Fear trickled down her spine. Dread. Dolores' pale forehead was sweating. Her eyes were wide open, fixed on the plane. The terminal was so big, so many people, yet she felt alone. Silence echoed in her mind. Her heart raced. She was fatigued. She stood up, and her long skirt danced in the air. The trembling legs took her, almost catatonic, in front of the glass. A beautiful B777 was flashing in front of her. Boarding had not yet been announced, but the chairs at gate A30 were already full. Her eyes darted around the room. People dressed so . . . differently. New York fashion, Humbert commented, in a disparaging tone. He didn't like anything, Dolores thought. At him, however, she just rolled her eyes.
It wasn't planned. Dolly packed her things in a few days. Like gypsies in the night, the two left like two shadows in a nightmare. Humbert wondered if he was losing his lucidity and letting his paranoia take on the colors of a forced psychiatric hospitalization or if his thesis possessed by lust was the result of a ferocious subconscious Lolita, her sin, her soul, was contemplating an escape. A mysterious man surrounded her. They followed his car. He was a journalist, he bet, incarnated by his own sins. No one would touch his Lolita. The girl, now fourteen, was his property. On her lips, it was always Lolita. For others, it was Dolores. With friends, she was Dolly. In order to present the image of a sweet father, she was Lo. Lolita existed only in his perverse mind, purified offshoots of his clumsy creativity. Dolores had played a stupid and suspicious character, Humbert imagined. When he gave her the good news, she didn't cry like she thought. She didn't take his words to heart. And then, when she walked into her room, after much delay watching television in the living room, she realized it was serious. They were going to New York. So she went from cynical to desperate. She cried. She asked. She begged. She bargained. She dealt with what she could, played with demons. Humbert didn't even give her hope. They had to be quick. Someone was lurking in the dark. Dolores, who had a very clear plan of escape, counting the days and the coins, collapsed. He felt. He sniffed. She would never be free. This dog, perverted piece of meat with his bulging eyes, won. She struggled. She threw his boxes on the floor, bit his hand, scratched his face. She screamed blasphemies. That she hated him. She hated New York. That she would have sex with the first man available. When the argument reached a heated level, Humbert grabbed her wrist so hard it almost broke. Her mouth twisted in a squeezing scream. Her white skin was painted Ruby red. Dolores protested in vain. "You're not going back to that school," humbert shouted against the girl's euphoric screams, "It's all right now! Can you stop?!". She wouldn't see Mona anymore. No piano lessons. The colors of freedom are now lost in mere seconds of rage. Dolores was tired. Her bony wrist still echoed the throes from that fight.
She stopped in front of Humbert. Her gaze landed on a TSA employee. It was comical how Humbert was so fragile. One word, one tear, one scream, and her parody of incest would be over. "I gotta use the bathroom," she stated, throwing her bag onto his lap. It was an animal print backpack. She had bought it with her allowance money. She lied about the amount, as Humbert was looking for her hiding place and knew from notes in a notebook how much he had presumably given away. Thus, she kept some bills still in strategic points. Her tricks have already invoked other precincts, and Dolores has developed the practice of hiding coins in strange places. Her hiding places outside the house. Her mouse holes. In the end, she didn't manage to scrape together much. What survived was not even forty dollars. "Don't take so long." Dolores walked down a ramp. In front of the bathroom there was a shop. She looked down at the sweatshirts. Colors varied. She hated the suburban style, mom thing. Not any mother. Her mother would never wear an outfit like that. She smiled with a heavy heart. Then she glimpsed some mugs, pencil cases, and notebooks. Got a chocolate. Kit kat. The girl at the cash register smiled at her. Everyone smiled at Dolores. And she, whose wouldn't lose an opportunity to show her tenderness beauty, smiled back.
Now, with a chocolate, she sat next to Humbert. "I thought you went to the bathroom," he commented, forcing a certain falseness into his tone. He was trying to sound kind and caring. However, he was out of patience. Lolita tied knots in his guts. Her mouth didn't shut up. The brat protested until the end. He didn't want to fight. Not there. One cry and his charade would be over. Just a few more seconds, minutes, less than an hour, and control would return to his grasp. "Do you want anything else?".
She shook her head. He looked at the plane, at the sea-tinged sky. She wanted to sail the ocean, soar like a seagull, see the stars in a summer sky. No worries, no bedtime, no fears. Clare had promised him that, a new world, concrete dreams. And now? Where was he?