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Borgov realizes, hunched over the desk and half-listening, the full weight of the eyes on a body.
He knows how a body can break from permanent exposure. How it doesn’t even think to react. It’s been explained to him at length that this weight is something he’d have to live with. Yet Harmon’s eyes feel different.
When he looks up, nothing changes. Lutchenko is still moving the pieces, and the eyes in the room are on his hands. No one sees what he sees, no one would: Harmon’s very quiet and very still.
There’s a feeling there, like the smell of a wet dog. She watches him from the corner of her eye, and he can’t help but know it.
Borgov wants to make a move, to chase after it. He thinks, if he doesn’t, she’s going to figure it out. She’s going to guess where the stillness in the air comes from. Why they are careful, why they don’t run. That none of them can really afford to.
There’s nothing like that in her behind that door.
He wonders what she thinks Moscow stands for. It must be just this: a tall room and an audience. The reaping of the rewards.
He saw her in Paris. There’s nothing a girl like that can know about the trappings of a life. He watched her go from game to game, sure and deadly, hungry for attention, hungrier when observed. And, finally, careless when people started to look away from her trembling hands.
Her eyes lock in on his. Where he usually wishes for the intrusion to be over, he wants her to keep at it.
He can’t name what’s right there on her face. He can’t tell if, on her, it stands for fear or amusement. She watches him like he’s an animal in the room: like he’ll get over there or smother her in her sleep.
Borgov puts down his drink. Maybe he should. Maybe it won’t count for anything if he goes over there and closes the door in her face.
She shakes her head and turns away. She shouldn’t be here in the first place. He knows that. The things you can’t predict, you shouldn’t trust. There’s nothing here worth chasing, and yet Borgov makes his way towards the door.
Harmon turns her head as if to check up on him, not slowing down. She walks down the corridor, the impact of her heels absorbed by the carpet. His every step is wary yet he finds he’s unable to stop.
She turns, again, but this time she stops. So does he.
Harmon tilts her head, considering him. “You’re scared of me.”
He wants her to explain her meaning before he realizes. What they must have looked like to a girl who came here alone. What an absurd spectacle it must be, old men discerning her meaning, feverishly trying to predict her next move. Harmon crosses her arms.
“I’ve seen your debate,” she says, her voice low and disapproving in the empty hallway. “Care to tell me what Lutchenko will hit me with tomorrow?”
She has lost twice, and right now she looks it. The fear, the failure. Yet there’s a thing behind her words, and it feels like a threat even if he can’t get at her meaning. That’s useful too: if she’s attacking this quick she must be feeling cornered. It’s the pawn then, in that envelope.
The thing is, he’s learned Lutchenko’s plays years ago. And it sometimes seems like the whole of Moscow is playing the same three openings. Harmon doesn’t play at those. She’s uniquely reckless, as if she could throw it all away without batting an eye. It doesn’t help that he notices her fingers are long and pale and relentless, just like the rest of her. It makes him uneasy, if not unsure. It fascinates him in a way he wouldn’t want to put into words.
If he has words, it’s only a matter of time before someone hears them.
He looks her up and down, a small woman in an expensive coat, the only person in the world a step closer to tomorrow’s outcome. Where they are guessing, she’s already trapped.
And there’s no one in that room to contradict her.
What Harmon doesn’t know is that no matter how she tries, loneliness won’t give her an edge. If there’s no one to help her with it, no one will help her out of it either. His mouth set in a thin line, he wants to warn her that it doesn’t go away. That she’ll have to learn to exist around it.
He can’t allow for any of it out in the open. But if he keeps standing here, maybe it’ll spill over.
It does. Like a moth to a flame, Borgov closes in on her.
Harmon arches an eyebrow, she raises her hand. He makes half a step, and Harmon has her finger digging into his shirt.
She doesn't look drunk. He’s been told to watch out for that, seen her at the bar in Mexico City, has witnessed her trembling hands in Paris. He doesn’t know what to make of this.
The gloved finger pressing on is meant to keep him at a distance. Nothing short circuits or loops in on itself, nothing prevents her from calmly, deliberately staring him down. She doesn’t even flinch.
He doesn’t think Harmon sees it, he doesn’t like it that he does: she’s touching him. As if she forgot what it means. As if the only thing in play here is power, and if she can take a piece off a board with little to no effort, then she should be allowed to do this and for it to have no consequence.
Worse than that: Borgov is still standing there, waiting to be eaten. He wants to hide his hands. He wants to dig into her.
He wonders if she’ll be the same when they play. Because she’s going to beat Lutchenko: pawn to h5 or not, she’s won tomorrow’s match. There’s no way around it now: Lutchenko’s becoming soft. Just like him in a few years. Just like him in a day: going for the jugular, finding out you can’t bite.
He holds her gaze. He catches her catch herself. She pulls away, too quick and not far enough. Just so she’s not touching him anymore. But her hand is right there.
Her breath goes sharp. There’s that thing behind Liza’s eyes he refuses to know what to make of. Nothing is done in brightly lit hallways. Nothing this desperate anyway.
His mouth is open. He hasn’t noticed. He didn’t know.
His feet won’t move but Harmon’s quicker. She can allow for fear, for action. She has to retreat.
The point where her finger dug into him feels like a bruise, like a wound, like he’s missing a limb. That’s how you take a thing apart without laying a hand on it.