Sanguine - 5/8 Radio #231

Apartment 54, fifth floor. Sveta is smoking on the open balcony, wrapped in an old puffer jacket. It's the typical timelessness of a weekend day when it's impossible to tell exactly what time it is. Children in snowsuits that make a «whoosh-whoosh» sound while walking are dragging a huge snow tubing somewhere, and a group of red-faced men, drinking on the bench in front of the building, just emptied another bottle of vodka. But Sveta isn't here — she's in Sochi twenty-something years ago. Blond-haired Sasha sees her off at the platform. He arrived ten minutes before departure: his eye is bruised («last night got into a fight with a guy from Tambov, nothing to worry about»), and he's holding flowers, plucked from a flowerbed. He promises to call. But it never happens. Where is he now? And on which balcony would she smoke, if he had called twenty-something years ago? If Sveta knew about the Sanguine’s mix for 5/8: radio, which helps distract from persistent thoughts about things that never happened, she would immediately turn it on. But she doesn't know