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I didn’t recognize the incoming number on my cell phone’s screen. The area code was from Orlando, where I lived, but the rest of the number was unfamiliar. I turned off the music in my car and answered the phone.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Emma?” a male voice said. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place who it was.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“It’s Ruel.” My heart skipped a beat at the sound of his name.
“Ruel?” I replied, surprised. I had no idea why he would be calling me. I ran through the past thirty minutes in my mind. I had gone to Ruel’s cube after finishing up at my desk. He still had to run to the lab to complete a test before leaving for the day, so I had left to face the Friday traffic.
Normally, he walked me to my car, especially on Fridays. It was gesture that could imply we were a couple, but we were not. He had made it very clear to me that he did not date at all, and I had assured him that I wouldn’t date co-workers. I had changed my mind, but it didn’t seem like he ever would.
“Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have called,” he said quickly, his voice dropping off at the end.
“No, no, it’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting you to call. Is everything okay? Are you still at work?”
“Yes, everything’s fine. No, the lab was locked, so I ended up leaving right after you.”
“So, um?”
“Why am I calling? Right. Sorry, I realize it’s a little bit later than you said I should call,” he said with a quick laugh.
“Just a little bit,” I said, laughing. It was January eighteenth and I had given him my number on December twenty-first, just before Leavitt Defense Systems shut down for the holiday break.
“Right. Well, really I called to apologize,” Ruel said. “I should have walked you to your car, especially since it’s a long weekend. I’m sorry that I didn’t.” I inwardly groaned. I had forgotten Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
“Oh, well, it’s okay. I’m sure I’ll manage through three long days without the extra seven minutes of your company this afternoon,” I said, conjuring up my usual mixture of acerbic and indifferent tones that I liked to call my Ruel voice.
“Hmm, that’s too bad. I was going to see if I could make it up to you.”
“How so? Are you going to come over for seven minutes tonight?”
“How about dinner?” he said, quickly. I gasped without thinking and hoped he didn’t hear me.
“Ruel, are you asking me out? Last I checked, you didn’t date,” I said, attempting to keep an even tone. I was sure I failed miserably since my whole body was shaking.
“Let’s call it a New Year’s resolution.” He replied. My mind was racing as fast as my heart. I had no idea what to say next. I couldn’t decide if this was really happening, or if I was just imagining the whole thing. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d imagined Ruel asking me out to dinner. He often joked about us hanging out, but I never thought it would actually materialize.
“Well, tell me what to wear, and then I’ll guess where you’re taking me.”
“So, that’s a yes?”
“No, it’s a maybe.”
“Hmm, what to wear? Well, let me decide where I’m taking you first.”
“Okay, how much time do you need for that?”
“I’m ready now.”
“Impressive.”
“I aim to impress.”
“As you should.”
“Black dress, black stockings, blue garter belt, black heels, and silver drop earrings.”
I didn’t respond. I hadn’t realized that men could be so precise, but then it was Ruel, and I had come to discover over the last six months that he was not like other men.
“Too much?” he asked.
“No, no,” I felt my mouth form into the familiar smirk that I wore when flirting with him. “It’s just, I only have a teal garter belt…”
He didn’t respond. I considered this a victory. My body buzzed with energy from our conversation.
We had never spoken like this out loud, only electronically. It began after an influx of borderline work-appropriate exchanges via company email around September. We decided it would be better to switch to our personal accounts. While these conversations were thick with flirtatious undertones and innuendo, we only ever spoke to each other at work. Even in our emails, the topic of my lingerie’s color had never come up.
I remembered he had fulfilled his part of the bargain, so I should go ahead and guess where he was taking me. We never discussed French food, so it had to be a French restaurant if he were to continue his typical behavior. There were only two options. Not that Orlando only had two French restaurants, but I knew Ruel would only take me to two in particular.
“Chez Vincent,” I said confidently.
“Wrong,” he replied. I could tell from his voice that he was smirking. “Why would I take you out for French?”
“I’m scowling at you,” I told him while scowling. “So where are we going?”
“So, that’s a yes then?”
“Yes.”
“I will pick you up at 7:30.”
“Do you even know where I live?”
“Yes, in fact, I do,” he replied, smugly of course. I had never told him my address and I was not listed in any directories. I briefly wondered how he might have figured out where I lived, but I was certain my address was lying around somewhere on my desk, so I wasn’t concerned.
“Well that makes things easier. Seven-thirty then?” I said.
