Peeling The Covers
He walked inside the hotel bar for a drink and ordered vodka on the rocks. A muted television was hanging on his right and the bartender, after giving him his drink, turned his back and returned to polishing the glasses. It was still early, past seven on a Tuesday night, and he had ordered the vodka precisely because of that. He has enough time to mull over his drink, let the ice dilute the alcohol and cool it. He looked around, slowly turning his gaze on the mostly empty oak tables. He felt conscious of being only one of the four paying customers in the bar, none of them together, all of them in different states of looking busy or bored. Andrew was still shaking off jetlag, a bit of time disorientation, having travelled for half a day and several time zones from Manila to Paris the day before. For the rest of that day, he had sat through a series of introductions and business meetings, fighting off sleep with several cups of coffee. At one point, in a meeting inside a conference