She supported herself
as a lab tech in nearby Durham's Research Triangle Park — a job she got because having grown up hunting rabbits and squirrels, she didn't
feel queasy about sacrificing lab animals.
«You could be a hundred years old and still be beautiful,» he said,
as if he meant it, and she couldn't help it, it was such a good line — she smiled at him, soaking it all up with a
queasy feeling that she was being swept along toward a shore she hadn't envisioned and needed to
do some serious paddling in the other direction if she wanted to get home safe.