“It’s a date,” he said, and hung up.
My body melted into the tan leather seat of my Audi S5. I had a date with Ruel Alexander. I put the music back on and turned it up, allowing myself to be overcome by the moment. I thought back to when I gave him my number in December. That night was the closest thing to a date we’d ever had.
Most of the office had left the Wednesday before, but those of us who stayed through the twenty-first, the last official work day of 2012, went for drinks at noon that Friday at the Ale House, a local restaurant bar chain popular for its happy hour.
Ruel had shown up ten minutes after me. That was his style. I hated it because I didn’t like waiting around for him, constantly looking up at the door to see if he’d arrived, and only half-listening to the people around me. I loved it because it was familiar. Other than our walks to my car, he never did anything when I expected or wanted him to. I had been at the bar ordering my usual scotch when he squeezed between me and the man to my left. His face glowed in the light of the white Christmas lights wrapped around the gaudy, garland-lined bar.
“Scotch girl?” he’d asked quietly, leaning down over the bar so his face was at the same level as mine. I decided this was an effort to surprise me.
“Hey, nice of you to finally join us,” I replied in a casual tone, even though the proximity of his body made me extremely nervous.
“My pleasure,” he said in his usual flirtatious tone.
“I know how much you hate happy hour.”
“This is a liquid lunch, I believe,” he said as the bartender produced my drink. The bartender looked at Ruel, and he asked her if they had any hefeweizens. She shook her head and he laughed. “Of course not, it is Ale House, after all. I’ll just have gin and tonic then.”
“So, what are you up to for Christmas?” I asked him as the bartender poured his drink.
“Oh, well, nothing. My parents passed away a while ago, and I don’t have any siblings, so I always just stay here.”
“Oh, sorry.”
He shrugged. “What about you? Big family get-together?”
“Not exactly,” I said and laughed to myself thinking about how small my family was.
“Oh? I had you pegged as the type for that,” he replied with a frown.
“Well, my dad, if you want to call him that, died last year, and my mom, well, who knows where she is?” I threw my hands in the air. I honestly didn’t know where my mother was. She’d split twenty-one years ago when I was eight for a guy she’d been sleeping with off and on throughout the course of her relationship with my dad. I didn’t remember it that well, but my dad explained it to me at some point after. My parents had never been married, and my mom would occasionally leave for months at a time, so it really hadn’t been that big of a deal for either of us.
“Hmm,” Ruel said with little emotion.
I shrugged. “He lived in Myrtle Beach anyway. It’s actually a relief to never have to go there again.” I pictured the flat, white stucco strip malls that made up the landscape of that city. I imagined a wildfire spreading over them, the plastic signs melting onto the asphalt, like a Dalí painting. I laughed at the thought. It was a rich, true laugh, which surprised me. Ruel laughed too. I wasn’t sure if it was directed at my comment or my laughter. The bartender placed his gin and tonic in front of him, and I raised my glass.
“To big family Christmases,” I said.
“To big family Christmases,” he replied, smiling down at me. We clinked our glasses together and drank. The scotch burned my mouth and left a smooth finish as it always did when I swallowed.
“Should we join the group?” I asked, even though I didn’t want to.
“No,” Ruel said easily, then shot a glance at the Leavitt group. Neither of us was particularly close with any of them. I was a decent friend with my cube-mate, Maria, but she left Wednesday to go visit her family in Puerto Rico. It seemed Ruel had come just to see me. My stomach warmed at the hopeful realization.
“Good,” I said. I was trying to work out a way to get together with him over the break. Just once would be enough. He hadn’t been on travel for a while, and I had grown accustomed to seeing him five days a week. A potential twelve-day Ruel hiatus felt like an unbearable event. Finally, I sucked it up and put the offer out there. “Listen,” I said, “if you want to hang out on Christmas, or whenever, I don’t mind.”
“Oh?” he said. I couldn’t read his tone. “That could be interesting. We’ll see. What’s your number?”
I gave it to him. His response had been so vague I wasn’t certain he would call. He didn’t.
Not until now, I thought, and smiled as I pulled into my driveway.
—
As I pulled on my right leg’s stocking, I wondered if Ruel would be late as usual. I stood up and fumbled with the garters, which, in that moment, were the bane of my existence. Finally, I gave up and put on a pair of tights, figuring Ruel would never know the difference. I went to thumb through my dresses. For someone who never went on dates, I had far too many dresses. None of them were really work-appropriate, and I rarely wore them at all.
