Free The Lover From an Icy Sea by Alexandra S Sophia

though the body parts and parlors remained on very different, very separate maps.
    “ Thanks. Tell me later what you want on your pizza if it’s more than just pepperonis.”
    Kit went to his cubicle, picked up the phone and dialed Daneka’s number. It rang once, twice. He frowned and prepared himself for her machine. Instead, a voice answered.
    “ Daneka! When can I see you?”
    “ I don’t know.”
    “ What is it?” Kit sensed distance.
    “ Well, darling, I’m on my way to the airport. I’m off to Europe.”
    “ Excuse me?” Kit’s ear momentarily registered the ‘darling,’ but it was the rest of her message that stunned him when he heard the sound of a suitcase being snapped shut somewhere behind the voice. “To the airport?” Where are you going?” He’d vaguely registered the “Europe,” but the distance it suggested had bounced off his brain like a bead of water off a red-hot skillet. “When will you be back? What is it you do for a living, anyway?” The questions were falling out of him like spilled coffee beans in spite of his best efforts to sound merely curious.
    She heard the tone of panic and decided she liked it. “I travel,” she laughed—and hung up.
    Once downstairs and with her luggage already piled into the trunk, Daneka gave instructions. “To JFK, Ron, but first, a quick trip to Carnegie Hill Photo to drop off a roll of film.
    He drove her around the corner and two short blocks up Madison Avenue to the photo shop. She opened the door as soon as he’d pulled up to the curb. Out stepped a sheer, black-stockinged leg—exposed almost to the crotch as the flap of her dress fell away for not more than a second—that terminated in a good two and a half inches of black spike heel. Daneka never dressed for comfort when she flew internationally. She dressed for opportunity, for adventure, maybe even for attack. Transatlantic flights in the direction of Europe—except when she took the Concorde—always included an abbreviated night. Just long enough, just anonymous enough, to realize a fantasy or two if the right candidate presented him- or herself. And even the Concorde had a deliciously roomy and comfortable tabletop in its W.C. She knew; she’d tried it a time or two—and not to change diapers. She sometimes wondered whether some of those who’d shared that high-wire act with her—tycoons and power brokers from downtown, maybe a Hollywood star or two—ever contemplated those same electric moments as they now lay domestically, routinely, boringly beside their Annettes or Mary Janes discussing the kids, their careers, and taxes.
    She walked up to the clerk, smiled perfunctorily, and placed the roll on the counter. “One frame only. The rest are blanks. Matte finish. And give me an eight-by-ten enlargement with borders, will you?” The clerk was pleased. This customer clearly knew what she wanted, and it seemed to him that she probably also got it more often than not.
    “ Thursday all right with you, ma’am?” he asked as he tore off and handed her the order stub.
    “ I’ll pick it up in ten days or so. Thanks.” She dropped the stub into her purse, turned, and walked back out to where Ron was waiting beside an open door.
    “ Which airline today, Miss Sorenson?” he asked.
    “ BA.”
    Ron made a half-hearted gesture to tip the cap he wasn’t wearing.
     
     

Chapter 10
     
    That evening, Kit finished work later than usual and decided to take a walk. Instead of heading out to the East Village, he turned north. He didn’t know exactly why; nor did he know where he was going. But he knew that only one thing awaited him at home, and that he could no longer be content with a two-dimensional facsimile. It wasn’t excitement or diversion he wanted; it wasn’t even sex. Sex he could’ve had easily and with only minor prompting following that day’s shoot. This particular “Britney”—as Rachel had so aptly called her—was clearly as ready, willing and entitled as