ACT IMADNESS MOST DISCREET

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs,

Being purg’d, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;

Being vex’d, a sea nourish’d with loving tears.

What is it else? A madness, most discreet,

A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

Romeo to Benvolio,

Romeo and Juliet (Act I, Scene 1)

I. 1

(Enter the Fedorov Sons.)

The Fedorov sons had a habit of standing like the points of an isosceles triangle.

At the furthest point forward there was Dimitri, the eldest, who was the uncontested heir; the crown prince who’d spent a lifetime serving a dynasty of commerce and fortune. He typically stood with his chin raised, the weight of his invisible crown borne aloft, and had a habit of rolling his shoulders back and baring his chest, unthreatened. After all, who would threaten him? None who wished to live a long life, that was for certain. The line of Dimitri’s neck was steady and unflinching, Dimitri himself having never possessed a reason to turn warily over his shoulder. Dimitri Fedorov fixed his gaze on the enemy and let the world carry on at his back.

Behind Dimitri, on his right: the second of the Fedorov brothers, Roman, called Roma. If Dimitri was the Fedorov sun, Roman was the moon in orbit, his dark eyes carving a perimeter of warning around his elder brother. It was enough to make a man step back in hesitation, in disquietude, in fear. Roman had a spine like lightning, footfall like thunder. He was the edge of a sharp, bloodied knife.

Next to Roman stood Lev, the youngest. If his brothers were planetary bodies, Lev was an ocean wave. He was in constant motion, a tide that pulsed and waned. Even now, as he stood behind Dimitri, his fingers curled and uncurled reflexively at his sides, his thumb beating percussively against his thigh. Lev had a keen sense of danger, and he perceived it now, sniffing it out in the air and letting it creep between the sharp blades of his shoulders. It got under his skin, under his bones, and gifted him a shiver.

Lev had a keen sense of danger, and he was certain it had just walked in the room.

“Dimitri Fedorov,” the woman said, a name that, from her lips, might have been equally threatening aimed across enemy lines or whispered between silken sheets. “You still know who I am, don’t you?”

Lev watched his brother fail to flinch, as always.

“Of course I know you, Marya,” Dimitri said. “And you know me, don’t you? Even now.”

“I certainly thought I did,” Marya said.

She was a year older than Dimitri, or so Lev foggily recalled, which would have placed her just over the age of thirty. Flatteringly put, she didn’t remotely look it. Up close, Marya Antonova, whom none of the Fedorov brothers had seen since Lev was a child, had retained her set of youthful, pouty lips, as fitting to the Maybelline billboard outside their Tribeca loft as to her expression of measured interest, and the facial geography typically fallen victim to age—lines that might have begun expelling around her eyes or mouth, furrowed valleys that might have emerged along her forehead—had escaped even the subtlest indications of time. Every detail of Marya’s appearance, from the tailored lines of her dress to the polished leather of her shoes, had been marked by intention, pressed and spotless and neat, and her dark hair fell in meticulous 1940s waves, landing just below the sharp line of her collarbone.

She removed her coat in yet another episode of deliberation, establishing her dominion over the room and its contents via the simple handing of the garment to the man beside her.

“Ivan,” she said to him, “will you hold this while I visit with my old friend Dima?”

“Dima,” Dimitri echoed, toying with the endearment as the large man beside Marya Antonova carefully folded her coat over his arm, as fastidious as his employer. “Is this a friendly visit, then, Masha?”

“Depends,” Marya replied, unfazed by Dimitri’s use of her own diminutive and clearly in no hurry to elaborate. Instead, she indulged a lengthy, scrutinizing glance around the room, her attention skating dismissively over Roman before landing, with some degree of surprise, on Lev.

“My, my,” she murmured. “Little Lev has grown, hasn’t he?”

There was no doubt that the twist of her coquette’s lips, however misleadingly soft, was meant to disparage him.

“I have,” Lev warned, but Dimitri held up a hand, calling for silence.

“Sit, Masha.” He beckoned, gesturing her to a chair, and she rewarded him with a smile, smoothing down her skirt before settling herself at the chair’s edge. Dimitri, meanwhile, took the seat opposite her on the leather sofa, while Roman and Lev, after exchanging a wary glance, each stood behind it, leaving the two heirs to mediate the interests of their respective sides.

Dimitri spoke first. “Can I get you anything?”

“Nothing, thank you,” from Marya.

“It’s been a while,” Dimitri noted.

The brief pause that passed between them was loaded with things neither expressed aloud nor requiring explanation. That time had passed was obvious, even to Lev.


Copyright © 2019 by Alexene Farol Follmuth