“Do you want me to grab your hair again?” Mindy threatened, towering over her. “If you don’t show up, it might seem like an admission of guilt. Here’s what I say you do. Dominic said he wants to take you to a charity carnival. There is no doubt in my mind that Mark and Laura will be there also. I’ll dress you up in a dark wig. I’ll also find you some brown contacts. You’ll be Cleopatra by the time I’m finished with you and no one will dare think that you are the same person as Helen. You’ll be in the clear if you can manage to trick them into believing that you’re a completely different person. You can pull it off, can’t you?”Helen started to see things from Mindy’s perspective during her speech. Mindy was right. She should grab the bull by the horns and deal with it.“Okay!” Helen said, gathering up all her energy. “When is the date?”Mindy looked at her watch

Monday MorningOn Monday morning, Helen got dressed with unusual deliberation. She intentionally dressed herself to look prudish. She couldn’t help it. If she showed up at work looking even a little bit playful she knew it was going to be a day of backlash. She wore black trousers, a white collared shirt, no accessories, and only minimal product so that her short hair didn’t look unruly. Her glasses looked thick even after she applied her mascara. She had to look professional and steady.When she came into the office, Mark was waiting for her. Leaning against the wall in the reception area, he said, “Drop your bag off at your desk. We have a meeting with Collin this morning." Then he handed her his half-filled coffee mug and said, “Oh, and please top me off.”Helen took the mug from him and headed down the hallway toward her desk.Collin? Helen had heard the name before from one of the other girls in the office, but what had she said

“Yeah, I noticed. I didn’t think anything of it, but Mark, you suck. You should have called and said you’d pay a hundred an hour,” Helen said, still thinking with her impoverished brain.“What? Why should I have done that?”“Because then I could have got two hundred dollars an hour from dating that blood drinker!”“You really did it for the money!” Mark laughed, seeing dollar-signs fill her eyes. For one second, he looked like the Mark she knew the week before. He leaned back in his chair and looked content, but then a thought seemed to cross his mind and the mirth left his face. “Can I ask you a personal question about being an escort?”“Go ahead.”“I was just wondering how detached you are when you play ‘Vera.’ Is the real you close to the surface or do you almost forget about your true self?”Helen knew what he was talking about. Only a person

Dominic joined Collin and looked on with interest almost as if he was partially in charge. “Since hair color is an option on Vera, do you think she would look better as a brunette?”“No,” Collin said quickly. “The thing that’s special about Vera is that we can match her hair to whatever shade we want, as long as it complements Alexander’s. Also, her eyes—a blue-eyed girl wouldn’t have filled the bill. I still haven’t discarded the idea of having everything in the photos black and white except for their eyes.”“It doesn’t matter,” Dominic said, looking at her and Alexander together. “Your graphics wizards don’t care what color her eyes are. They’ll make them the color we want.”Collin frowned and picked up his camera. “You two talk!” Collin yelled at Helen and Alexander. Then he turned to Dominic and started explaining something.Alexander turned

Out of the OfficeWhen Helen got into Mark’s car, she was more relaxed than she thought possible. It wasn’t a fancy car, but an ordinary Toyota sedan, very much like the one her parents owned. The interior was almost the same.She gave Mark directions to her apartment. Partway through her discourse Mark stopped her. “Couldn’t you just give me the address? It seems like we’re just following the number twelve bus route.”Helen shuddered. They were following the number twelve bus route. She wasn’t very familiar with the city, even though she had lived there for almost a year, and she didn’t know how to get anywhere without taking the bus. She blushed and gave him the address.Mark changed lanes and look them onto a much faster-moving road. Apparently, they had really been going the slow way.Finally, he parked in front of her building. “Do you want to come in?” Helen asked nervously. She had never invi