Have you ever noticed how sometimes the whole story is there for a glance?
The sun was just starting to settle as I drove home from work around 7 p.m. The man on the sidewalk stood out in space normally vacant at that time.
His combover likely looked much better in his own mirror and the tie her wore like barbed wire was probably a fashionable width the last time he wore it.
As if the clues weren't already in neon, he paced and checked his watch twice in the time it took my car to move the block towards him.
The music in the club behind him wouldn't start for hours. A drink-not-dinner blind date was in the offing, scheduled so that one or both of them would still have a night worth salvaging if it went poorly.
She probably called that shot. He was a rookie. His sister or daughter filled out his online profile and he was already quite sure she would not not see what they wrote. Any fool could see 5'10" was not 6'0," he should have corrected at least that one, he told himself. Community college was a college degree, he rationalized, and he almost finished.
At least it was a neutral site. Downtown. No one there from his bowling or fantasy football leagues. If she was pretty, maybe someone he knew would come in. That would be good.
The woman who wrote his profile only had his best interests at heart, but at the moment it was simple torture.
I had almost gotten to the part where the date arrives, when I pulled into my home parking space.
Of course, he could have been a conventioneer finally meeting the woman at the company call center in Buffalo...

Copyright 2006 Judi Griggs