On the ride in, sitting in the pilot boat's warm, rattling cabin with a towel around her neck, she called Karim. He had waited up.
"Yas wanted to know if the wind came first," he said.
Rania leaned her head back against the bulkhead and closed her eyes. "Tell her it came at the same time," she said. "Tell her that's the hardest kind."
The pilot station's van dropped her at Gulfline Gate Two at ten minutes after two in the morning, because her red Honda was still parked inside, on the wharf at Berth Four, and Gate One was closed at night.
The TWIC reader still had its strip of yellow masking tape across the top. The light in the white shack was still on. Wade Toups was still in it, sitting on his stool, and when the van pulled away and he saw her standing alone at the arm in the light rain with her bag on her shoulder and her yellow jacket and her hard hat in one hand, he stood up so fast his stool fell over.
He slid the window open. He looked like he had not slept in a week. His shirt had dried in wrinkles.
"Ma'am," he said.
She unclipped the terminal radio from the strap of her bag and held it out to him through the window.
"I said I'd bring it back."