Will came home from the restaurant with a smile on his face and the index card in his pocket. He didn’t see Pam until he looked out the patio door.
She was outside on the deck fooling with her ‘upside down tomato’ plant.
Will thought it was crazy to knock a hole in the bottom of a bucket, put a tomato plant in it, and hang it from a post. Any gardener will tell you things grow towards the sun and not away from it.
The poor plant gets ‘leggy’ and grows around the edge of the bucket and upwards until it sets fruit
and then gravity takes over and pulls the plant downward and away from the sun. He couldn’t believe somebody got rich off this.
It gave Pam pleasure though, and like all things that gave her pleasure, he didn’t mind. She was in a tank top and cargo shorts, and looked as beautiful as she did the first time they met
over 31 years ago. From a distance she looked in her late thirties, and up close she could pass for mid forties, even though she would be 52 in just a few weeks. Happiness filled him as he remembered.
……………………
He had worked for Massive Industries for six years after coming out of the marines. He had the distinction of participating in one of the most minor events of U. S. military history, the Grenada incursion. He stood out in that conflict because he was one of the few to actually get shot. It hurt like hell and left a nasty scar on his thigh, but he got a purple heart and a bronze star out it. He never mentioned that part of his life to anyone. Pam didn’t know about the medals until they had been married ten years, and only then because the VFW wanted he and a few more purple heart recipients to be marshalls in the Veterans Day parade that year. He told her it was in the past and wasn’t something he thought about much. In reality he didn’t feel his service was in the same league as the WWII, Korea, and Vietnam
veterans.
He had gone to school at night and worked his way into junior management. As the junior member of the management team one of his responsibilities was to walk the prior days’ paper work across the street from the plant to the main office. This was before the prevalence of computers. The office had them, big ugly machines that most of the plant employees didn’t trust.
That Monday he noticed the office manager showing a new girl around, and that Jenny was not at her desk. The manager waved him over.
“Will, this is Pam. She’s taking Jennys’ place while she has her baby. Help her out if she needs it, okay?”
He was instantly smitten. She was 5’5′ tall, but her slender body made her look taller. Medium lenght ash brown hair, teased wildly in the style of the era. Her most distinctive feature were her eyes, large and almost black in their intensity. like she was looking straight through you.
“Not a problem, Esther. How are you today, Pam.”
She smiled nicely.
“Nervous, confused, and anxious to do a good job.
I’ll probably lean on you a good bit at first, if that’s okay.”
“Well, don’t hesitate to call. You’ll find an phone directory on the top of your file cabinet. If I’m not in, just use the page number. You can hear it all over the plant and I’ll get back to you quickly.”
They spent about twenty minutes helping her through the basics and then he reluctantly left.
He thought about her off and on all day. In reality she was about three sixteenths away from being beautiful, but in his eyes the yardstick was broken. Never in his 28 years had he been so attracted to a woman. And he was sure that with his looks and her beauty, plus the six year age difference[she had just turned 22] he had no chance at all.
He developed a habit of delivering the paperwork right before her morning break, and before long they were having their coffee together. When he found out she thought the office coffee was weak he started stopping at the break truck on his way over. It was run by a retired naval mess steward, and the running joke was that maintenance used it to strip paint off equipment. She liked it though and when he found out she had a sweet tooth he brought her a pastry or candy bar to go with the coffee.
They talked. She found out he had never married because he had just never found ‘the one’. He found she had married at 18, way too young. They were both too immature, and when the stress of life hit she became clingy, and he became mentally abusive and cheated. The parting was bitter. She had been divorced for thirteen months when she went to work for Massive, and had dated twice but was too nervous to enjoy it.
After eleven weeks had gone by he came in on Monday to find Jenny back at her desk. She laughed at his expression.
“Don’t worry Will. Your little honey isn’t gone, she’s been transferred to accounts receivable. I’m jealous, in three years you never brought me coffee. But, then again, I’m 32 and a mother of four now, not a hot bodied 22 year old. Want to see my baby pictures?”
He was miserable but made appropriate approving noises.
He went back to delivering the paper work first thing in the morning and spending his break in his office. It didn’t help him that Jenny would tease him and tell him his hot little girlfriend was waiting for her coffee. She would smirk and add a comment about something a little sweet would be just the thing for her.
Then two weeks later he was heading for his office and saw Pam standing at the door with two cups of coffee. She looked at him hard and said-
“I decided to come by and see why you wouldn’t spend your break with me anymore. Where can I set these?”
My office was more like a cubbyhole and only had one chair besides the one behind my desk. I didn’t want any obstacles between us so I grabbed a chair out of the next office and sat down beside
her with the coffees on the desk.
She got right to the point.
“Why did you stop having break with me? Did I offend you? Or, do you just not like me?”
He hesitated, choosing his words carefully.
“I like you, quite a bit actually. But with you not doing the paperwork anymore I had no excuse to be around you. I miss our break conversations terribly, it was the high point of my day. Besides, I know there’s quite a few girls your own age in your new area. I thought you would enjoy talking to them more.”
He thought he phrased that pretty well. Boy, was he wrong, and she let him know it. It was the first time he got a glimpse of the temper he was to grow to know very well.
“Will, there’s six years between our ages, not sixty!
And why can’t you spend your breaks with me just because you want to, without some sort of excuse?
That’s not very good for a girls’ ego, just so you know.”
She paused to take a breath and fixed those penetrating eyes on him.
“Just so you know, I’ve never chased a man my whole life and I’m not about to start now. However, if you were to ask me to dinner Friday night and to see the new Spielberg movie, I might not say no. It’s all up to you now.”
She sat back with a small grin on her face.
To Wills credit, he wasn’t an idiot, and it just didn’t get any plainer.
“Pam, I’ve really been wanting to see the new movie playing uptown, and there’s a great little Italian place close by known for their homemade pizza. Would you care to go?”
She had a small smile on her face as she got up.
“I’ll have to think about it. How ’bout I answer you tomorrow at first break after you’ve gotten us our coffee? Oh, and try to bring one of those cheese danish things if they have one. See you then sweetie.”
She gave him a little peck on the cheek as she left. It just so happened that another supervisor happened by and saw it. His cheek felt warm all day, but that could have been from all the ribbing he got over his hot new girlfriend.