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benetti gave that possible bow again and backed out of
the room, closing the door behind him.
Time to be going. edward stood up and gazed at his re-
flection in the mirror. He ran his fingers along the clean
edge of his bone-white goatee. his shaved head glistened
in the low light, deeply tanned. a cheap bargirl in nice had
once told him that his head reminded her of the creature in
‘alien’. she said it scared her. he thanked her for the com-
pliment. Turning back to the writing table, edward saw that
he had covered eight of the rich, cream-colored pages with
his writing. he folded the pages and slipped them into the
inside pocket of his burberry.
he moved quickly now, down the grand staircase and
across the reception hall to the thirty-foot mirrored doors.
edward turned on his ‘man of destiny’ stride, moving across
the hall fast enough for the hem of his Burberry to flare out
behind him. pushing through the enormous doors into the
courtyard, he felt his skin recoil as his body took the first
shock of the deep cold. He flipped up his collar and strolled
along the waist-high parapet. his enormous steamer trunk
sat alone by the cable car dock. Benetti, ever efficient, had
seen to edward’s luggage.
edward rested his arms on the parapet and gazed down.
very far below, a winking light bobbed and jerked. It rose
and grew, resolving itself into the small cable car. Weak yel-
low light spilled out, lost against so much cold dark. edward
breathed in the frigid air, breathed it in so deep that his
lungs ached. overwhelmed by exhilaration and by some-
thing else he could not name, he stared up at the sky full of
stars and the cold, bright moon. he felt a single vertiginous
moment as his soul tried and failed to encompass the im-
blue moon 9
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