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lb_leeGrey knows the moment Bob starts liking her, because that’s when he starts touching her.
( Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue )
lb_lee
It was the stiffest Thanksgiving dinner I ever had.
Grey showered, replaced both uniform and steel rod, and silently waved me into 1990’s most boring, practical sedan, but I was determined not to fall for the hardass act this time. Anyone who’d trolled me that successfully had earned my full attention, and I’d felt something in that break room.
( Read more... )
lb_leeGrey really does try to make Bob hate her.
Before 9/11, she does well. A man as expressive and catty as him proves easy to irritate; all she has to do is make herself social dead weight, be the goylem he expects her to be, and watch him climb the walls. After he confuses South Fifth Street and Fifth Street South, she double-checks all his directions until he tells her to go to hell and hangs up on her. Larkin tells her, “don’t be petty, Grey,” but still, it’s very satisfying.
After 9/11, it stops being enjoyable. All the sniping in the world can’t hide the misery on Bob’s face after being denied his Diwali leave, and Grey relents. It’s not his fault that she’s attracted to him, and her personal issues take a back seat to his basic comfort at work.
( A Very Important Pigeon )
lb_lee
For a shady government agency dealing with interdimensional migration, the PIN buildings didn’t look special or important. They were just another cluster of boxy beige buildings in their own strip mall on the outskirts of town. Health and Medical on one side of the parking lot, Communications and Operations on the other. Comm-Ops wasn’t any more exciting on the inside, except for the gigantic painting on the wall.
( I had to check legal records to learn that Arizona only repealed the sodomy laws between Bob's arrival and his partnering with Grey. )
lb_lee
I never would’ve touched the PIN if it hadn’t been for SpecialestAlpha.
That was the name I knew him by, back on alt.games.alienmenace. His gimmick: brooding secret agent alien hunter, desperate to find teenage girls to join the fight against extraterrestrials (and blow him). The group treated him like a pet troll, and for a long time, I saw nothing wrong with that.
( He is absolutely not based on a real person. )
lb_lee
Staying celibate isn’t a hard promise for Grey to keep, at first. She’s too busy trying not to wash out. Thanks to Vicky, she now knows that she can learn… but it still takes a while, and she can’t afford to lose this. Andersen is sponsoring her training; she can’t disappoint him.
( After all, where would she go? What would she do? )
lb_lee
In 1966, when Grey is eight, she sees an old silent movie called der Golem on dollar day at the drive-in theater. The film is faded and flickery, parts seem to be missing, and all the text is in German, but none of that matters once the golem appears. Grey’s too young to know what that leap in her heart means, but when she sees the golem’s dress and bobbed hair, her strength to hold up a collapsing ceiling, she knows that’s who she wants to be. She wants to be the girl who saves everyone, the woman who holds up the world.
( But she will never get to be that girl. So she might as well be the useful monster. )
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