scratch on the left side of her chest. - ... is it how you managed?

- Crazy bullet, comrade doctor.

- It was lucky that on a tangent it touched and casually. - pretty blonde began to wear gauze tampons. - So you would not be a bandage alone. Would give you to darn your bad guys.

- How is that woman? - to get away from the pain I asked. - She's fine?

- If you are confident in the strength of the blow that was inflicted on her, I will tell you one thing - it is amazing that there is no concussion.

- Well thank you. Like a stone from his shoulders.

At noon the next day I left the district police station, where they brought my arkhar members. Extremely meticulous investigators let me go only after sucking all the information on yesterday’s case twice.

I already wanted to go down from the high porch of the entrance, as I saw a young woman climbing the stairs, in whom I immediately recognized the stranger yesterday.Those few minutes that I saw her directly at the scene of the scuffle and when communicating with the valiant police were enough to remember her: she was still a very attractive young woman of thirty-three-thirty-five with turquoise eyes and thick brown hair, braided in a tight braid, slightly upturned nose, sensual lips, high breasts, ...