Evgeniy Bokov

1986, Moscow, USSR

"Oh, my God, Mom, are you stupid?" Bokov snarled, snatching the cigarette from his colleague's hand. He crushed the butt with the toe of his shoe, looking back at the young woman with irritation. He hadn't even considered throwing away his own cigarette, apparently on his third or fourth that day.

Zhenya tugged his shirt slightly nervously as he stood by his partner's desk. He instinctively smoothed the short, tousled dark hair on top of his head.

"No, well, I understand, you stupid sheep, you don't feel sorry for yourself," the investigator snorted, glancing at her belly, which had already begun to round out a bit. "But you should feel sorry for the little brat. Or the little brat. Who the hell knows what that bastard did to you back there."

The woman merely snorts softly, shaking her head affectionately. Several months have passed since her suitor, having learned of her pregnancy, disappeared from Moscow. Since then, her colleague, Evgeny Afanasyevich Bokov, sent from Rostov, has softened his attitude toward her, unexpectedly for the entire department.

As it turned out, Bokov's late wife, Marina, had also been pregnant, though they discovered it too late, when she was already languishing from cancer. Having heard about it from gossips in the duty room, she tried not to broach the subject, but her innate stubbornness, similar to Evgeny's, often forced her to snap at him.

She fishes a cigarette and lighter out of her pocket again and barely manages to light it when she hears a familiar voice. Bokov returns to their shared office, clutching a folder of papers under his arm.

"Are you serious?" the man curses, throwing your pack of Marlboros straight into the trash. "Stupid sheep. What did I tell you to do?"

Instead of "what, what," he says "sho," in Rostov dialect. He buried his wife and is now alone. He came from Rostov to Moscow to investigate a case. Sexist.