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“What? Why are you staring at me?” She looked at him and looked away. The heat of his gaze drew her to him again. Windblown curls gently framed sapphire eyes as his full red lips worked their way to a hesitant reply.
“I’m sorry. Um,” he wrung his hands around his theater program, “I couldn’t help wondering if you were Lee Richardsen.” His eyes darted from her eyes to her mouth to her feet as he spoke.
He looked familiar to Lee, but as is often the case with such meetings she just could not place his face nor that resonant voice.
“I am sorry to bother you, but I couldn’t just pretend you weren’t there. I’m Michael. Michael Christopher. I was a clerk in the same accounting office as you. I guess it was close to four years ago now. I’m sure you don’t remember me, but I just had to say hello.” He gave Lee a little grin and moved to leave. A taxi was just pulling up to the curb as Lee stopped his departure.
“Michael!” He turned around, startled, at the sound of her voice. “Don’t go yet. Um, it’s still quite early and I thought maybe we could go get a cup of tea or cappuccino and catch up on the last few years.” What was she saying? The words sprang from her lips totally bypassing her brain and landing Lee in a situation she wasn’t sure she wanted to be in. But Michael Christopher seemed
to be a decent sort of a guy and he was attractive. Why not?
“Wow. Sure, I’d really like that. Do you have a car or should we grab this cab?” The driver looked like a trapped cat, whiskers twitching, eyes narrowed, waiting for them to make up their minds.
“Actually, The Coffee Shoppe is just a couple of blocks away, why don’t we walk? I could use the exercise after sitting in there for the last three hours,” she gestured over her shoulder with her program towards the concert hall. The taxi driver sped away from the curb like an Indi 500 driver as Michael nodded his assent to Lee’s suggestion. As they went on towards the cafe she asked him,
“What did you think of ‘Les Miserables’?”
“I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but I was near tears. The story is tragic yet uplifting. And the music! My God! Andrew Lloyd Webber is a genius if ever there was one.” Oh, that’s great, Michael! Sound like an idiot in front of this incredible woman, just the way to start off the evening.
“That’s exactly the way I feel too. At one point I nearly fell over the balcony ledge for being so drawn into the … experience. This is the third time I’ve been to see it and every time it gets me.” Lee smiled, “It’s nice to finally meet someone else who feels the same way.”
They each sunk briefly into their respective thoughts for the moment, Michael sneaking glances at Lee’s bright golden hair as it blew behind her, much like the trail of Haley’s Comet. At the same time Lee could hardly keep her eyes from Michael’s full lips. There was something in the way he took his bottom lip between his teeth and worried it as he concentrated. It reminded her of a school-boy anticipating punishment for something he had done wrong. It was very endearing and it made Lee wonder how she could not have noticed this handsome man when they worked together. She remembered him, of course, but he had no special place in her memories. He was just another nameless drone who was working his way through college in that accounting office.
But then you had to know how Lee herself had been back then. Driven, goal-oriented, single-minded, cold. Those were the adjectives that sprung from people’s mouths when they spoke of Lee Richardsen. She didn’t think of herself that way, she was just striving towards success in a very competitive world that doesn’t take woman professionals as seriously as they do men. But that was then, now Lee was walking down a cool city street towards a hot cup of Earl Grey tea with a man she knew she was going to get to know better.
“So, Michael,” Lee started, “what are you doing now? I mean, are you still in accounting or have you moved on to something different?”
“For the last year I’ve been writing the Great Canadian Novel. My parents died almost two years ago in a plane crash and they left me a sizable estate so that I didn’t have to worry about money. I then came to the decision that I was going to try to make something good come out of their death and finally started writing seriously after just tinkering with the idea through high-school and university. English and Creative Writing were usually the only courses I ever got ‘A’s’ in.”
“A writer? I didn’t think you creative types had any kind of skill at mathematics or paperwork,” she chuckled. “How did you cut it as a bookkeeper?”
“I was terrible!” Michael responded, laughing. “I basically sluffed my way through that year. I was determined to make it through university on my own, but my uncle was a partner in the firm and he kept me on long enough for me to get my debts to a manageable level. I’m sure he went to bat for me against his
partners quite a few times because of my mistakes. But if you were to ask him he’d say I was one of the best employees they’d ever had.” Grinning, “You see, I’m his only nephew and he and my aunt never had children, so I was the beneficiary for all that pent up fatherly pride and devotion. Actually, I don’t know what I would have done without him after my parents died.”