“OK, great.” And with that he ended the call.
“He asked me out, Winston!” I screamed to my dog, who had been bumped off of the dirty clothes pile when I did the laundry and was now snoring at the foot of my bed. He exhaled loudly at the sound of his name, but barely cracked open one eye to acknowledge my excitement.
Elation turned to panic as I scanned my closet for something decent to wear. I was determined to look amazing on this date, as the last two occasions when Rocky saw me I was either covered head to toe with mud, or wearing baggy, grey, homeless-lady sweatpants. I mentally vetoed my entire collection of cocktail attire as too formal for a patio date, and all of my casual or work-wear items were either too casual or too wintery.
Not seeing an appropriate ensemble, I decided to dash over to the Northgate mall to pick something up. I raced to the car. The date had to be perfect. I scoured through the sale rack at my favorite discount store and found an emerald green maxi dress with a tie front bandeau top, some delicate strappy gold sandals and a bright yellow spring/summer cardigan. To complete the outfit, I picked up a long gold chain necklace with a seashell charm and a thin, gold headband.
When I got back to the apartment I went about curling my hair into loose beach-y waves, making sure to run my fingers through each curl and break it up so it looked a little bit messy, but still held the perfect amount of va-va-voom to make it appear sexy and effortless. I flipped my head over and sprayed each portion with some cheap hairspray, slipped the gold headband in between the waves and nestled it behind my ears. I touched up the under eye concealer that I had smeared on before my mall trip, and carefully applied a light foundation over it and onto the blotchier parts of my skin: my forehead and cheeks. I opted to dust my entire eyelids a light, slightly shimmery eye shadow called perle and swiped a darker sandy brown across my lids, then finished my eyes with a dash of brown liner and two generous coats of deep black mascara. The last steps were to use my largest makeup brush to dust my face with my favorite designer face powder and then, using the second biggest brush, to lighten and brighten my skin with ample amounts of bronzer and blush. Finally, I added a sheer, red lip stain and a layer of clear lip gloss then threw both in my purse for touch-ups. In my jewelry box I found the gold and emerald drop earrings that my grandmother had given me at college graduation and put them on, along with a tiny, matching gold ring, inlaid with emeralds. At quarter-after-five when I checked myself out in the full-length mirror stuck to my closet door, I had to say that I was satisfied.
I had a few butterflies in my tummy when the doorbell rang at exactly six. Kathy had arrived back home sometime when I was out shopping, and I heard her plod down the stairs and answer the door. A second later she yelled up to me unceremoniously: “Lulu, some guy named Rocky is here to see you!”
In the minute it took me to reach the landing on the bottom of the stairs Kathy had somehow managed to suck Rocky deep into a conversation about the benefits of electric cars. He was dressed very casually, wearing a worn-in pair of jeans that were tight in all the right places, a fitted, soft grey v-neck T-shirt, and brown leather thong sandals.
“Seriously,” Kathy was telling him. “You should look into replacing your cruisers with those new Chevy Volts or Nissan Leafs.”
“Eh, OK. I’ll mention that to the Lieutenant,” he replied. He turned to me, looking relieved that I had saved him from further lecturing.
“Hi,” I said, smiling. “So, I see that you met my roommate, Kathy.”
Kathy looked at me in admiration. “You look so pretty Lulu, are you guys going on a date?” she asked bluntly.
I didn’t know how I was going to answer that, but Rocky jumped right in. “I’m taking her to dinner.”
“Oh OK, have fun,” she said to us. Then to Rocky: “We’re having one of our writing meetings later tonight if you want to come over and listen in. I think you’ll find it really interesting, and we’d just love to have someone from law enforcement represented. Maybe you could even think about writing an article outlining your efforts to get the Seattle Police Department to switch over to electric vehicles.”
I had to stop myself from pushing Kathy back into her bedroom and closing the door.
Rocky totally played it cool. Grabbing my hand, he said, “Well if we’re around later, I will be sure to stop by. Don’t wait up for Louisa, though. She’s had one rough week, and I am going to keep her out until she has smiled for at least three hours in a row.”
