mutual cooling-off period.
I made a big production out of struggling with my luggage when I got into the airport, and soon enough a scruffy twenty-something with a huge backpack hurried over, gave me his best impression of a winning smile, and offered to help carry my bags. I gave him a half-strength smile of my own, loaded him down with my bags, and directed him toward the desk for my airline. People are willing to do all sorts of things for a pretty girl (I’m not being conceited; I just know my strengths, and being pretty isn’t even the strongest of them), but it’s better if you act like you don’t know you’re pretty. If you position yourself as too sophisticated and cool and aloof, the losers are afraid to approach, but if you act clumsy and lost and helpless, they decide you might be just barely in their league after all: and losers are easy to manipulate. Being cold and distant and perfect has its uses, but it attracts a different sort of prey: smug, confident, arrogant men. Men like that are good if you’re playing a longer game, though. They can pay great dividends, especially if you’re not yet eighteen and can mention your jealous father the cop—even better because it was true, and no reason to mention he was chief of police in Lake Nowheresville, Minnesota thousands of miles away—and statutory rape and oh, didn’t I mention I was underage, oh dear, I thought you knew, I thought that’s what you were into !
But I decided that once I got to Lake Woebegotten I wouldn’t play any of those games anymore. The place was too tiny, anyway, and who would I play with, Norwegian bachelor farmers? Some bald bank manager or the guy who ran the car dealership or the podunk grocery store? No thanks. This was a chance for a fresh start. To simplify and purify my life, and just be The New Girl… which meant I’d probably have my pick of country bumpkin boys. There might be some entertainment value there. I vaguely recalled they grew them big in the Upper Midwest.
I ditched the loser bag-boy at the security line, not even bothering to thank him—no incentive, when I’d never see him again—and breezed through the gates without being groped or bombarded with radioactivity. Having translucent skin as pale as milk (or “the color of lutefisk,” as one of my Minnesotan relatives had memorably said once, shudder) is an advantage in a world of scary foreign terrorists, even with brown hair and eyes to go with the paleness; I don’t look dangerous at all. Which just goes to show how much faith you can put in looks.
Once I got to the gate, I upgraded my flight to first class—it was on Miranda’s credit card, and she’d never notice. She didn’t even look at her statements when they came in the mail, just threw them in a pile for a year and then shredded them. I got on board as soon as the jetway opened, took my seat and my complimentary beverage—I didn’t bother trying to get booze, because alcohol doesn’t do much for me, just takes the edge off the world—and frowned when a businessman sat down beside me. First class was booked solid. Disappointing. Fortunately, the doughy man paid me no attention—gay, probably—and to my surprise he opened his briefcase and took out a book , of all things, not even a Kindle or an iPad, but a big fat hardcover printed on actual paper. There was no dust jacket, but I could read the title: The Historian . Bleah. Who’d want to read about a stupid historian? Or about anything, for that matter, apart from the occasional book of useful non-fiction? Why read about other people’s imaginary lives when you could have a real life of your own?
I took out the MP3 player I’d stolen from Dwayne, my mother’s boyfriend. Dwayne was dreadful, in his late thirties and at the tail end of a career as an arena football player, which was the kind of football you played when you’d never been good enough for the real game or just weren’t good enough anymore . Despite being a
I made a big production out of struggling with my luggage when I got into the airport, and soon enough a scruffy twenty-something with a huge backpack hurried over, gave me his best impression of a winning smile, and offered to help carry my bags. I gave him a half-strength smile of my own, loaded him down with my bags, and directed him toward the desk for my airline. People are willing to do all sorts of things for a pretty girl (I’m not being conceited; I just know my strengths, and being pretty isn’t even the strongest of them), but it’s better if you act like you don’t know you’re pretty. If you position yourself as too sophisticated and cool and aloof, the losers are afraid to approach, but if you act clumsy and lost and helpless, they decide you might be just barely in their league after all: and losers are easy to manipulate. Being cold and distant and perfect has its uses, but it attracts a different sort of prey: smug, confident, arrogant men. Men like that are good if you’re playing a longer game, though. They can pay great dividends, especially if you’re not yet eighteen and can mention your jealous father the cop—even better because it was true, and no reason to mention he was chief of police in Lake Nowheresville, Minnesota thousands of miles away—and statutory rape and oh, didn’t I mention I was underage, oh dear, I thought you knew, I thought that’s what you were into !
But I decided that once I got to Lake Woebegotten I wouldn’t play any of those games anymore. The place was too tiny, anyway, and who would I play with, Norwegian bachelor farmers? Some bald bank manager or the guy who ran the car dealership or the podunk grocery store? No thanks. This was a chance for a fresh start. To simplify and purify my life, and just be The New Girl… which meant I’d probably have my pick of country bumpkin boys. There might be some entertainment value there. I vaguely recalled they grew them big in the Upper Midwest.
I ditched the loser bag-boy at the security line, not even bothering to thank him—no incentive, when I’d never see him again—and breezed through the gates without being groped or bombarded with radioactivity. Having translucent skin as pale as milk (or “the color of lutefisk,” as one of my Minnesotan relatives had memorably said once, shudder) is an advantage in a world of scary foreign terrorists, even with brown hair and eyes to go with the paleness; I don’t look dangerous at all. Which just goes to show how much faith you can put in looks.
Once I got to the gate, I upgraded my flight to first class—it was on Miranda’s credit card, and she’d never notice. She didn’t even look at her statements when they came in the mail, just threw them in a pile for a year and then shredded them. I got on board as soon as the jetway opened, took my seat and my complimentary beverage—I didn’t bother trying to get booze, because alcohol doesn’t do much for me, just takes the edge off the world—and frowned when a businessman sat down beside me. First class was booked solid. Disappointing. Fortunately, the doughy man paid me no attention—gay, probably—and to my surprise he opened his briefcase and took out a book , of all things, not even a Kindle or an iPad, but a big fat hardcover printed on actual paper. There was no dust jacket, but I could read the title: The Historian . Bleah. Who’d want to read about a stupid historian? Or about anything, for that matter, apart from the occasional book of useful non-fiction? Why read about other people’s imaginary lives when you could have a real life of your own?
I took out the MP3 player I’d stolen from Dwayne, my mother’s boyfriend. Dwayne was dreadful, in his late thirties and at the tail end of a career as an arena football player, which was the kind of football you played when you’d never been good enough for the real game or just weren’t good enough anymore . Despite being a