The champagne was relaxing to Jolie.  Adam's voice was relaxing.  He'd taken her hint and talked about his family and previous relationship which piqued her curiosity greatly.  She wondered about that girlfriend, a model.  Jolie felt a little tickle of insecurity flit across her brain.  This whole night was like a game of collecting information and withholding, seeking and hiding.  Now, she knew that this artist liked beautiful women.  Would he still think she was beautiful when he knew about her dark secrets?  She took a sip of champagne to try to drown out that doubt and looked into those kind eyes with an alcohol-enhanced hope.<br/><br/>The way he spoke to her after he announced he was finished gave her hope too.  It was all orders, directives.  Yes, they were quiet and not harsh.  Merrick had been quiet, too, at times at least in volume.  The most dastardly deeds and diction he voiced in whispers.  Something about this moment, Adam's eyes looking up her skirt where it had fallen to the side as she relaxed and the quiet orders, it spoke to her.  It breathed a little oxygen into that small flame of hope that resided in her chest, and it flickered inside her.  She closed her eyes and relaxed.  Then he asked her to read a poem, and that flicker wavered a bit.  She feared it would turn to smoke.<br/><br/>She couldn't disobey him though, not in the state she was in.  Her hands shook as she sat up and looked through the papers to find a poem that she could read.  Certainly not Good Girl Gone, her mistake.  She decided that she would go with the poem about a favorite film of hers, Hitchock's Vertigo.  Her voice was shaking but she sat up and read it to him, happy to have to focus her gaze on the paper and not look at him while she read:<br/><br/>Souvenir<br/><br/>A dizzy dream, in day, you drown, always<br/>remembered falling down. She’s platinum,<br/>his proxy, dimpled chin.  With whirling daze<br/>a plot begins. Spy her saunter, satin<br/>her sway; employed to supervise her days.<br/>A suicide you fish from freezing sea,<br/>a bouquet grasped in gallery.  You chase<br/>upstairs but cannot catch.  Guilty<br/>display around a neck of golden chain<br/>with rubies square, a souvenir she should<br/>not wear.  So sentimental with your pain,<br/>a face replaced, embraced inside redwoods.<br/>Their trunks with rings resplendent as her lie.<br/>Your souvenir, two times, you watch her die.<br/><br/>As Jolie finished reading, she shyly looked at Adam.  Even this poem that was not remotely about her life felt naked and personal now.  It was one of her favorite movies and it was about a femme fatale, a woman who destroys a man with his desire for her.  It felt eerie right now, like a premonition to look into the face of this guileless man having read what was almost like a warning.<br/>