24
A formal handshake between your new host and your Designated Mate may mean that they haven’t met before now.
In certain rich, powerful men, physical slightness will seem a source of strength.
The failure of your new host to acknowledge you may indicate that women do not register in his field of vision.
Being invisible means you won’t be closely watched.
Your job is to be forgotten yet still present.
A white, sparkling villa amid so much scrabbly darkness will appear miragelike.
A man to whom women are invisible may still have many beauties in his domain.
These neglected beauties will vie for his scant attention.
Among neglected beauties, there is usually an alpha beauty who assumes command.
As you enter the villa, her cool scrutiny will ripple through the other beauties and contract around you.
The sensation will remind you of going as a child to a school, or a country club, where you knew almost no one.
Feeling at the mercy of those around you prompted a seismic internal response.
The will to integrate and thrive among strangers felt deeper than yourself.
You were never childish, even as a child.
Your unchildishness is something your husband has always loved in you.
Once the new children had become your allies, it was wrenching to leave them.
25
A small table and chairs carved into a spindly clifftop promontory are doubtless designed for private conversation.
If your Designated Mate brings you with him to this spot, he may be imperfectly at ease with your new host.
When your new host dismisses his alpha beauty, important business is likely under way.
An alpha beauty will not tolerate her own exclusion if another beauty is included.
If your new host’s first acknowledgment of you is a gesture of dismissal, look to your Designated Mate.
Take orders from no one but your Designated Mate.
If your Designated Mate keeps an arm around you in the face of your new host’s dismissal, you have become the object of a power play.
If your new host speaks directly into your face, at close range, he is likely testing your ignorance of his language.
If your Designated Mate stiffens beside you, your new host’s words are probably offensive.
An uncomprehending giggle is a beauty’s most reliable tool for diffusing conflict.
If the men relax into their chairs, your neutralization has been successful.
Your new host has insulted you and, by extension, your Designated Mate.
Your Designated Mate has prevailed in his claim that you’re too harmless to bother sending away.
Congratulate yourself on preserving your adjacency and activate your ear mic.
26
In the presence of business discussion, project an utter lack of interest or curiosity.
Notice where you are at all times.
On a high, narrow promontory at Latitude X, Longitude Y, the ocean and heavens shimmer in all directions.
There may be moments during your mission when you’ll sense that critical information is imminent.
It may come in the form of a rush of joy.
This joy may arise from your discovery that the moon, hard and radiant, is still aloft.
It may arise from a sense that you have entered the fantastical realm where childhood stories are set.