The Sin Collector

ANDREY

Andrey opened his eyes and nearly screamed bloody murder, but then he realized this enormous, shaggy, stinking face was not a beast out of his worst nightmares. It was only the result of yesterday’s very unmacho bout of pity and temporary insanity.

As usual, he’d come home around eleven from police headquarters at Petrovka, tired as a dog, and stopped to buy some bread at the twenty-four-hour shop near his house. An actual dog was sitting outside the shop, scratching himself in a frenzy. While Andrey sipped his well-earned bottle of Baltika, he and the dog had a chat. Basically, Andrey talked about his own doggone life: his terrible but manly loneliness, how fed up he was with “ladies” (he didn’t have to watch himself with the dog—we all know what they call the females of that species), how he worked himself ragged and lived on junk food. He also bragged a little about his culinary feat of the previous evening. He had fried ten frozen meat patties, and tonight he would warm them up in the microwave.

That had turned out to be a strategic error. The stray was no idiot. Sure, he had listened with sympathy and respect to Andrey’s sad tales of bachelor life, but when it came to meat—well. The dog’s eyes gleamed even more pitifully, and his tail beat on the cracked asphalt. Since Andrey was feeling generous after the Baltika, he invited the dog home. He thought he’d toss a patty onto the porch. Men had to stick together, after all.

But the mutt had different plans. He followed Andrey into the makeshift kitchen and sat there staring with eyes bigger and sadder than any orphan’s until Andrey had fed him not one, but five of the patties. He didn’t even chew them like a civilized dog—just gulped each one down whole, and noisily.

“You’re supposed to chew your food,” Andrey admonished him, his mother’s voice ringing in his ears. “You won’t digest anything that way!”

But to no avail. Andrey had to practically swallow his share whole, too, just to keep some of it away from the scrawny, clever beast.

“And you’re a terrible actor. You’re playing dumb, but I don’t buy it,” Andrey told him as he sipped some tea. “Who was that shameless blonde in the old Hollywood movies? Marilyn Monroe.”

This shaggier Marilyn must have known there wasn’t any meat left, and Lipton was clearly outside his expertise. The pitiful sheen in his eyes was gone now, and he stretched out on the floor next to the saggy old couch.

“Don’t even think about sleeping here.”

Andrey went to drag the dog out by the scruff of his neck. But Marilyn wiggled out of his grip, and that look returned, a suffering that permeated the whole damn room. Andrey gave in, spat on the floor, and told the dog he was overacting. He shut the door to the bedroom behind him.

By morning, though, clever Marilyn had evidently figured out how to pry the door open and come right up to the bed. Andrey swore again and walked out to the wash basin hanging outside. He took the towel down from the hook without thinking, then immediately hung it back up again. The towel was such a dingy shade of gray that there was no way he was going to use it. Andrey told himself very seriously that he was really going to have to do some laundry, and then he switched on the electric teapot and sat down on the porch. While the water started to boil, he took yesterday’s teacup and spooned instant coffee into it, along with a couple of cubes of sugar. He sliced some bread. Then he locked eyes with the dog again. Those eyes seemed unimpressed.

“You can get the hell out if you don’t like it, Marilyn Monroe,” Andrey snapped at him. His mood that morning was rotten enough, and then he remembered that the night before, all wrapped up in his conversation with the dog, he had forgotten to buy the cheese he wanted for breakfast.

His cell phone rang, and Andrey swore quietly. The day was about to go from bad to worse.