I was expecting to get into Rocky’s police cruiser, but instead we walked up to a very new and clean looking black Jeep Liberty. He opened the door for me, and when I climbed up to my seat he leaned over my lap and buckled me up.
“I could have gotten that myself, Rocky,” I said jokingly.
“Don’t want to get a seatbelt ticket.” He winked, then put his hand on my shoulder and leaned his already very close face even closer to mine. He was inches away. I barely realized that I was holding my breath. “Let me see that eye,” he said. Like he did the morning before, he put his hand under my chin and tilted my face upwards towards his. But this time he put his other hand behind my neck, pushing my hair aside gently. I closed my eyes, feeling slightly self-conscious, waiting for the verdict on how well or poorly I had managed to cover up the nasty looking bruises.
When I didn’t hear anything for a second, I started to get a little nervous. “Well, what do you think?” I said, fidgeting. I lifted my hand to my face to touch the offending eye. “I tried my best to cover it up, and I iced it like you said, but it’s really still kind of sore.” Why wasn’t he saying anything?
“You know what I think, Louisa?” he finally asked me.
I was thinking of what I could say to him to give him the easy out that I was sure that he wanted when instead I got quite a surprise. All of the negative thoughts left my head when he suddenly and gently pulled me in and gave me a very soft kiss. I jumped a little bit in the seat and exhaled sharply. His lips pressed gently into mine—a question.
After the initial shock wore off, I answered him by opening my mouth and relaxing into his kiss. That light cologne that I was starting to love wafted over me and I felt like I was being lifted off my seat and hovering above my body. As he pulled me closer to him my hand relaxed away from my face and found itself sliding down his muscular back. I held onto him tightly as we kissed for several seconds until he moved his face away from mine.
I opened my eyes, still in a pleasant state of shock but now also more than a little bit turned on. When he slowly pulled away from me, his fingers were still on my neck but now deeply wrapped up in my hair.
“I think you’re absolutely beautiful.” He smiled, suddenly looking shy. “I’ve wanted to do that since the moment I met you, and I didn’t want to wait all the way until after dinner. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, trust me. I really don’t,” I said. Then I looked back up into his dark brown eyes and then hungrily right back at his lips.
“Good,” he replied. He must have noticed where my eyes were planted because he leaned in and kissed me again with that fantastic mouth, this time more quickly. “OK, let’s go to dinner before I change my mind and just take you back up to your room for the rest of the night.” A huge part of me was surprised at his boldness, and a slightly smaller part of me was so flattered that I almost took him up on the offer. The flattery won out over the trepidation—screw it if Rocky wasn’t doing things the “way he was supposed to,” I told myself. He was being honest with his feelings. Who says you can’t kiss before your date anyways? I reached over and took his hand as we drove, determined to be as brave as he was being and demonstrate I reciprocated his feelings. Rocky took my hand and gave it a comforting squeeze.
At Duke’s we were seated on the edge of the patio with a view of the Space Needle and downtown Seattle. Rocky ordered us a dozen raw oysters as an appetizer but deferred to me on the wine selection. I chose a mid-priced 2007 Sauvignon Blanc. After the server had come over and poured us
our wine, I couldn’t help but try to probe him for some information about the case.
“So what exactly happened yesterday after the whole ‘Louisa gets punched in the eye’ incident?” I asked.
Thankfully, he didn’t seem annoyed at the question. “Well, after that whole scene at the funeral we brought Sarah’s husband in for questioning. He said that a few weeks back, Sarah had come to him and confessed that she was having an affair with Ari Cohen from Merit. Apparently the guilt was really getting to her. Despite the affair, she and Ben decided to try to work things out, so the next morning they signed up for couples counseling, and she broke it off with Ari at the office. Ben seems to think that Ari was so deeply in love with Sarah that he wouldn’t accept the end of the relationship, so he lost it and killed her in a blind rage.” He handed me the oyster that he had been preparing, with the perfect amounts each of lemon juice, horseradish and cocktail sauce.
“What about Ari? Did someone question him?” I asked, taking the oyster from his hand and trying to suck it down in the most lady-like fashion possible.
