“Excuse me. Who is this?” I asked, knowing well who it was.
“Liam. Liam Dolan. We just met,” he said, sounding amazed and a little insulted.
“Oh. Sorry. You were in and out so quickly, I forgot your name. Thank you for the invitation, but I’m otherwise occupied.”
“Huh? What’s that mean?”
“Translated, that means I have things to do tonight that make my accepting your invitation impossible.”
“All night?”
“No. I think I’ll spend some time sleeping. But thank you,” I said, and hung up.
I waited to see if he would call back. A part of me wished he would, and I sat there chastising that part of me. He didn’t call back, but I had no doubt that he would not give up so easily.
Maybe it wouldn’t be long before he wished he had.
5
At the end of the day, Michael Thomas stopped in to see me. I could see from his expression that news about me had spread with electric speed through the company. I had stopped in the business office and met the head accountant, Mrs. Lovejoy, a woman in her late fifties who looked as if she had absorbed decimal points into her eyes. They were spotted black and gray. She gave me a form to fill out and mechanically explained the company’s pension plan. I sensed that despite Mr. Dolan’s eagerness to hire me, she didn’t believe I would be with the company long enough for anything she said to matter all that much.
Afterward, I returned to the office. Mr. Dolan was having a meeting with
an attorney named Stan English. From the way Stan had looked at me when he arrived, I had the feeling Mr. Dolan had already told him about me, filling his description with compliments.
“If for some reason Ken doesn’t want to keep you on, you call me,” he said, winking.
“Control yourself, Stan,” Mr. Dolan told him. “You’ve got three grandchildren.”
“And a fourth on the way.” He smiled at me. “I was eighteen once. Don’t rush your life.”
“Sorry,” Mr. Dolan told me, continuing with the lightness, “but Stan, like most lawyers, is always eager to give someone else advice. Get in here, you idiot.”
“Come see me,” Mr. English mouthed as he went into Mr. Dolan’s office. Mr. Dolan had already told me that his meeting would go past the end of the day and I should just let him know when I was leaving.
I was glad to see Michael Thomas because I anticipated Liam Dolan returning to pursue me despite my having turned him down on the phone, and I was afraid that I would weaken and go with him. I told myself it was far too soon to experiment with another romance. Buddy’s face was still vividly in my mind and in my dreams, not that I had any hope of ever seeing him again.
“Congratulations,” Michael said. He was obviously very surprised that I had been hired. “I just stopped by to see if you had changed your mind about a ride home, since from what I’ve heard, you’ve done a day’s work in a matter of hours.”
I imagined I had been a big topic of discussion. “I’m not exhausted, Michael. Thank you, but you know what I would like, if you have a few minutes?”
“Sure, what?”
“A quick tour of the showrooms. I’ve been mostly shut up in here and haven’t had the opportunity to look at an actual saddle tee fixture, and since I wrote the letter informing the wholesaler who won the bid for that and other things with us, I thought I should know how to tell it from a chocolate ice cream cone.”
Michael laughed. “Absolutely. Glad to do it.”
“I’ll just let Mr. Dolan know I’m leaving,” I said. I buzzed him and told him. I added that Michael Thomas was giving me a little tour of the company on my way out.
“Good idea. See you in the morning,” he said.
As Michael and I started out, Liam Dolan appeared in the hallway, just as I had anticipated. He looked from Michael to me. “I’d be happy to give her a ride home,” he told Michael.
“She’s not going home,” Michael said. Neither he nor I added anything.
We continued down the hallway to the showrooms, both of us smiling at the way Liam just stood there looking after us, confused.
“Just give me a quick brush of it all, Michael,” I said as we entered the first showroom. “I’ll work myself deeper into it as I go along.”