December 4, 1972
"I don't understand why you want to run the apothecary scene again," Jack said.
Oleg's jaw dropped. "How can you not understand how critical - how vital - this scene is? The most important moment in the entire play?"
Jack studied his roommate - and increasingly, though Jack did not like to admit it, his friend - very carefully. "The most important moment in 'Romeo and Juliet' is the apothecary scene? You have to be joking."
"You have no artistry in your soul," Oleg sighed. But he was grinning, his reddish goatee bristling on his chin. "Of course, we knew that ever since your Faust."
"You should be performing Russian plays," Gary said. In Jack's best estimate, Gary had not washed his clothing or him body since the midpoint of the semester; he was curled in what seemed to be a semi-permanent huddle on his top bunk, a gray and odorous vulture in the room. Oleg called him gorgul'ya, the gargoyle. "Plays that uplift the worker, that talk about the revolutionary struggle." On the bunk beneath Gary, Nikita rolled his eyes, then turned over with his face to the wall.
"Shakespeare was a proto-Marxist," Oleg insisted, thumping the table with his fist. "Everyone knows this. When you come to the performance tomorrow night, the truth of the play will be revealed to you. To everyone. Except Jack, of course."
"Why won't I see it?" Jack said, curious. It was slightly disconcerting to think that Oleg - or anyone - could think that Gary might be quicker on the uptake, on any subject whatsoever.
Oleg laughed and crossed his hands over his heart. "Because you will be too busy looking at the beautiful Irina to pay any attention to those of us onstage." Nikita chuckled, and even Gary's gaunt face reflected a faint smile.
"Maybe I understand 'Romeo and Juliet' better than you do, then." Jack made a show of picking up his aerodynamics text. "Find out if Nikita has artistry in his soul. I have work to do."
That much was the truth, though his work had nothing to do with aerodynamics; Jack had mastered his "surface specialty" before he'd turned 22. But as he sank deeper into his cover identity, more and more often, he needed quiet moments to pull himself together, to remind himself what he was doing and why. Who he was, and who he could not be.
The real John Leary had applied for Soviet immigration and a place at the university, then cleared the background check. After receiving his approval, perhaps in celebration, he'd gone out, gotten stinking drunk and plowed his '68 Falcon into the Missouri River. His identity and future thus abandoned, Jack had been able to slip into them smoothly enough. John Leary's only family was an elderly aunt; the CIA sent him false letters from "Aunt Claudette,' written in an old woman's shaky scrawl. He left the letters out for Nikita to read during the night - they weren't encoded. Just fake. His lone embroidery on John Leary's life had been to insist on being called Jack. Deep-cover training generally included the creation of a strong emotional response to a false name, but Jack's preparation had, by necessity, been rushed.
Maybe his incomplete training was why he found it so difficult, realizing how much more there was to living this lie than pretending to be John Leary.
Jack would have pretended to be friendly with Oleg no matter what; the truth was, he liked him, with his indefatigueable good cheer and quick humor. Nikita, of course, was a KGB agent, but he was intelligent, and he seemed to be judging Jack and Gary fairly. Gary - well, maybe it was better not to consider Gary. But after several months of living in an impossibly small dormitory room with the three of them, Jack knew that the relationships they'd cultivated were no longer purely cover. They were real.
And that was nothing compared to the way he was beginning to feel about Irina.
He'd studied her photographs, but the first time he saw her in person - running up the front steps of the library, her thick hair shaking free from a loose bun - she'd still taken his breath away. Irina was more beautiful than any woman he'd ever been with, maybe more than any woman he'd seen that wasn't on a movie screen at the time. The photographs couldn't have prepared him for the sight of Irina in color, in motion, three-dimensional and alive.
Still, Jack could have controlled his response to her beauty. If all he'd felt for her was lust, his assignment would almost have been easy. It was Irina herself who was calling forth something deeper in him, who took his self-control and his duty and his discipline and tore them to shreds.
He had never before met a woman who weighed her words the same way he did, who turned every conversation into a game of chess, every debate into a fencing match. She didn't put on a false front, didn't spill out every secret or emotion. Instead she revealed as much of herself she chose and no more, when she was ready, leaving it to him to piece together the puzzle. Jack was self-aware enough to know that he behaved much the same way, and that he enjoyed the puzzle as much as he suspected Irina did herself.
That much he might have anticipated. After all, the psych guys said their profiles matched. That was why he was here. But Jack understood what the psych guys could do and what they couldn't, and they couldn't have predicted the chemistry between them - the tidal pull of desire he felt for Irina every time they touched. And, amazing as it was, as little as he believed it when he looked in the mirror, Jack knew that Irina wanted him as desperately as he wanted her.
