Dreams in the Tower Part 3 by Andrew Vrana Page B

you don’t mind, I can’t talk much once I start taking her in. Concentration and all.”
    “Of course.” She reached her hand into her pocket, grasped the small cylindrical object she found there. “Anyway” she said, “I’ll want to go down on deck so I can hop off as soon as I can.”
    He shook his head. “Not immediately. You’ll be hiding in the stack until you see me flash the wheelhouse lights. Then you can get down the plank as quick as you can.”
    “Okay,” she said faintly.
    They sat in silence for a while, watching the lights, yellow and orange and ghostly neon, come closer and closer. “Lester, I want to say thank you,” Dellia said. “For everything.”
    Reddish light bathed his face as he pulled on the cigarette between his lips. “You know this was just another job,” he muttered.
    “I know.” She got up and crossed over to him. Taking his thickly callused hand into her own, she pressed the little vial of vaccine into his palm and closed his fingers. “Find a vein. Pop the cap.”
    He said nothing. Had he been expecting this? She decided no formal goodbyes were needed, so she left to go find a place in the stack of containers where she could see the wheelhouse lights. As she descended the stairs she thought she glimpsed him, by the hazy radiance of his cigarette, leaning over the crook of his arm, wasting no time in protecting himself. When he was out of sight she got the feeling of being completely, terribly alone.
    Right back where she had started.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    26
     
    Sitting by the curtained window in the deep dark of the hotel room, Chris Colmin shifted uncomfortably. From somewhere in the void to his left came the sounds of slow, nasally breathing as Alana slept off her post-sex drowsiness. He wanted to join her, but this was one of those nights where he just could not get comfortable; the bed was too hot and the covers felt abrasive on his bare skin. Even this cool leather chair was starting to become unbearable, no matter how he moved around in it.
    Agitated and weary, he rose to his feet and turned to the window, pulling back the heavy curtains just enough to fill the room with a pale reflection of D.C.’s city lights. He stood there, ten floors up, looking down on the street below through the grimy glass. If someone looked his way from down below or across the street it could be bad: a Texas senator in a downtown hotel window at 3:30 a.m. wearing nothing but a pair of briefs was easy fodder for the media’s sensationalists. But he didn’t really care. He knew he should, but he didn’t. Maybe he was just too tired to care. Fuck it all, why can’t I sleep?
    Turning his back on the orange-and-yellow glow of the restless city, his eyes found the pale form of Alana, wrapped up in the flowing blankets like they were some kind of linen cocoon. Did caterpillars dream when they were in the cocoon? Doesn’t matter , he decided. She did not appear to be sleeping deeply enough to be dreaming anyway; she was too serene, her face too content—too attached to the living world to be wandering through dreamscapes. Maybe that was why he didn’t feel bad about waking her up so she could share in his misery. He went over to the bed, sat on the edge and gently shook her by the shoulder.
    “Hmm?” she said, just a little groggily. “No, I’m awake. Is it time already?”
    “Not quite,” Chris said. “I want to talk.”
    Alana sat up, stretching ever so slightly, and stood her pillow up against the headboard so she could lean back against it. She let the blankets fall away, revealing pale pink nipples on breasts that weren’t quite as high and firm as they probably once were. “Talk about what?”
    “What we were discussing earlier. During dinner.”
    She sighed, long and full of weariness. “I told you before, even if I didn’t have moral and ethical objections to an illegal relationship with a corporate entity, there’s simply too