I’m smart enough to recognize a pattern. To know that the same man who’s telling me that I’m lovely and smart and my ideas for Vanny are revolutionary will shift the discourse soon enough. The compliments will bleed into remarks about how I’m naïve and foolish and exhausting. How I couldn’t even manage to open a tin can if it weren’t for him. And it will happen so slowly I won’t notice until it’s too late, and I’m under his control.
