LITMIR.BIZ

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she had won that battle.

      She put on a tight-fitting full-length jumpsuit, of black stretchy water-repellent fabric, and began to wind the boot laces around the hooks. She had almost finished that tedious but important operation when her work phone rang.

      The urge not to answer was so great that, before pulling it out of her backpack, she sat there for several seconds listening to Khachaturian’s "Sabre Dance”. Would she let it keep ringing until it stopped? But the new case required her to be available all day.

      There was an unfamiliar number on the display.

      "Hello, Loreley. Am I interrupting you? Are you working?"

      "No, no..." she replied, trying to figure out who that male voice belonged to. She didn't want to risk making a fool of herself, but at that moment she didn’t recognize it as anyone she knew.

      "If you have an hour to spare, I’d like to talk to you. It wasn’t possible the last time we saw each other."

      "Actually, I'm really busy and…" she stopped. "Sonny?!"

      She uttered that name, letting out all the air in her lungs.

      "I'm sorry, I was assuming you would have recognized me."

      "We've never spoken on the phone; your voice sounds a little different."

      There was a brief embarrassed silence, then he spoke again: "Maybe I shouldn’t have called you."

      "No! You just caught me off guard. I'm at the Chelsea Piers ice rink." She had never given him her number. Oh, but he had called her work number, which anyone could find on the internet.

      "Are you with someone?"

      "No, I’m alone," she replied, repenting it instantly. If she wanted to avoid that man, she should have said something else.

      "Then I can join you if you like. I'm not far from Chelsea, I could be there in twenty minutes."

      Loreley took a moment to reflect. It was going to happen sooner or later, so best to get it over with now, so she could get on with her usual life.

      "You'll have to rent some skates, because I'm just about to go onto the ice." If he didn’t know how to skate, it would be fun to see him suffer a little.

      "I realize that. I'm on my way."

      With her hair tied in a ponytail and shields on the blades, Loreley left the locker room and made her way to the rink.

      When she saw that the ice had just been smoothed, she smiled with satisfaction but hoped there would be fewer people on it, especially less children… they would make her apprehensive. It had been while trying to avoid a child that she had fallen. The resulting concussion and trauma to the cervical vertebrae had diminished her sense of direction and although she had long since healed, the pain at the back of her neck persisted.

      She removed the shields from the blades and slid lightly over the immaculate surface for a few minutes, letting herself be carried away by the music. The chill of the ice under her feet rose and enveloped her whole body, but it was like a pleasant embrace, sometimes electrifying and at others relaxing.

      After performing some warm-up exercises, she amused herself with some cross-steps and simple figures, and then tried some jumps. She finished with a few spins of medium difficulty, but went no further, not wanting to hurt herself.

      The music became slow and gentle, as if wrapping itself around her. She lifted her face, gave herself some momentum and raised her arms to shoulder height, then lifted one leg behind her in the Angel pose. As she glided over the ice, with the cool air brushing her skin and lifting her long blonde ponytail, a whirlwind of sensations seemed to direct her towards nothingness, towards an infinite quiet.

      Suddenly she became aware that she could collide with the people around her and opened her eyes. A hand touched her outstretched arm; she turned, straightened up and put her raised foot back on the ground.

      "Oh... you've arrived!"

      "I didn't want to interrupt you," Sonny said. He had appeared beside her almost like magic. Wearing a heavy jacket, a scarf and wool beanie, he skated beside her try to keep up with her.

      Loreley slowed down. "Don't apologize, I shouldn’t have been doing certain things with all these people around." She usually skated at times when she knew there would be very few people on the ice, but that afternoon she hadn’t been able to respect that logical caution.

      A little boy darted past, almost touching her, and she swerved to the opposite direction, going closer to Sonny, who put a hand on her shoulder as if to protect her. "Let’s not stop here or we’ll be run over," he suggested, looking around.

      "I'd rather we didn't stop at all..." Saying that, Loreley accelerated leaving the man behind her and went to the opposite side of the rink, where the large windows offered a lovely close-up view of the Hudson River and the pier where the sports center was located.

      Sonny watched her perform a slalom to get past the skaters she encountered along the way. He could easily have reached her in a few seconds but preferred not to follow her. It was clear that she was trying to postpone the moment when they would have to clarify things between them, and he didn't want to put too much pressure on her.

      What would he say to Loreley? That he was sorry he’d had sex with her? Would she have believed him? He didn't believe it either. Although he did not remember exactly everything that had happened, he knew that he had never given as much vent to his basest instincts as he had that night; perhaps because he was not very sober, but that mattered very little now. What bothered him most was something quite different.

      Among all the women at the wedding, I took Hans' sister to bed of all people!

      He’d been drinking, but he wasn’t so drunk that he didn't know who the woman was that he was dragging into the room. So why her? If Hans found out, he would not believe it was a coincidence; no, he would have accused him of doing it on purpose.

      He shrugged. Who cares!

      Loreley was an adult. And she had been consenting, drunk but consenting and a participant too. No one could have blamed him, and he was wrong to create problems for himself, especially since she had sneaked out of the hotel room without even waiting for him to wake up, without exchanging a single word with him.

      That morning he had struggled to piece together everything that had happened; at first he had felt relieved that the girl had vanished, thus avoiding to have to give and receive explanations, but then he told himself that until they had spoken there would always be something outstanding.

      He went to the side of the rink and waited for her to join him, giving her a lovely smile.

      "How many years have you skated?" he asked her.

      "I started figure skating when I was five years old, but I gave it up in my first year of university. Every now and then I come here to take my mind off things and get a little exercise. It's not healthy to sit for hours in an office or in a courtroom. Besides, I like skating too much. What about you?"

      "I used to play hockey when I was little more than a kid. But I stopped a long time ago to dedicate myself to music."

      "You wouldn't think so, to look at you."

      "I think it's like a riding a bike. You get back on it after a long time, and it’s like you’d been riding it just a few days ago. Now we should go and talk somewhere else; maybe we can get a drink here at the bar."

      4

      With her backpack on her shoulders, Loreley headed to the exit from the sports centre. She had freshened up and taken her hair out of the ponytail to hang loose on her shoulders.

      After returning the locker keys to reception, she went into the vast colourful lobby where Sonny would be waiting for her. And there she stopped.

      Sonny was busy with two young men who were asking him to put an autograph on their skates, and a girl was wanting to take a selfie with him. Someone had recognized

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