She realized something else. Roman. His behavior no longer caused her sharp pain; it had simply become a fact, a variable in the equation. He wasn’t on her side; he had never truly been on her side. He was on the side of his own comfort, and he was most comfortable where it was quiet, where he didn’t have to make decisions, where his mother was happy. His betrayal wasn’t malicious, but cowardly, infantile, and that didn’t make it any less disgusting. She would lose him tonight. She knew that. But, to be honest, she felt almost no grief at the thought. There was only a slight regret, like for an item that turned out to be defective.
She tore the cardboard with her calculations into small pieces and threw it in the trash. The plan was in her head, honed and flawless. Now all that remained was to wait for the right moment, to provoke it. She filled the kettle with water, flicked the switch, and a blue light came on. Kira watched as the first bubbles began to rise in the water. Inside her, it was just as quiet and tense. She was preparing. The transition from passive defense to attack was complete. From a victim being slowly and methodically carved up in her own kitchen, she had transformed into a hunter. She fixed her hair, squared her shoulders. A faint, barely noticeable, completely calm smile appeared on her face. When the kettle boiled, she turned it off, took the TV remote from the shelf where it always lay in the kitchen in case she was cooking and watching the morning news, and walked back into the living room. Slowly, confidently, like a queen walking to her coronation. She knew the climax was coming, and she was ready for it. The play was nearing its end, and she was going to write the finale herself.
Kira returned to the living room with the TV remote in her hand. It felt unusually heavy in her palm, not like a plastic box, but like a scepter or, perhaps, a weapon. A dense, stagnant atmosphere hung in the room, the kind you find in old, long-unaired houses. It smelled of dust, something sour from the tea, and faintly of mothballs—as if the scent emanated from Larisa Andreevna herself, from her brought-from-home robe, from her entire life.
On the screen, like in a circus arena, agitated men in expensive suits flailed about. They yelled at each other, waved their arms, and their faces, distorted with anger in the harsh studio lights, looked grotesque, inhuman. Larisa Andreevna, half-reclining on the sofa, absorbed this shouting with a greediness, as if it were a life-giving balm for her. Her face expressed deep satisfaction, the kind a connoisseur might have while listening to a complex but beloved opera. She was the mistress here, not only of the sofa but also of this broadcast noise, this foreign, nationally televised scandal.
Roman, huddled in his chair, was an island of silence and feigned tranquility amidst this sonic storm. The light from his phone cast bluish, deathly glimmers on his chin and cheeks. He was so deeply immersed in his little glowing world that it seemed he might not notice if the room caught fire. But he felt everything. Kira knew it from the way his back tensed when she entered. He felt the change in the air, the shifting of tectonic plates in their small, artificially created world, and he cowardly waited for the tremors to cease.
Kira walked past him in silence. She didn’t even grant him a glance. Looking at him now was physically unpleasant, like looking at something viscous, formless. She stopped in front of the television, a short distance away, and aimed the remote at the screen. A light press of a button. The political talk show was cut off mid-sentence, at the highest pitch of a scream. The sudden silence was deafening. Instead of shouting men, a serene picture appeared on the screen: an emerald valley, a mountain river carrying its clear, cold waters over glistening boulders. And a quiet, transparent music began to play—a flute and a harp, something Celtic, melancholic, and calm. This sound, this image, was so alien to everything that had been happening in the room for the last two hours that the effect was like a gulp of ice water in a stuffy, smoke-filled room.
Kira didn’t sit down. She remained standing, her hand with the remote lowered. This was her declaration. Her attempt to restore her living room’s true identity. The identity of a place for rest, for peace, for quiet beauty.
— What is this? — Larisa Andreevna’s voice was sharp, like the crack of a dry branch. She sat up straight on the sofa, throwing off the blanket she had covered herself with. Her small, light eyes drilled into Kira. There was no surprise in them, only cold, piercing irritation. She had understood perfectly. This was a challenge.
— Mom was watching her show, — Roman’s voice came from his chair. It was guilty, pleading. He was addressing Kira but looking somewhere at the floor. — Kir, please turn it back on.
Kira slowly turned her head towards him. She looked at him with a long, unblinking gaze, and there was so much cold contempt in her gray eyes that he shrank even more and fell silent, burying his face once again in his life-saving phone. The dialogue with him was over. Now, it was just her.
— I’m asking, what is this? — Larisa Andreevna repeated, raising her voice. She looked at Kira the way she must have looked at that workshop manager with the Armenian cognac—as a disturber of the peace who dared to question her authority.
— It’s a nature channel, Larisa Andreevna, — Kira answered calmly and evenly. — The shouting gives me a headache. I wanted some quiet. After all, this is my home.
She spoke the last words quietly, but they echoed in the room like a gunshot. She herself had defined the battlefield. “My home.”
Larisa Andreevna’s face contorted. It was no longer just annoyance, but open rage. The mask of the “old-school person” and “just worker” fell away, revealing the face of a domineering woman, intolerant of objections, accustomed to always having the last word. Her whole life she had fought, achieved, put people in their place. She didn’t know how to negotiate; she only knew how to win. And now some little upstart with “easy money” dared to contradict her, Larisa Andreevna? In her, Larisa Andreevna’s, presence?
— Oh, your home? — she hissed…
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