"Katya's out all the time, you know," she'd hinted last week as he walked her home from the cinema, his mind still furred with odd, "Solaris"-inspired thoughts. "She spent the night with us last night, which means she probably won't get home tonight until dawn. If then."
Jack had understood her meaning, and his thoughts had leaped ahead instantly - to a darkened bedroom, to the feel of Irina's naked body against his. But he'd pretended exhaustion and schoolwork took him away and forced them both to be content with a slow goodnight kiss.
You're here to become her lover, Jack reminded himself. That's not just something you want to do. It's something you have to do.
And yet he understood that, when he took her to bed, he would be taking his lie to another, deeper level of betrayal. He knew it had to be done, but still, he delayed. And they hadn't even begun delving into her work on Rambaldi yet - he would have to be in so far over his head before he could even begin his true mission --
"Chort vosmi," Oleg said, throwing his script at an unamused Nikita. "How can anyone be a worse actor than Jack? I thought it was impossible."
"You're just mad that I have a different interpretation," Nikita retorted.
"Give me that," Jack said, holding out his hand for the script. Any distraction from Irina Derevko would do.
**
As Oleg had predicted, Jack paid very little attention to the play. Irina's reactions were far more enjoyable.
Irina clung to every word - not in rapt delight, but skeptically, her lips pursed in a frown. When the lovers declared their adoration at first sight, she folded her arms. When Friar Laurence made his promises, she rolled her eyes. When Oleg, in full Romeo regalia, took the fatal potion and collapsed across the stone tablet, she sighed loudly. Her impatience with the story amused Jack as much as it intrigued him.
As the play ended and they applauded dutifully, Jack leaned over and whispered, "You never told me you hated Shakespeare." His lips brushed her ear.
"I don't," she said, low enough that he had to remain close to her to hear. "I hate silly romantics who expect fate to solve all their problems. But as love stories go, I like this one better than most. At least these fools end up dead."
He smiled and kissed her cheek. "So sentimental." She gave him a sidelong glance that made his blood flush hot.
They went with the actors to the bar across the street; Oleg and the others still wore their greasepaint, their outlined eyes and crimson mouths brilliant in the dim lighting. Jack kept his drinking to a minimum, but he had a few shots of vodka and joined in the general laughter about the audience, the costumes, and the moment when Juliet, a.k.a. Raisa, had tripped on the train of her gown and gone crashing into a plaster pillar.
Irina had only met Oleg on a few occasions, and knew the others not at all, but she was in the heart of the party: pouring the vodka, urging on the anecdotes, laughing at everyone's jokes. She was wearing a long red skirt Jack had never seen before, its fluid material draping softly around her hips, sometimes outlining a glimpse of knee or thigh. Her dark hair was full and loose, falling past her shoulders, her prized earrings glinting when she tossed her head. She had never been more beautiful. More desirable.
Late in the evening, the party began to break up. Oleg was staggering toward the door, one arm draped across Raisa's shoulders, when he suddenly slapped his forehead and swore. "I don't think I locked the back entrance."
"Of course you did," Raisa said. "Besides, nobody's going to break into the theater this late, not on a night like this."
"No, no, no. I didn't do it. We have to go back -" Oleg's face turned ash-gray, then a distinct shade of green, and then Raisa hurriedly pushed him through the door, so he could be sick in the ditch outside.
Jack shook his head: "And they say Americans can't handle their vodka."
"They don't say it about you," Irina replied as she pulled on her gloves, then settled her black-fur hat atop her head. "Tell me, Jack, do you ever lose control?"
"You'll have to wait and see," he replied. Her eyes sparkled, but she simply slipped on her coat and took his arm.
When they went outside, Oleg was leaning against the wall of the bar, as limp and miserable as though he'd melted. "Vodka is a creation of the devil," he groaned.
"I don't think you're supposed to believe in the devil," Jack replied.
"I wouldn't, if the proof were not making me sick this very moment." Oleg reached in his coat pocket and held out a set of keys. "You, Jack - you go and check the door. As a friend."
Jack's conscience twinged, for only a moment. "It's done," he said, taking the keys in one gloved hand. "Get him someplace safe, Raisa."
Irina added, "Or at least someplace horizontal."
"Flat," Oleg agreed as he switched from slumping against the wall to slumping against Raisa. "Flat is good."
Jack and Irina strolled across the street, taking their time; the cold was sharp, even by Moscow standards, and snow was drifting down so thickly that even Oleg and Raisa seemed to vanish within a few moments. But there was no wind, and the snowflakes were small and glittering, shining against Irina's dark hair and the black fur of her hat. He found himself wishing for a camera - when all of this was over, when every other memory would have turned to poison, he would still want to remember this, to remember the way she looked tonight.
Don't think about that, he told himself. Just think about her.
