us for nearly forty minutes. This place is all about the bar profits. We can’t even get his attention for a bread basket to hold us over or to inquire as to where our salads are. When the waiter finally approaches, tray in hand, we see that he has brought our salads and our meals together, but we’re too hungry to complain. My chicken is rubbery, and Katie makes a face when she bites into her salmon, but insists it’s fine. It’s another less-than-spectacular meal at Café Blue. Perhaps the place would go out of business before I had to come back with my sister.
We are waiting and waiting for the check as Katie begins explaining how much trouble they’re having setting the wedding date. This works well for me because I’m hoping to get through my sister’s harried wedding plans before moving right into another frenzy of wedding to-do lists. “Laura and Jonathan are getting married in May. That seems like a nice time to do it.”
“I know,” she says, sounding uncharacteristically defeated. “Mike says he doesn’t care, but every time we try to work out the date, he’s too busy or he has some excuse for why a date I suggest won’t work for him.”
“Excuse me, miss?” the waiter says from above. He places the bill on the table and then hands me a business card. “A gentleman asked me to give this to you. He had to leave, and he says he’s sorry for not being able to wait for you earlier.”
I take the card, and the waiter winks at me before walking away. I’m taken aback, not sure if I really saw the wink or not. Then I hear Katie stifling a giggle.
The business card reads “Jason Randall, Financial Analyst, Prime Investments”.
“There’s something written on the back,” Katie says.
I flip the card over and see a neat blue scrawl with small block letters that read, “Sorry we couldn’t talk more. I would like to. If you would, too, call me.” He’s written down a telephone number that’s different from the business numbers on the front.
“Let me see,” Katie says, reaching for the card. “You must have made an impression.”
“I barely said two words to him.” I grab the card and reread the back.
“That must have been enough.”
You take your life in your hands when you drive in and around Boston. Bostonians drive offensively rather than defensively. The local joke is that using your turn signal is giving information to the enemy. In the past year I’ve been sideswiped by a car taking a right hand turn from the wrong lane, and I’ve been driven into, albeit slowly and therefore without much of a jolt, by a newly licensed teenage girl who was not supposed to be driving her parents’ BMW. I wasn’t at fault in either case, but I was hassled by the paperwork and the loss of my car while the repairs were made. But at this time of night, just after eleven on a weeknight, there are very few cars on the dimly lit roads. I cruise easily out of the city, and I am back at home in less than half an hour.
I love my townhouse. I bought it last year with down-payment money I’d been saving since I started working. Thirty is simply too old to be paying an extravagant rent in Boston. I miss being in the city, but most of my friends have migrated west, so remaining there just didn’t make much sense anymore. I now live about twenty minutes west of Boston, but within walking distance to a small town center and the local commuter rail stop, preventing me from feeling completely isolated inside suburbia. When I first moved, I thought I might even walk to the train and commute into the office that way. But I’m still ruminating on it as I drive my car into the heated office garage each morning. I don’t want to rush a decision like that. My townhouse is also closer to my folks and to my sister, which has its pluses and minuses.
Once I bought my own place, I donated to charity all the shabby college furniture I’d been dragging around with me. I bought a brand new couch and bed and decorated the place in warm shades of cream and mauve. I now have a dedicated home office and a separate kitchen that is not part of a kitchen/dining room/living room combination as all my apartments had been. I also have