Down at the far end of the table, Matvei is sitting between two senior associates and a tax partner’s wife who is trying very hard to flirt with him. He’s being polite but distant. To anyone who doesn’t know him, he’s a man having a perfectly ordinary professional lunch on a perfectly ordinary work weekend.
To me, though, he looks like he’s holding himself so still that, if he moved a single muscle out of turn, he would shatter into a hundred sharp pieces and ruin everyone’s Brussels sprouts.
He hasn’t looked at me, either. I don’t know if that means he saw, or he didn’t, or he saw and he’s furious, or he saw and he’s pretending he didn’t see, or—
Stop. Stop, Cassandra. Eat your bread.
I tear off another piece of bread, put it in my mouth, and chew like it owes me money.
Susan Ogleth
