What Laura had been searching for her whole life, this random guy was able to sum up in one horribly butchered sentence. There was nothing worse than being boring. Boring was exactly what Laura had been before she'd died. She was a travel agent, Shadow's wife. She was a girl whose mother didn't love her, whose sister didn't want to be friends with her, whose father had died of a heart attack on the toilet when she was young. She'd played dumb just so she didn't have to do work in school, had been enrolled in special ed classes, and she'd regretted all of that later in life. For most of her life, she'd been a bit of a slut, but she had never really minded until her husband was sent to prison. She'd enjoyed sex with lots of people, but she'd never had really good sex. She liked sexy underthings, chili, and strawberry daiquiris because they made her interesting. She was, to be frank, a laundry list. And he had tossed that out there for her to see.
He had, though, mentioned the one thing that she'd never had, the one thing she could never have, even now. Her organs had been taken out for her autopsy and they'd been tossed back in all hodgepodge. Laura would never be a mother. She'd never have children of her own. There was no one, once Shadow and her immediate family was gone, who would remember her. In that respect, she was exactly like everybody else who'd ever walked the earth. Unlike them, she could keep reminding people about herself.
"You're one of the few people who's spoken to me like a real person since I've been dead. That makes me pretty miserable. I was social when I was alive. I liked people, and I liked being with them. I can't do that anymore. Also, you're only the third guy who's checked me out since I've been dead. Like you said, I was beautiful. It used to be a lot more frequent." She paused, smirking at him. "If I was alive, I think I would divorce my husband and just go back to being a slut. I can't seem to get out of my own way when it comes to a good looking guy, so why try to fight it? I should have been born in the days of courtesans and harems and things like that. I think, ultimately, the point of all of this was to tell me that I'm not the marrying kind. Then again, if I hadn't loved Shadow, I'd be in a box, like you said. Though I'd probably be substantially less rotten."
Why was he bothering? The fact that he spoke to her like he cared was unsettling. Nobody was supposed to care about her point of view, about what she thought. She was Laura, the head of the Night Watch, that pale woman who never slept. Nobody here paid her any mind...and that was how she liked to keep it, for the most part. This was different, and she didn't know what to make of it.