Adrian looks at the message once more. Then he puts his phone
in his pocket.
“We’ll deal with that tomorrow,” he says.
“Are you sure?”
“Tonight has already been enough.” He holds out his hand.
“Come on.”
The car is warm and quiet. The city moves past the windows
and neither of us says much but it isn’t empty silence. It’s
full silence. The kind that has a lot sitting inside it.
Victor texts once. Adrian doesn’t open it.
That alone tells me everything.
-----
He walks me to my door.
We’ve done this a hundred times. Contract required, image
maintenance, necessary for appearances. But tonight there are
no cameras on this hallway and Victor is wherever Victor goes
at 11 PM on a Friday and nobody in the world is watching
except us.
He stops at my door.
I turn around.
The dist
