If Interested

I was probably rehearsing my plans for the day, as usual, as I arrived. Not that I need to go over in advance what I am doing on a Monday at work, but that is my habit. I enjoy having plans – what I would call a ‘satisfactory routine’ – and, what is more, that is how I get myself into what I call the ‘mind-set’ for the day. Then I saw the woman in the foyer. She was using a public telephone, unusual in itself these days, and kept talking to whomever on the other end, or maybe no one at all. She returned my stare quite definitely, as if to make sure I knew she had noticed I was looking, rather than to show any reaction to me. A beautiful woman must somehow learn to deal with her effect on others. I had never thought about that before, as far as I could remember. A beautiful woman might sometimes deal with the matter in that way, I realised. She returned my stare ‘blandly’, I would say, as she listened to whomever on the phone, or no one at all, her curved lips showing the slightest suggestion of amusement at whomever’s words. Or was it at me? So I am the embarrassed one here, I thought, while at the same time feeling reassured that I might not have to be.

All this got to me, I can tell you. No sooner had I gone inside my office, than I was out again, pretending I had remembered something I needed at the reception desk again. She was no longer on the phone. In fact, I all but missed seeing her again, as she hurried out past the desk. She had put on a coat. She seemed more beautiful. Then she was gone.

I saw my pile of folders sitting on a chair. How on earth had I come to leave them there? I picked them up, and a small piece of paper fluttered to the polished granite floor. It was a torn scrap from a hamburger store advertisement with yellow and red printing on one side. On the other, in neat handwriting, was the message: ‘Same time tomorrow, if interested.’

This must be from the porter, for one of the chamber maids, I told myself at first. But I knew it was from her to me. The idea entered my mind with quite a jolt. The piece of paper looked different then. Or could it be for me from someone else? I wondered. Or from her for someone else? Am I just slow on the uptake? I wondered. Does this kind of thing happen to other people all the time? Has it happened to me before, and I have not noticed? Have I missed out?

Well what does it matter if it is from her to me? I thought then. Is she really interested in me? Is she selling drugs, perhaps? Is she a prostitute? A spy? What have I got to offer?

I looked at the note many times during the course of the day. I folded it, then unfolded it. I screwed it up, then smoothed it out again. The message neither increased nor diminished with rereading. Sometimes I decided she was kind, and sometimes cruel. Sometimes that she was merely impulsive and would not return. Sometimes that I was more attractive than I had thought.

Eventually I threw the note away, only to wish later that I still had it and could check it once again.

This morning I turned up the setting on my razor by one notch, to get a closer shave. I shaved even more carefully than I usually do, to avoid any inadvertent nicks or abrasions to my face. The result was satisfactory. I chose to wear the same clothes as yesterday, but brushed my jacket painstakingly before setting out from home.

She was there when I arrived, but so were a dozen other people in the foyer.

‘Hello again,’ said a man I recognised but could not name.

‘Hello,’ I said to him.

She seemed not to have noticed my arrival, but walked off along the corridor towards the lifts. I followed and caught her up.

‘Did you write me a note?’ I asked.

‘Who are you?’ she said. She stepped into the lift and was again gone.

But I can’t leave it at that, can I? Not now.