Half a dozen serious-faced lawyers glared at each other from the couches and chairs in the living room, while Ueli and Dusha occupied the space between the conversation grouping and the bedroom door.
Ueli checked his phone and surreptitiously rolled his eyes at whatever he’d seen. He muttered to me, “There’s coffee and breakfast on the sideboard.”
The lawyers twisted in their seats to see who had emerged from the bedroom, two of them half-rising, but they lost interest and sat back down when they saw me walking toward them. Their dark suits looked laser-printed on, none of their cuffs a little too long or too short at their wrists or ankles.
Meanwhile, I was wearing jeans and a frilly blouse I’d bought for my hope chest. Socks kept my feet warm enough because the air conditioning geysering from the ceiling vents fell to the carpet. The deep pile’s chill soaked through my cotton ankle-highs as I padded around the furniture to where some yogurt, fruit, and pastries were laid out beside the coffee pot. I piled muffins on a plate.
One of the women attorneys looked me up and down and shot ano-wayglare at the lawyer beside her, but the other five kept it professional.
Fine, I’d go first. “Nicolai will be out in just a minute.”
More glances, more shuffling of behinds on the couch.
One of them started, “About this contract he is proposing?—”
All of them started arguing with each other like each had been waiting for the trigger-pull of the starting gun.
“Post-nuptial contracts aren’t a thing,” one dude-lawyer started, his medium-length, medium-brown hair falling around his ears. His dark suit trousers looked like he’d be medium-height, too. “This agreement should have been signed before the ceremony or not at all. And since it wasn’t signed before, then itshouldn’t be signed at all.”
“I’m here to act asherattorney, but Romanov is paying me. This is definitely a conflict of interest,” one of the women said.
“These clauses he sent last night are insane. There’s no way he wasn’t coerced into writing these. Romanov is being taken advantage of,” the medium-guy expounded, gesturing by rolling his wrist at the ceiling.
“Alexandra is the one being taken advantage of.” A different lawyer, not the one who’d judged my clothes, twisted in her chair to talk at me. “Aren’t you? He married you without a pre-nup, maybe by coercion? Were you drunk? Drugs? Were you not of sound mind? Because you should have been protected.”
I stirred cream and sugar into the black depths of my coffee. The eggshell-thin china cup looked like a specimen from my friends’ moms’ generational china collections. I needed a mug, a big mug, for the amount of coffee my brain was craving. “I wasn’t drunk, and I’m not saying anything more about the wedding until Nicolai is out here.”
“Youweren’t drunk?” One of the other lawyers, a guy, asked. His wiry black hair was sculpted close on top and faded to shaved halfway down his skull. His dark eyes examined me like I was a contract clause. “That begs the question, whowasdrunk?”
“Nicolai said he will be out in a second,” I told them again. “If I say what he said, that’s hearsay, right? So it doesn’t even matter.”
Some of the lawyers rolled their eyes. One said, “This isn’t a trial.”
“Did youseethe livestream?” one asked, the guy who was too sharp for me to say another word around. “I found it this morning. Romanov was wasted. He looked roofied.”
The woman lawyer who’d announced she wasmylawyer cranked herself around to pin me to the sideboard with her intent stare. The beads on her long braids clicked around her shoulders as they swung.“Don’t say another word.”
I wanted to argue with that guy about Nicolai being roofied, but when your lawyer tells you to shut it, you shut it. That much, I’d learned from internet videos. I sipped the still-bitter coffee and turned back to add another sugar cube.
Another lawyer asked,“Whenis Mr. Romanov going to join us?”
I glanced at my designated lawyer, who nodded, before I said, “He’s in the shower. He’ll be out in a sec.”
The entire flock of lawyers perching on the furniture slumped in their seats and gazed out the windows or picked up their phones.
Yeah, the guy who paid their bills wasn’t present. No need to look alive. I stuffed a muffin in my mouth and gnawed on the dry crumbs as I started to meander back to the dining room table, but Nicolai opened the door and strode out of the bedroom like he’d been waiting to make an entrance.
Every single one of the lawyers sprang to attention and turned to look at him. The Black guy who’d said Nicolai looked roofied was the first on his feet. “Mr. Romanov.”
Seriously, Nico was not just a better actor than I was, but his theatrical timing was impeccable. I should be sitting at his feet to learn the craft.
The reflex to watch someone and analyze their effect on other people’s reactions was a technique I’d learned my freshman year of high school in theater class, but I hadn’t been doing it for a long time.
The habit had petered out when I’d been around Jimmy-my-Ex’s family because it hadn’t been worth the mental effort anymore.
Because I’d given up not just my ambition, but my art.
Oh.
