2 Landscape in Scarlet Read Free Page A

as a matter of form only.”
    Juliet grinned.
    “Me too. I didn’t have the heart to tell Rose that sweatshirts sell best when arranged by size and color and that I didn’t need a whole day to prepare them . I’ve been helping her hang stuff so she doesn’t fall off her chair but we finished that an hour ago . ”
    “You’re too nice for your own good.”
    “You know, Raphael,” she said as they started for the door. “I don’t know that that’s true. I do the right things, always have, but I may not be a nice person at all. ”
    “You are still discovering yourself,” he answered matter-of-factly . “It takes a while to adjust to the outside world when you’ve been inside for as long as you were . You have to learn to make choice s again, to realize that you can afford compassion and friendship and hope. At least with certain people. ”
    He spoke from experience. He had also done something clandestine for the government and it had put him in a wheelchair. If he was bitter about this, it never showed.
    “Yes.”
    And, as usual, he was right. She needed more time. Her old job had slowly lifted choice out of her hands, ostensibly so she could be free of outside distractions and get on with her work. Eventually t hey controlled her hours, her friends, her environment. And it was always the ir way or the highway. They pulled the strings and the obedient puppets reacted or got their strings cut .
    At first, lonely and adrift after her parents’ deaths, she had been glad to find what looked like a new family with the rules and order she craved . Her boss had been kind and once he was aware of her talents he had shielded her from much of the pressure and unpleasant infighting. She had coasted along for decades , living in limbo , because it was easiest and because there was nothing else she wanted more than to sift through words, looking for evidence of terrorists at work, or play, or even being created. Mostly what she found were the stupid, unscrupulous , and terrified who were anything but criminal masterminds or even criminally minded . But sometimes she tracked down the real bad guys. She had thought that these occasional victories made everything else worthwhile.
    It took someone close to her dying pointlessly for her to start seeing all the flaws, the systemic troubles and corruption by those higher up the food chain. A nd after she began really looking around, the good features of her work were outweighed by the system’s bad qualities. In fact , she soon had more entries in the minus side of her ledger than the L ibrary of C ongress. And the reward for doing her work well? She got to do the same thing over and over again — world without end, amen. And without her boss to watch her back and protect her from the infighting.
    She discovered then that there was no work protocol for losing faith in one’s profession . Lose an arm, a leg, an eye, there were fixes on the books. Lose a job, a marriage, a house — bad, but they could be worked around. But faith? There was no substitute, no replacement for that. And without it, duty to a governmental god became impossible. Because she no longer felt she had an obligation to a three-letter agency that did a lot of harm along with the good .
    When she left, she discarded everything she could to lighten her psyche. But just because she tossed out the uniform of bland business suits and the security card to the fourth floor, it didn’t mean that she could forget all the memories and training. Or emotional scars from incidents that had taught her to be wary .
    It was probably a good thing the incident had happened. She preferred her life choices to be her own, that it was her fingers pulling the strings even if it meant surviving out in the cold, cruel world .
    “I love the autumn, even if it is the dying time of the year , ” Juliet said, partly changing the subject and partly to redirect her mind . “I’m glad we get color here. I can’t imagine autumn