“Well, we tried. Patrol picked him up from his home last night. He didn’t try to run or anything, but as soon as we got him to the station he requested his lawyer and refused to talk to any of the detectives.”
“That looks pretty bad for him, right?” I asked. “I mean, doesn’t asking for a lawyer make you seem guilty?” I had been imagining those primetime TV crime dramas where only the guiltiest of criminals ask for a lawyer.
“It just depends,” he replied. “Sometimes perfectly innocent people request an attorney, and sometimes guilty people break down and confess within five minutes of questioning. I’m not a detective, but I see this stuff enough to think that the only real way to make a case is to gather physical evidence that proves you right or wrong. For example, the lack of evidence is the reason that even though you were present at the Merit office on the night of the murder, I know that you’re completely innocent.”
“So this isn’t just an elaborate scheme to get me to confess?” I asked sarcastically.
“Oh yes,” he said, and leaned over to me with his cloth napkin in one hand. “You are going to break at any moment. But first I want to get this little bit of cocktail sauce, right…here...”
He went to swipe at my face with his napkin and I laughed and swatted his hand away, leaning away from him. Self-consciously, I rubbed my chin with my hand, searching for the offending drip of sauce and not finding anything.
“I don’t have any cocktail sauce on my face! You’re making that up.”
“Yes you do. It’s right…here.”
He leaned in again, but this time I did too. When our lips touched, the kiss had just as much magic as the first, and again I felt like I was being lifted off of my seat. In fact, I was being moved. Rocky was pulling my chair closer to him while we were kissing. In a second we were facing each other and full-on making out like a couple of high school kids. I knew that we weren’t alone on the patio; in fact, it was full of couples, groups of friends and families trying to soak up the first evening of summer weather, but I didn’t care. It felt so right and so amazing to kiss Rocky that I don’t think at that moment that I would have stopped kissing him if somehow the Pope, my grandmother, and Bill Clinton were all standing together watching us.
When our lips finally parted the server was standing right behind us, waiting. Sheepishly we ordered dinner, then held hands and chatted while we waited for our food. We ate slowly and finished the wine, hanging out on the patio and talking until the sun had dropped down behind Queen Anne hill.
It was a little after 9:30 when Rocky dropped me off. He held me and we kissed again in the car, then on the front porch of my apartment. I resisted inviting him in, even though my entire body and the two glasses of wine I’d had wanted to more than anything. To his credit, he didn’t push the matter. In fact, even though I knew that I was thinking it, and it was obvious from the large bulge in his jeans that he was thinking it, he didn’t bring it up. By the time he finally said goodbye, my knees were rubber, my lips were chapped from Rocky’s urgent kisses, and I felt like my insides had melted into a pool of mushy gushy utter infatuation.
I was so giddy that I practically floated up the stairs, changed into my PJs and got into bed. Twenty minutes later, I was laying on my back daydreaming about Rocky’s lips, eyes, smell and muscular body when I suddenly got a text on my phone from him.
Perfect date. Can’t wait to see you again.
Perfect indeed.
That night, despite everything that had happened that week, I fell asleep with a big smile on my face.
Chapter 10: Shit is Whack
When I got into the office Monday morning, I didn’t really know what to expect, and even though I was still in a happy daze after my date with Rocky, I had a feeling that my morning was going to rapidly disintegrate into utter chaos. Considering Ari’s imprisonment, I was well aware that we were now missing not one, but two principles, and regardless of the emotional state of our group’s employees the deadline for completion of the merger documents was still that coming Friday. I woke up early enough to do my makeup and cover up my black eye at home, and I mentally prepared myself for eight hours of pure hell.
Even though the office was deceptively quiet when I arrived at my desk at 7:55 AM, immediately upon sitting down I discovered that I already had eight new voicemail messages and over one hundred unread emails. Most of them highlighted the week’s merger deadline and frantically requested that I divvy up the work left behind by the two principles and send out the new staffing report. Although it was one hundred percent typical for Elaine to push her management responsibilities off onto me, I knew without a doubt that this was going to be an especially monster task. Not only did I not really have a clue which projects and files Ari and Sarah were even working on, the onslaught of emails from our group made it clear that no one else really did either—especially not Elaine—the one person who should have had the most insight and ability to give direction to the rest of the group. In fact, I was sure that over the last few months both Sarah and Ari held extensive meetings with Elaine giving her their latest progress reports, during which she paid absolutely no attention to what was being said. She was clueless, and her solution to the pressure she was getting from upper management was to simply dump the work on someone else, then alternate between hovering and freaking out until it was done to her satisfaction.