Irina tried the theater's back door; as Oleg had predicted, it swung open instantly. Jack had lifted the keys to the lock before her hand rested on his, stopping him. "We could go inside," she murmured. "Explore a bit."
Of course, Jack realized. He'd been trying to figure out where they could go, a place that might offer some privacy - but he'd never considered the theater itself. Surely, backstage, there would be a couch, or a cot -
Irina raised an eyebrow. "Jack?"
"Great idea." He locked the door from the inside.
In an American theater, the curtain would have been plush red velvet; this one was gray, but the setting looked dramatic enough. Jack fiddled with the stage lights until a few came on, bathing one corner of the proscenium in pink-tinged light. Irina shrugged off her coat and tossed it along several seats in the front row. "Do you think I would have been a good actress?"
"You have the face for it. They'd put you on every poster." She smiled as she dropped her gloves and hat atop her coat, then began climbing the side steps to the stage. "Do you ever wish you'd become an actress?"
"I meant to, once," she said, surprising him. "In a manner of speaking."
"Really? I would've thought you'd lose patience with all the love stories." He walked up toward the stage as she opened the curtain, revealing the setting for the final scene, mausoleum and all. Props were still strewn across the floor; Oleg's group was perhaps not the most disciplined theatrical company.
"It was a long time ago." Irina stooped to the floor, her red skirt puddling beneath her, then stood back up with Juliet's coronet in her hand. "Just plaster," she said, twirling it in her fingers, "but they've made it shine."
"Stagecraft." Jack took off his own coat and ascended the stage. When he stepped closer to her, she smiled a little and strolled away, walking deeper into the scene.
She carefully placed the gold-painted coronet in her hair, balancing it with her fingers. "How do I look?"
"Beautiful. You're always beautiful."
No more waiting. No more words. Jack walked toward her, measuring each step in the heartbeats that were already thumping harder within his chest. Irina remained perfectly still, her hands still atop her head, as he took her in his arms and kissed her.
The moment their lips touched, she changed in his grasp, became electric. She leaned into his kiss, returning it hungrily, as her hands traced down his cheeks, across his chest, to hook into the sides of his belt. He slipped his fingers through her hair until he held the base of her head in his palm, cradling her close. Irina moaned softly into the kiss, and he forced himself to pull his mouth away from hers, to better to hear her desire.
As he placed soft kisses along her jawline, then down her neck, Irina murmured, "Tell me you're not going to stop tonight."
"Not tonight," Jack promised, his words spoken only an inch from the skin of her throat.
Irina laughed, a low sound that somehow made him even more excited. "I thought - sometimes I thought, if you made me wait only one more night -" The threat, erotic and unknown, trailed off as Jack brought his hand up to cup one of her breasts; her head fell back, sending the coronet tumbling to the floor.
"That's why I waited," he murmured, caressing her gently. "I don't want only one night."
She arched her body against him as she began pulling his jacket away from his shoulders. "It's going to take me much longer than that before I'm done with you."
Jack let his jacket fall to the floor, relishing the warmth of her hands through his thin shirt. He had meant to try and find a more comfortable place backstage - someplace more private -
We're alone, he thought. That's all that matters.
Irina took his hands as she sat on the edge of the faux-stone tablet where Romeo and Juliet had breathed their last. He knelt on the floor in front of her to kiss her as she tugged his necktie loose and they unbuttoned each other's shirts; her fingers brushed through the hair on his chest, tracing fine lines of heat across his skin. Jack wanted to relax, to enjoy her touch, but the desire to touch her in turn was taking him over.
He slid her blouse off her shoulders, then quickly unhooked her bra. Giving him a full-lipped smile, Irina shrugged the bra off, then straightened her back, proud of her beauty, showing off for him.
Reverently, Jack took her breasts in his hands, felt her nipples taut against his palms. "You must know how perfect you are. How many men have wanted you."
"It doesn't matter what they wanted," she whispered, leaning back to give his searching hands better access. "All that matters is what I want. And I want you."
"Irina." Aroused, he kissed her more deeply, pressing her against him so that he could feel her breasts against his bare chest. Impatiently, she tugged his shirt away so that it fell to the floor. "I want you too."
Jack pushed her back onto the tablet so that she lay beneath him, then lowered his face to her breast and took one nipple in his mouth, teasing her with his lips and tongue until she cried out his name. Then he did the same to the other, and she cried out again, now beyond words. Her thighs were spread beneath him, his legs between hers, and he ground his erection against her, showing her how hard she'd made him, how badly he needed her.
She cursed him in Russian, and the mere sound of it nearly made him come. "Damn you, Jack, you want me, then take me, just take me, make love to me already -"
"I am making love to you."
"What's the English word again?" she gasped, then grinned. "Fuck. That's the one. You aren't fucking me, Jack. And I want you to fuck me."
