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.It would thus not, she reckons, be worth getting pushy.Instead, she accepts it as for the best.She will go back to her cabin, unpack her bag, freshen up and go along to the show.That way she can take him in gradually, from a safe distance, like an immunising dose, before confronting him point blank.She’s travelled light, only thrown a few things together in hand luggage.Barcelona is warm, below decks on the ship warmer still.She opts for the dress because it is light and lets the air get around her, whereas her jeans were starting to feel that heavy and clingy way.She only realises once she has showered and slipped the dress over her head that she hadn’t even been thinking about which outfit she looks better in.It is a strangely jarring occurrence: the single-minded and pragmatic motives that are both driving her and guiding her have suppressed such considerations as unhelpful and distracting, but just this one thought seems to shatter the seal.Thus far it has all been arrangements and logistics: the ship’s schedule, onboard entertainment programmes, flight timetables, the pursuit and practicalities of putting herself and Zal together in the same room.How she is going to feel about that and how she is going to conduct herself when it finally happens have been subconsciously deferred as not of immediate concern, like they were arriving on a later flight.That plane has landed now, and she is glad Morrit sent her away and gave her time to prepare.She looks at herself in the mirror and begins wondering, for the first time, what Zal will see.She appears tired, worn-down, fraught, like she’s barely slept in weeks, which is about right.Does the dress make her look like a scrawny waif? She has a spare top, one with long sleeves.Maybe in that and the jeans she would look.No.The pragmatic drive kicks back in.She can’t afford this.Go with what’s physically comfortable.The show’s starting in half an hour, and you want a table near the front.When the houselights dim, Angelique is more anxiously expectant than she remembers feeling at any teenage rock concert.She feels a surge throughout her whole torso, something horribly involuntary, a reminder of how much we are hostage to the physiology of our animal selves.Jesus, she’s never felt this helpless entering the line of fire on Dougnac’s team, but that’s because under those circumstances, she’s always known what she was doing.Then all of it is suddenly dispelled and forgotten as Zal Innez takes the stage, dressed in a sober but semi-formal dark-coloured suit and bow-tie.He looks more mature, rather than simply older.The lighting and a bit of make-up are no doubt contributing to this effect, but it’s the fact that he’s lost the long locks and the peroxide that is giving him an upscale elegance that is almost impossible to equate with the prison-tattooed Californian surf punk who stole from her bed as she slept on Christmas Eve 2002.Some things can’t change, however: the blue eyes are still two piercing laser-beams, and even from the rear of the stage, she’s well within their range.She had imagined he’d go for a magician-as-rock-star look, though hopefully not including a David Copperfield retro-nineteen eighties mullet.Instead, he’s closer to retro-eighteen-eighties, and looks quite disarmingly respectable for it.The whole set, in fact, looks defiantly old-school and unashamedly low-tech.She interprets it as a statement of embracing the past, though that might just be an optimistic personal spin.Angelique feels a reprise of that involuntary surge as he comes to the front and walks across the stage, ever closer to her, a deck of cards in his hand.Will he look her way, she wonders, and if so, will he see her? The lights are bright, and even though she’s at the front, she may appear no more distinct than a silhouette.Besides, with his evidently practised stagecraft and effortlessly polished professionalism, he’s unlikely to skip a beat, so how would she tell either way?He fans the cards, turning a little on his heel, and scans the front row.Yeah, she’s pretty sure he sees her.He recovers from the fright, albeit not exactly seamlessly, and proceeds to keep Angelique spellbound for much of the next hour.She forgets where she is several times, lost in just watching him perform; maybe even in just watching him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]