They were from a different point in my life, and some of them held bad memories. Memories I didn’t want to recall because they reminded me that I was once that person. I kept them as a reminder of who I was capable of being. I passed over a particularly horrific one, fingering the black silk until I came to the blood stain on the front. I shook my head, trying to avoid the images that were rushing to the surface from the deep, receded compartments of my mind. The images faded as I dashed on to the next dress, which happened to be the one I planned to wear. It had no connotation, no memory. It was simple, unworn, black. Perfect.
I pulled the dress off the hangar and slid it over my head. It stretched tight over my curves as I pulled it into place on my body. I had managed to get my workout in when I got home, despite actually having dinner plans. I looked in the full-length mirror on the inside of my closet door and nodded in approval. It wasn’t too suggestive, but it certainly didn’t downplay my better features.
I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth before putting on some makeup. I didn’t want to overdo it, not that I really ever wore much makeup. A simple smoky eye shadow look and a soft pink lip gloss to offset my pale skin and faded-blond hair. I assessed my quick handiwork, then moved back into my closet for heels. I knew the pair I wanted, the matte leather and pointy-toed stilettos with a single strap around the ankle. Once they were secured, I strode over to my jewelry box. I winced as I shoved the silver drop earrings into my stubborn and closing holes. It had been a while since I’d worn earrings. I sat down on my couch to wait. It was 7:27.
I wondered if Ruel would wear a tie. I hoped not. I only saw him wear ties when we had a customer at the office. He was the guy who demonstrated our project’s product to the customer, even though I knew the product better. I had, after all, designed it, but he was better at talking people into things. Ruel landed a sale with Norway just weeks after coming onto the project, and now he was working to secure a contract with Russia.
As our foreign sales increased, the need for a superior domestic system fell into place. My current job involved developing a system that would outperform the ones Leavitt sold to foreign nations. It was classified as top secret, meaning I couldn’t talk to anyone about it, including Ruel. There were only three of us on the development team. Maria was one of them, along with Andrew, the math genius. I was in charge of the whole thing, but I felt I was too young to oversee two people on a top-level classified project. However, I was the one with the PhD from Georgia Tech, and I suppose that added some years to my age. Ruel would be the right age; he was at least a decade older than me. Someone in his or her forties would be the right age to manage such a project. I didn’t know Ruel’s exact age, nor did he mine. Neither of us had asked the other, and I decided this meant neither of us cared.
I imagined the gray specks in Ruel’s short, coarse hair and smiled. I recalled an image of him from a recent meeting with Russian military officials. They were not happy because of some severe problems with Immigration when they landed in the US. I didn’t follow politics, but I knew tensions were rising with Russia, particularly between them and the European Union. On Monday, Russia cut off the gas supply to Ukrainian pipelines after a long-standing argument over unpaid debts between one of the Russian gas giants and the Ukrainian government. The dispute further erupted into a missile attack on Ukrainian soil, though Russian officials claimed that was an isolated terrorist act, unrelated to Monday’s events. The EU was now refusing support to Ukraine because they feared Russia would stop sending gas through Belarus, which, combined with the Ukrainian pipelines, accounted for nearly half of the EU’s gas supply. Ukraine was now looking to the US for help, but President Obama was biding his final two days before the president-elect, Angela Herron, was sworn into office. Mrs. Herron was yet to directly comment on the situation, but it was well publicized that she was anti-Russia, especially with their companies drilling in Cuban waters only a mere fifty miles from the coastline of Florida.
Ruel was fluent in Russian, along with what seemed like forty other languages. He bothered to list them for me once, but he never gave me a straight answer on how he knew so many. His staple response was that he was simply an anomaly. That was something I could agree with. Due to Ruel’s fluency, our business director sent him to greet the Russian military officials at the airport and smooth things over. By the time he led them into the conference room, they were eating out of the palm of his hand.
I remembered how he kept a grave composure, but let his eyes naturally widen in such a way that would enable anyone to trust him. His ability to manipulate people so easily should have worried me, but it didn’t. The fact that I could spot it made it seem like he wouldn’t be able to manipulate me. I knew this very well might be the strategy he was playing against me, but I wouldn’t accept that possibility. I trusted that Ruel respected me and I knew how much I respected him.
I glanced at the clock again and scolded myself for doing so, utterly embarrassed at how nervous I was.
7:29.
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