“Since there’s no meeting here, I’ll close up in ten minutes.”
“Have a nice evening,” Charlene said, pulling the door closed.
“You bet,” Pam said to the closing door. “You bet,” she said more quietly to the empty room.
She cleaned off her desk at a leisurely pace, giving that last client who might show up at the wrong place for the right meeting a few more minutes to appear. She cleared her computer screen, locked her desk drawer and placed her calendar open on top of her desk, scanning tomorrow’s schedule. Yes, yes, I love working here, she said to herself. I’d be lost without this place.
Lost.
Pam pulled her gym bag from the cupboard behind her desk and went into Charlene’s executive bathroom; she only used this private facility when Charlene was out of the office. There she affected a transformation—from sophisticated career woman in light wool suit, silk blouse and pumps, to weight trainer in spandex, sports bra and cross-trainers.
She pulled her shoulder-length auburn hair into a clip and couldn’t resist the urge to preen a little in front of Charlene’s mirror. She was cut; nicely muscled, her percentage of body fat low. Looking fine. Weight lifting was more than just a hobby, more than a means of staying in shape. It was something she did to keep her spirits from sinking.
It wasn’t as though she had a bad life. In fact, by almost anyone’s standards she had a great life. She loved her job, was in outstanding health and had a terrific home life with her Great Dane, Beau, and an elderly but extremely fit father who traveled quite a bit, leaving her to enjoy the luxury of free rent in three thousand square feet with hot tub. And she had friends, from work, from the neighborhood and from the club where she exercised.
But there was no man in her life and there hadn’t been in years. Years! And she was no longer too busy to notice.
She also remembered the ones that hadn’t worked out, the ones who did come around but were completely wrong for her and the ones who caught her eye and already had the stamp of another woman on them. She was luckless in this department. What was worse, she had absolutely no idea why. If her father asked her one more time, “Any new prospects, honey?” she might strangle him. As objectively as she could judge, she thought herself to be of at least average attractiveness. Oh hell, above average! She was intelligent, industrious and clean. She had a sense of humor, she read good books and, unless she was missing some vital signal, she was actually popular. She got along with everyone, on both personal and professional levels. In fact, she was one of those women who, after writing of her dilemma to Ann Landers, was likely to get the response, “If what you say about yourself is true, you’d have been snapped up years ago. There must be some little thing you’re overlooking.”
It wasn’t like Pam to sulk. In fact, it was rare for her to give in to this sense of disappointment, this feeling that she had somehow failed. She’d stopped trying to figure out what terrible flaw she had long ago. Was this because Charlene was getting married? But that was silly. Charlene and Dennis had been together for years and, as she’d said, this was really only a formality.
Pam had accepted that not everyone gets a partner and she knew a lot of single people who were not looking, were not trying to find a mate. She was thirty-nine and had stopped allowing herself to be set up at about thirty-five. She wasn’t interested in making man-hunting a life’s work.
The paperwork she would take home was already packed into her briefcase. As she pulled her raincoat out of the closet, there were two short taps at the outer office door before it swung open. “Locking up, Ms. London?” Ray Vogel asked her.
“As we speak,” she said, taking her coat off its hanger.
“Whoa, Ms. London,” he said, grinning. “Look at you! I always figured you for a gym rat.”
“A what?” she said, laughing in spite of herself.
“Wow, look at that six-pack,” he said, referring to her muscled abs. “Where do you work out?”
“Just a neighborhood tennis and fitness club.”
“You compete?” he asked.
“Me? Get serious!” But she had an unmistakable urge to flex.
She slipped into her coat, pulled the strap of her tote over one shoulder, gym bag over the other, followed that with her handbag strap, then grabbed up her briefcase and suit-on-a-hanger. Keys in hand, she joined him at the office door. He took the keys from her hand, eased her out the door, flicked off the lights and locked up for her. “You could compete,” he said, handing her back the keys. Then he took some of her burdens. “Come on, I’ll make sure you get to your car.”
“You don’t have to do that, Ray. I get myself there every night.”
“Tonight’s my treat,” he said. “You know, I could tell. That you work out. I thought about just asking, but I didn’t want to, you know, be…um…” He was clearly searching for a word.
“Nosy?” she supplied, humor in her voice.
“That’s not what I mean. I was working on a way to ask you if you were, you know, married. Or involved.”
She almost dropped her suit. She stopped walking and turned toward him with a look that verged on alarm. “What?”
He shrugged. “Married? Involved?”
“Why?” she said, confused—and very shocked.
“I thought we could grab a drink some night. Maybe something to eat.” He took her elbow in hand and led her the rest of the way to the elevator. He pressed the down button. “You know, a date.”
It was almost scary, the way he proposed this only minutes after she’d been flexing her thirty-nine-year-old muscles in front of the bathroom mirror, bemoaning her absolutely solitary life. She was going to be a long time in recovering from the sheer blow. “Are you serious? You have a thing for older women?”
“Why wouldn’t I be serious? How much older can you be?” he countered.
The elevator arrived and they stepped inside.
“I could be a lot older, Ray. I could be your mother!”
“Come on,” he said, brushing her off.
“How old are you?” she demanded, feeling a blush rise up her neck.
“Now, if I’d asked you that question, I bet you’d get all piss—All bent out of shape,” he said, correcting himself. “I’m almost twenty-eight.”
“I could be your much older sister,” she said. “I’m almost forty.”
“Oh yeah?” he said, looking pleased with himself. “How almost?”
“Thirty-nine and three quarters.”
“No shit. I mean, no kidding!”
“How ‘almost twenty-eight’ are you?”
“Twenty-five,” he said. He grinned devilishly. Handsomely. “I took you for about thirty.”
“Ray.”