I saw no other option besides both physically having to dig through boxes of files and accessing and sorting through both Sarah and Ari’s email inboxes trying to find clues on the status of their various projects, which without help was going take hours if not days to accomplish. To make matters worse, I opened my calendar and found that I had multiple meeting requests dotting my day’s schedule: one with the office’s Administrative Manager, Chelsea Minton, one with Emily from HR, and one with Dr. Michael Castro, the new grief counselor. Plus, I had a weekly billing meeting, a budget discussion with Elaine, and a conference call with the Administrative Assistants out of the Denver office. There was no way in hell I was going to get all of this done in eight hours.
By 8:40 I’d managed to type up some emails and send them off to our IT team, requesting access to both Sarah’s and Ari’s inboxes, outboxes and network drives. By then several members of our group started filing in, and inevitably the further flood of questions and requests started coming. I tried my best to ignore everyone, but out of the corner of my eye I could see the two Associates conferring together quietly in the cubicle a row behind mine. Sure enough, a few minutes later they marched together over to my cubicle and demanded answers as to what kind of additional workload and longer hours they could be expecting. Maya, completely pissed off, led the charge and had a crazy look in her eye like she wanted to hit something. Poor Priti followed behind her, and stood quietly with her tiny arms wrapped around her thin petite body, hugging herself and blinking back tears.
“I’m sorry ladies,” I a
pologized, trying to think of what to say that would deflect their aggression away from me and onto someone else. “I wish I could tell you, but honestly I don’t know what kind of workloads to expect. I am hoping to know within the day or over the next couple of days.”
They looked at me skeptically. “Well that’s not going to work for us,” Maya snapped. “We need to know now!” She was purple-faced and yelling at this point. Priti peeked out from behind her nodding but shaking like a Chihuahua.
“Look,” I began. Now I was getting pissed off too. This was not my fault and I certainly didn’t have the answers they were looking for. “I’m really sorry guys. I wish I could give you answers now, but the truth is that I don’t know what’s going on either. I have all of these emails and I’m really not even sure where to start.” I pointed to my computer monitor, which displayed that I had 132 unread emails.
Maya approached my computer and pointed at one email that Elaine had sent at 1:43am on Saturday night, the title of which was “I’m confuzed.”
“What the fuck is that? Elaine is so fucking crazy,” she said, not mincing words. I knew that now she understood that we were on the same side.
“Seriously,” I replied, trying to get her to focus her anger onto Elaine, where it belonged. “I have at least ten like that.”
“Look Louisa, what you need to do is tell Elaine that I can’t take any more shit off of anyone’s plate right now. I am so fucking busy right now and I really can’t deal with this- I’m five fucking seconds away from a total fucking meltdown. Jesus Christ! Fuck!”
I nodded. “I swear I’ll do my best. You know how Elaine gets.”
“Yeah, you do that. Tell her that she can’t dump anymore shit onto Priti either.” Maya turned to point at Priti, who was still hugging herself, for effect. “This girl has been working seventy fucking hours a week for the last month with no overtime pay. She has no fucking life.”
Priti looked at me with her big brown eyes and furiously nodded her head. Because she was complete overachiever at work, she was constantly stressed out and seemed to get even thinner and thinner with each passing fiscal quarter. I was pretty sure that she was only in her mid-twenties but already her dark black hair was starting to show signs of grey. Elaine had no understanding that Priti was actually an American who has never even been to India and insisted on constantly asking about the menu items from the local Kosher Indian restaurant we were forced to order from for almost every office meeting (“Maaahhkkk! Ask Priti about which sauce to get with the Pakoras”). Priti, having already given up trying to explain her ethnicity to Elaine, now just played along and always recommended the tamarind sauce. It was embarrassing.
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