Sassy was there, though, catalogues in hand. We went through them for a while and I picked out what I needed, most of it against Sassy’s advice. We had very different tastes in clothes. But I did let her talk me into wearing mascara, perfume, and a pair of her black boots for my date, though I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it. After that, we went to the secondhand room to pick out a few things to hold me over until I got my new wardrobe. Then it was time to go down to the first floor. “You’ll be fine,” Sassy kept telling me all the way to the elevator. But it was my first date with a guy I barely knew. How was I going to be fine? Deep breaths, I kept telling myself. “Hello, Kristine,” Connie said when I stepped inside an elevator. “Roman is already waiting for you on the first floor.” “What?” It was only four-forty. I’d hoped to get to look around the rec room for a little while before I met him at the cafeteria. “Roman is waiting for you on the first floor,”
