The sunset’s warmest hues played over the chrome and white lacquers surfaces of the surrounding furniture. Harlan stepped over to the bar and made himself drink while his smart TV read the email to him.
He may have lacked for human company and interaction these days, but at least he had technology to make his life easier.
Chapter 3
The first hours of the workshops were quite exciting. Tory learned a couple of interesting interface solutions and software hacks she couldn’t wait to try out.
As the sessions went on, she became distracted by one of the contest winners from Italy talking about the awful wave of Coronavirus deaths in Milan and other cities. Her name was Giada, and like Tory she was a junior, except that she went to school in Manhattan. She had plans to go back home to Milan and was starting to worry about it.
Another contest winner was a programmer from India named Mahira Shah.
Mahira told them about a 14-year-old Indian prodigy, Abihigya Anand, who predicted a world crippling pandemic during the previous summer.
All three young women had accommodations at the W and shared an Uber car back to the hotel after the final sessions. In the lobby they ran into Peter Pratt, the Font design winner, who was also at the W, and who joined them for dinner. The evening was cool, and together they walked along 3rd Avenue from 28th Street up to 33rd before unanimously deciding on a Sushi bar.
After dinner, Peter walked with them back to the Hotel. He had plans for the Lower West Side and rushed up to his room to change. Giada wanted to go up to her room and Skype with people overseas.
Mahira and Tory sat at the bar in the lobby and ordered cocktails. Watching people walk back and forth outside the plate glass, they talked about the spread of the disease in NYC and joked about meeting guys at the bar for one-night-stands. Tory was just playing along with what Mahira was saying, because she had never had a one-night-stand and felt she would be too nervous and scared to do so if the opportunity presented itself.
Mahira asked Tory if she’d seen Harlan Dawes in person yet.
“I don’t think so,” she said, thinking about it as Mahira scrolled through the content on her phone.
“I like these,” Mahira said, passing her the phone.
They gigglde, passing back and forth publicity pics of Harlan from an interview he had given while driving a new electric sports car with a bikini-clad Estonian Supermodel getting comfortable in his lap.
“Do you think he’s playing into his image in these photos or are these photos images of him at play?” Mahira asked, then sipped her drink.
“I don’t think we’ll ever know,” Tory told her and motioned to the bartender for another round.
Up in her room, Tory drifted off to sleep with the news on, the cacophony of the city churning beyond.
She dreamed of careening along a sinuously treacherous mountain road at sundown, graded hairpin curves, and blind slopes in a silent electric sports car.
On Harlin’s lap, she opened herself to him as much as possible, his right hand squeezing the triangle of cloth between her thighs while trying to position her solidly onto the throbbing bulge in his pants.
As the road narrowed absurdly and the sun plunged into the depths of surrounding valleys, the swimsuit began to shrink, getting smaller and tighter, working its way up between her legs, shriveling to bright swatches of cloth tightening rapidly on her huge swollen nipples.
The sports car seemed to hit a barrier or membrane of darkness, slowing it and everything else down as her orgasm expanded around her like fireworks at speed of ripples spreading in a pond. She woke up breathless, damp and still a little drunk.
She laughed a bit, flipped her pillow over to the cool dry side and went back to sleep until she finally had to wake up and get ready for the day.
***
Nextthing.Net had a small auditorium, modern and modular, with clear nods to Deco or perhaps Bauhaus in the detail. Comfortable in a dark pantsuit, hair pulled away from her face in a neat French braid and her dark rimmed glasses, Tory gave her presentation as confidently as possible, hoping that no one noticed her almost caution pronunciation of multisyllabic words and exotic jargon.
Knowing that Harlan was somewhere in the darkened audience of CEOs, designers and press people distracted her with random flashes of her dream, mixed in with the look of erotic surrender on the supermodel’s face in the interview photos. She felt her delivery came off as somewhat spaced, but she couldn’t care less, since the prize had already been won and the day’s presentation was merely a formality for Nextthing.Net and the media.
Before going back to the Hotel to change for dinner and the awards ceremony, Tory went back into the modern auditorium when it was empty to take some pictures of it like that. Upon hearing voices, she was immediately silent. Harlan was speaking to a black clothing-clad assistant, with a sleek Bluetooth unit twinkling in her ear. She read something to him from a tablet while speaking to someone else.