9
Lauren
For my meeting with Bliss, I called on every moment of the "training" she'd given me. I had to beat her at her own game. I had to be just like her; no, better than her. I had to do it without setting off a single alarm bell. And I had to do it with a million churning butterflies at war in my stomach.
I met her at a rest stop back in Vermont. It felt appropriate, somehow. When I was growing up, rest stops had been convenient places where we tweaked our appearances on the way from one job to another, from one identity to the next. I felt oddly at home in rest stops. They were like commas in a sentence, a pause for breath.
Bliss drove up in a brand-new Mercedes SL. She stepped out and clicked the lock, then came toward me in an outfit straight out of Jackie O's wardrobe. Big blac
