Kiss by Ted Dekker Page B

which scalded the cut on her tongue, still tender from her fall at the hospital earlier in the week. “I’ve been having more weird dreams.”
    “Daydreams?”
    “I wouldn’t call them that.”
    “Tell me: you have some unfulfilled fantasy to play football?”
    Dr. Harding’s reassurances freed her to get this off her chest. “Yeah, and to fight in Iraq, too, it seems.”
    He cocked his head. “I haven’t heard this one. You take a nap at home?”
    “No, when I passed out at the park. And it’s a winner too. I was dreaming of being someone else again. I don’t think it was you this time—wrong name—but the voice sounded like you. You’ve got to quit getting into my head like this, okay?”
    “So you were me. Or maybe not me. In Iraq.”
    “Yeah. Planning to go AWOL.”
    He laughed at that, a short, tight-lipped laugh. “A deserter, huh?” Then he took a swig of mocha.
    “Some friend of . . . this person’s had died, I think. Jones? Johnson? I—oh forget this—they called him Marshall. Marshall was upset about it. I got the impression it was some kind of last straw.”
    Wayne leaned forward, elbows on knees, cup between both hands, eyes still on her.
    “What’s waterboarding?” she asked.
    Wayne’s cheek twitched, and he looked away. “Torture,” he murmured. She almost couldn’t hear him. “Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”
    “You’ve experienced it?”
    “Only once, in training. With trainers I trusted. They cover your face, pour water up your nose. It’s like drowning on dry land.”
    “It doesn’t sound that awful—I mean, compared to other forms I’ve heard of.”
    He opened his mouth and then closed it again, looked at her with the speechlessness of someone who had no adequate words for his experience or her ignorance. Once again, she wished she had thought before she had spoken.
    “It’s slow-motion suffocation,” he finally said. “A controlled execution.”
    She looked away, mortified, and tried to bring the conversation back to her vision. But there wasn’t much else to tell. “Someone tried to talk Marshall out of leaving. But he was committed.”
    “And that’s it?” The theater lights dimmed.
    “Pretty much.”
    Wayne took another drink and leaned back in his chair. “Your mind does take ideas and run with them,” she thought she heard him say as the lights went out and the screen lit up.
    He downed the rest of his hot mocha like it was a shot of whiskey.

    Shauna looked at her watch for the first time thirty minutes into the movie. Her tea had become cool enough to drink, and the story line failed to engage her. Wayne was jiggling his thumb on his thigh, a tapping kind of fidget. But his eyes were glued to the screen.
    She tried to tune in to the film, but her ears kept returning to Wayne’s vibrating thumb.
    A few moments later he leaned toward her ear and whispered, “Be right back,” then slipped out. She heard his empty paper cup drop into the waste-basket next to the door as he went by.
    When “right back” turned into five minutes, Shauna started to wonder if Wayne was okay. Bad milk in the mocha, maybe? Or maybe he was bored, too, trying to be polite about it without actually having to suffer through any more celluloid. If that was the case, she should say she felt the same way.
    No need to waste both money and hours.
    She grabbed her purse, her half-empty cup of tea, and went out.
    There was no sign of Wayne in the small lobby or near the bathrooms. She checked the tables where several people hung out waiting for the midnight showing of whatever the classic movie of the week was. Not there. She contemplated whether it would be uncouth to wait for him by the bathrooms, but then thought she heard his voice out on the mall.
    She poked her head out, saw him standing a few feet off, back to the theater, talking on his cell. She felt slightly guilty for having commanded so much of his time today. Other people needed him. Obviously. His phone was