Re: Upper West Side: West 81st.
[She's never for one second wanted to be involved. Not even a tiny bit, not when every time they're fighting, it's because if they don't, it's disaster. It's not a storybook or a comic, whatever the man through the door wanted to tell her. It's life, and every time they're all out there, doing this, her heart is electric. She stays out of the way. She waits. Because going out there makes her just another liability and right now she's aware just how much of one she is.
And then there's only peripheral vision catching the twist of motion before the other woman is right there, and Pepper turns her head and yes, okay, she can see why the intern has a Google alert on the woman.]
Are you suggesting I stop?! [A jerk of her thumb backward] I stop, we get to know each other! [And if there's anything she likes less, it's that the boat, the sweeping up of women, it reminds her of the class she took in college on pre-Enlightenment forms of society and it's got an ugly taste of Viking to it.] Open to better ideas! [She's yelling. The terror is a sharp note in the words, acid with fear.]