Layers – Chapter 1 Page 5
She had lived a life that if someone had presented as a biography, this person would have had an impossible job of finding even a solitary believer. She had crammed a few lifetimes of experiences into her twenty seven years.
Her father had, at various times, worked for over a dozen different national intelligence agencies. She had been born in the former Soviet Union, but had moved with her family to the States at the tender age of three. She was an only child, and missed her father terribly whenever he went on one of his frequent, time consuming assignments. She idolized him, and from the moment she was capable of understanding what he did for a living, vowed to follow in his footsteps.
“You mean to tell me you can’t figure out why I decided to be truthful with you?”, Greg asked her quite bluntly.
He had never witnessed such a disarming smile. She leaned in and planted the most gentle of kisses on his lips.
“I’m really sorry Greg, forgive me. I wanted to see how you would react to my question”.
They were two highly intelligent people, but in the chess match of life, Greg would not be much of a challenge for Paula. She had been playing at it her entire adult life.
“Why?”, Greg asked.
“You mean why did I want to see your reaction”, she answered.
“Yes. Exactly. Is this some type of a game to you?”
For the first time she could recall, she felt genuine remorse. She put herself emotionally in Greg’s position, and completely empathized with his reaction. She had been trained so well and had been at it for so long, that she instinctively reacted in a ‘gather more information’ modal. It took a full night of conversation with a man in an alcohol induced black out for the human side of Paula to suddenly emerge. She realized that prior to this moment, she had only let herself feel in the company of one other person during her entire life. Her father.
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