I actually brought my lunch today -- leftovers from last nights stir fry in a Tupperware bowl -- but I couldn't face it. Just had to get out of the office. So I emptied the bowl in the trash and rinsed it out so the wife would think I was saving eight bucks today. It's the little lies that get you through the day sometimes.
Like last week, when I was sitting at Burrito del Soul, eating this very same Especial, munching on nachos, sipping a soda and mulling the Sudoku puzzle when this woman walks by. I call her Jane. I call her Jane because she looks like this character named Jane in an American version of a British TV show that was on air a few years ago for about the blink of an eye. Jane is dark haired and curvy, with big blue eyes and a penchant for wearing bright red lipstick and tight white sweaters or loose button-down tops and pants that hug those curvy hips.
I don't know Jane, but I've ridden the elevator with her a few times -- up to the 47th floor, down to the parking garage. One of those characters you see all the time who you never talk to but you make up stuff about just for fun. I'm a married guy, you know? I don't just go chatting up women. There's only one reason to chat them up, you know?
So Jane ends up sitting one table over facing me. She's got her own soda and one of those taco salad tostada bowls, and she's by herself reading this chick lit book about a young mom whose husband cheats on her and she ends up reviving her life and getting to choose between four different suitors, including that skunk of an ex husband. Hey, my wife read it...I was just looking over her shoulder, okay?
Anyway, I'm looking at Jane and she looks up, I catch her eye and I smile and nod, because that's what you do when you see someone you recognize but don't know and you know that she knows she's seen you before but doesn't know you either. And she knows that too so she smiles and nods and goes back to her book and I go back to my Sudoku. And then I look up again and for some reason say:
"That Chad sure is a bastard, isn't he?"
Now, you see, that's not a pickup line. Because no one man in his right mind would broadcast the fact that he'd read this trashy chick novel, and no woman would be impressed by this. At best, she'd assume you didn't go for the opposite sex. At worst...let's not go there.
"What?" she says back with a 'you talkin' to me?' sort of look.
"Chad ... in that book ... can you believe she'd even think of taking him back?" Then she laughs, which was what I was going for. Anything for a laugh some days, you know?
"Well, they were married for seven years. There's a bond there."
"Yeah, but if I'd slept with one of my employees in my wife's bed ... I'm pretty sure my wife would call that 'unforgivable'." See, I even mention my wife here.
"Well, may she just 'didn't understand him'," Jane says, still smiling. I laugh back.
"You'd make a great girlfriend," I say and suddenly get this shiver through my whole body...and I mean my whole body.
"Too bad," she says, smiling and holding up her left hand to show off the silver band there, the silver band I had, of course, noted the very first time I'd seen her in the elevator on the way to the 47th floor.
I can't speak, so I just smile and laugh a short, breathy laugh. She shakes her head and goes back to her book. I look back at my newspaper and shove a nacho into my mouth. I'm gonna pay for this.
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