In some situations, Jack thought as he tugged Irina's panties down past her hips, patience is overrated.
He helped her shimmy out of the red skirt, which fluttered as she threw it across the stage. As much as he wanted to be inside her, the sight of her naked, splayed out in front of him, made him pause to drink her in. He slipped his fingers between her legs, felt his fingers become slick with her desire. When he moved his hand a little higher, Irina groaned and shook against him. "There -" she murmured, and it was less a plea than a demand.
Obediently, Jack bowed his head between her legs, probing with his tongue, dipping deep, then sliding up to suck ever so gently at her. The muscles in her thighs tightened against his palms, a signal Jack could read well; he bore down harder, moved a little faster, taking his cues from the way her cries caught in her throat.
Then she shouted out, tightening around him. Jack kept going, more and more softly, until the last of her climax had ebbed from her and she relaxed again beneath him. "My Jack," she murmured as he leaned away from her to get out of his belt and pants as fast as he possibly could without looking like a fool. "Come here."
"I'm here." Naked, he lay on the tablet with her, shivering as his skin made contact with the cold plaster. But Irina enfolded him in her embrace, kissing him passionately, warming him in an instant.
"I can taste myself on your mouth." She tugged him over until he was on top of her.
Jack pulled her thighs up to cradle his sides. "Then you know how good you taste."
Irina angled herself, let her head fall back. "I want to know how good you feel."
Jack pushed inside her in one long, slow thrust. And oh, God, he had expected it to be good, but he hadn't expected enough. She closed around him, folding him in.
They moved together slowly, soundlessly, gazing into each other's eyes as he thrust inside her, and again, and again. The pink-tinged stage lights haloed in her hair, but he thought the flush of her skin was her own. Behind them, rows of empty seats stretched out, bearing silent witness. Her fingers traced down his back, caressed him, reached down between them to feel where they were joined.
The touch of her hand there, sliding between their bodies for one moment, stoked the fire he'd tried so hard to bank down. Jack groaned and thrust harder, then harder again. Irina's wicked smile betrayed her delight, and she gripped him more tightly between her thighs, as if daring him to keep going.
With that, Jack's control was gone. He stopped thinking, stopped weighing, stopped concentrating on anything but the feel of Irina, slick and soft beneath him. He couldn't get deep enough, couldn't take her hard enough, couldn't stop himself from -
He came in a white-hot rush, pleasure washing over him, rendering the world as invisible and silent as the falling snow.
After a few moments, when his head was resting on her chest, Irina whispered, " I don't know whether to kill you or thank you for all the anticipation."
Jack kissed her breastbone, still too dizzy and punch-drunk to really move. "Which way do I get to make love to you again?"
"Both ways."
"Then it doesn't matter. No matter what, I'll be happy." Jack smiled, and she must have felt the grin against her flesh, because she hugged him, then brushed her hands through his hair.
After a little longer she became playful, tickling him gently, making dirty jokes. Jack kept cuddling her and nuzzling her, stalling for the few minutes it would take him to begin making love to her again. The plaster tablet they lay on was still cold and hard, and he knew that tomorrow they'd both wish they'd found a bed. But this was worth it, he thought, dropping a soft kiss on the slight curve of her belly.
"I lost my crown." Irina stuck out her lip in a pout. One long arm reached down to search for it on the floor; instead, she pulled up a tin dagger. Delighted, she pulled away and set it ceremoniously between them on the tablet. "Here we go. Now we're innocent."
Jack knocked the dagger back onto the floor, where it landed with a clatter. "You were right. That wouldn't stop anybody."
When he pulled her back into his arms, she returned his kiss, laughing into his open mouth. Then she made another grab for her coronet and brought up a flask. "Poison. Be careful."
"That reminds me." Jack took the flask in his hand. "Oleg says the apothecary scene is the most important in the play, but I can't figure out why."
"Oleg is exaggerating, which I know must come as a shock." She stretched lazily, arching her feet so that they brushed against his. "But our professors do stress the scene. I can see why yours don't."
Jack tapped the flask experimentally. "I give. Why is it so important?"
"The rich man is able to force the poor man to do something he doesn't want to do. The apothecary knows the result of the potion can only be tragedy. But Romeo won't listen, and he reminds the apothecary of his lower status to bully him. Remember? 'I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.'"
"Of course. I should have realized it before." He set the flask aside and stroked his fingers through her hair. "I wasn't paying attention to the scene at the time."
Irina snuggled against him. "Poor man. He wants to do the right thing. He doesn't want to cause all that pain. But he doesn't really have a choice, does he?"
"No. I guess he doesn't." Don't think about it, Jack told himself. He embraced Irina more tightly, trying to will away his real identity, his mission, and everything else in the world.
**
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