Rachel had been working in the office for nearly three weeks. She was overly conscientious in her duties, wanting to make an impression. She wasn't our first choice or even our second. The others turned us down and now we were stuck with Rachel. I watched her as she typed, the tip if her tongue occasionally appearing between her lips. She had decorated the area around her desk with a few photographs; one of her nephew and niece smiling against the background of Boston harbor and another of what I took to be her boyfriend. Each morning for the past week she had brought in a small bunch of spring flowers that added a splash of color to the drab blue walls of the office.
I was difficult to say exactly what annoyed me most about her. Her coal-black hair was cut sharply into one of those modern styles that showed off her long neck. Her clothing had a studied casualness about it. She was always on time, always willing a stay a little later. It had struck me not long after she arrived that she never wore the same pair of shoes to work. I was tempted to start up a log of her shoes to discover when she would wear a repeat pair of shoes, but the thought of undertaking such a task exhausted me. She was third on our interview list because she was inexperienced and young. This caused her to constantly flit about the office seeking advice from her peers who seemed unusually willing to offer it. I recalled her CV; an upbringing in a middle class suburb near Chicago, higher than expected SATs, a decent college, above average grades, and effusive recommendations. She played volleyball for the college team and spent a semester abroad building homes for the poor somewhere in South America.
I suppose I knew what really annoyed me. It wasn't so much her bland perfections as much as my own unremarkable and accumulating imperfections. Languishing in my late 40's I was at least twenty years older than Rachel; probably about the same age as her father. My hair was thinning at about the same rate as my stomach seemed to be expanding. When I was married I longed for the freedom of the single man, but now, five years after my divorce I was plain lonely. I hadn't given up on dating exactly but dating seemed to be progressively giving up on me. The fact of the matter was that Rachel looked straight through me. I was nothing to her; neither young and good looking enough to be interesting or important enough to be useful.
A few days ago I walked over to her desk.
"Hey," I said in my most breezy tone accompanied by my brightest smile. She looked up from the report she was reading, her finger keeping her place on the page. I noticed again the small scar just below her eye that became a dark red when she laughed and flirted with the others in the office. Both her scar and her green eyes remained dim.
"That your boyfriend?" I asked, immediately regretting the question. She looked puzzled by this forced attempt at intimacy. I could read her thoughts perfectly; who is this person to ask about my boyfriend? She was still only half turned towards me and her finger remained in place on the page.
"Sorry," I said quickly, sparing her the effort of a reply to my stupid question. "I just wanted to say hello and make sure everything is going well."
"Oh," she said. "Okay," and turned back to her report leaving me standing there hovering. "Was there something else?" she asked. I admitted there wasn't and retreated.
The only person at work who might count as a friend was June who was around my age. We had an office fling years ago that ended badly but now we were old enough to recognize our follies. She had witnessed my "conversation" with Rachel.
"She's too young for you big boy," she said with a sympathetic smile.
"What do you mean?" I asked innocently.
"Rachel. I don't think she's into older men." This unasked for piece of advice both cheered me and disappointed me. The idea that June thought I was prowling around the office looking start up affairs assured me that at least someone thought my manhood still something to be reckoned with. However the thought that I was now, even in the eyes of June, an "older man" was a sharp and unwelcome reminder of my fading powers of attraction. We were standing outside the men's room, a place where June and I had several risky sexual encounters. Like me, June had put on a few pounds since then and patched things up with her husband.
"I was just trying to be friendly," I said, maintaining the posture of innocence.
"You should watch less porn; these girls are not for you unless you are buying them. And then they are not cheap." I knew that June, the former adulteress and swinger, was not judging me. Her enthusiasm for pornography rivaled my own when we were lovers.
"A man can only hope," I said enjoying this moment of shared understanding. June touched my arm to guide me back towards the office. "The photograph is of her boyfriend and she's not your type."
Rachel and the man in the photograph were sitting together in a booth at the steakhouse near the river. I saw them immediately I walked in. They were huddled together, seemingly engaged in a hissing argument. I sat, unobserved, in the next booth. Rachel appeared drunk, slurring her words while the boyfriend seemed angry.
"Rachel," he hissed, "this is too fucking much. Too fucking much."
"Don't swear," Rachel slurred. "Anyway," she continued, "I said I'm sorry. Let me say it again. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry."
"Shut up." This outburst caused several heads to turn. And they sat in silence for several minutes.
"I want another drink," Rachel said eventually.
"How many times did you fuck him? Did you fuck him in our bed?"
"I don't think so," Rachel offered.
"What do you mean, you don't think so?"
"I think we did it in the kitchen and then … fuck, I don't know. What does it matter?"
"It matters to me you filthy fucking bitch. You whore." This was said loudly enough to draw the attention of everyone sitting nearby and at the bar. The boyfriend stood up and stamped out of the building leaving Rachel behind.
I sat thrilled by my voyeurism. The waitress was forced to tap her pen on the table to get my attention. I ordered a coffee, decaf, since my heart was racing enough already. What should I do now? Should I risk the humiliation of an approach? She would reject me of course, humiliated by my being witness to her unseemly and very public argument. To give myself time I walked to the bathroom passing Rachel's table, hoping I suppose, she would recognize me and call me over. My hope was disappointed. She was staring miserably into her drink, her fingers softly drumming on the table. Once I was in the bathroom I panicked. What if she left while I stood here squeezing out the dribbles of an "older man's" piss? I rushed back into the dining area only to see that another man, more adventurous than me, was already standing over Rachel's table. I didn't like the look of him; several years younger than me, dark tattoos scrawled along his muscled arms, lank greasy hair. As I approached I heard Rachel telling him to "go away, please".
"Is there a problem here?" I found myself asking.
"Who the fuck are you?" the tattoo man said, an aggressive sneer across his face.
"Her father," I said. This seemed to flummox him. I was not competition, just a relative. He backed away and returned to bar. I felt the exhilaration of victory rush through me, only to encounter the realization that the tattoo man had no trouble at all in seeing me as old enough to be Rachel's father.
I slipped into Rachel's booth. She was looking at me through dulled green eyes, her mouth made slack by the alcohol. Suddenly she recognized me.
"Oh, you're that guy from the office; the one who brings his lunch every day."
"Yes," I admitted.
"That's really fucking funny," she offered. "Does the wife make your sandwiches?" She asked with a glint of contempt in her eyes. "That's what he wants," she continued not waiting for my reply, "a wife to make his sandwiches. That's all men ever want. I hate men."
"We should get you home," I said.
"I only did it to fuck with his head. He made assumptions. God I feel sick."
Rachel vomited a psychedelic spray across the hood of a Lexus in the parking garage. She stood, one hand pressed against a pillar, retching while I looked away from her shame.
"Are you going to hurt me?" She asked once we were in the car driving towards Inman Square.
"No."
