Heart of Assassin

Chapter 6

Unfortunately we didn't get to see Mr. Fallow's incarceration, but I did receive a thousand dollars in an envelope. That much cash in my pocket made me nervous. Stacy declined to let me buy her dinner; I told her that she didn't have to drop me off at my house. I wanted to spend some time in town. The first stop was at my bank.

It took a while to talk to the manager, who told me that my account was still frozen and that there was nothing they could do about it until they received a release order from the holding bank. Somehow I wasn't surprised. Of course, as long as the five hundred a day order was in place, and I had money in my pocket I could live on; I didn't mind that they were taking their time.

The next stop was the library to use a computer, thinking I would look for more jobs. Instead I looked up information on women in the US military. There was actually a lot of information, from babes in red white and blue bikinis holding M16s to issues with harassment, and the vague line between combat and non-combat situations pertaining to the no women in combat rule. There was only one article I found on the really big issue I needed answers on. What about my hair? Up to this point I'd gotten away with lying to myself that I didn't care about my appearance.

The truth was, I actually liked the way I looked and put some work into cultivating a cute grunge appearance, and my hair was a big part of it. Now I was considering a career where my clothing choice would be made by someone else, and that someone, the US government, wasn't noted for being particularly fashion forward. Therefore, instead of looking up the articles dealing with chances of getting blown to pieces by mortar fire, I looked up pictures of military women in uniform. After skipping the ones that were obviously wrong, they all showed the women, with their hair in a bun style hairdo. Quite honestly, this was my least favorite style. I was trying to picture myself dressed in army fatigues with all the equipment. I was glad staff sergeant Bennett couldn't see me now after his little lecture on good and bad reasons for joining the service. Try as I might to deny it, somewhere in the irrational section of the three pounds of wetware in my head, the decision was already made and no amount of logic seemed to be changing my mind. Well, the test would apply more fuel to the decision process.

I vacated the library and stopped at Tony's for a grinder for supper. Murdock was there with a friend. He tried hard to not acknowledge me, but I didn't let him get away with it, and sat down next to him. I thought about planting a big wet one on him, but decided to only embarrass him, not ruin his life.

"Hi Murdock, how's UCONN?" I asked.

When I was a sophomore, he was a freshman. At that time, before both of us were clued in on how the high school social structure really worked, we were invited to the same party. What we didn't know was that it was for entertainment purposes only, not ours, but everyone else's. Not to go into all of the details, it culminated in a video of him feeling the crap out of me.

The video, besides getting flagged as inappropriate by the Youtube users group, helped earn me my Skank nickname. I didn't harbor any ill will towards him, actually felt bad about the damage to his own reputation.

"It's okay" was his answer, "This is Larry."

"Hi Larry,"

He turned to Larry, "and this is, ah..."

"Millie," I finished for him

"Hi Millie," Larry said.

"I thought you were living at UCONN?"

"Spring break," he answered. Juan, who was working the counter, motioned that my grinder was ready.

"That's great, have a good break," I said, getting up and paying for my grinder.