A very heartfelt Thank You to Erik Thread for his fabulous editing. His skills make your reading pleasure better.
*
There was an unusual stillness to the day that Gail had not expected. The bay in front of her was glassy-smooth with barely a ripple moving across the water. Occasionally a fish jumped from the water, no more than a sudden burst of energy and so quickly gone back under the surface you didn't notice except for the sound of the splash, unless you were looking at that exact spot in the water when it happened. The sun was warm on her back, but not uncomfortably so. It was still early enough in the day that the heat had not had time to build.
She stood and picked up the trash around the table where she sat -- the empty paper sack, the clear plastic container with several chunks of fruit which had not looked as fresh as those she did eat, paper napkins, unusual-shaped half spoon -- half fork plastic spork, and a nearly empty bottle of water. Gail drank the rest of the water, added the empty bottle to the other trash, and took everything to the trash barrel at the corner of the small park. She looked across the concrete edge of the small park at a few early morning cars driving down the street, their tires almost at eye level. She was in a small combination parking lot and city park, several steps lower than the nearby sidewalk and the surface of the street.
Tossing her trash in the barrel, she did some stretching exercises to make sure her muscles had not tightened while she ate her breakfast then knelt to untie and retie the laces of her shoes. When she took the first step up to the sidewalk, the dark-haired man at one of the other tables she had passed on the way to the trash barrel spoke, barely loud enough for Gail to hear.
"Have a nice day, beautiful."
Gail turned and smiled at the man, whom she had seen in the park on several other occasions. As she responded to him, she noticed he was looking at his watch, "You too."
As she turned to take the fifth and final step up to the sidewalk, her foot landed on the outside edge of the concrete step. With a squeal of surprise, she tumbled backward. Missing the step behind her, her other foot barely missed the middle step. Her ankle turned on the bottom step and she bit her tongue as she landed hard on her hip, several feet below.
Strong hands were lifting her shoulders. "Hey, beautiful, are you okay?"
Looking up, Gail could not see who was speaking -- the sun was directly in her eyes and the man speaking was behind her. "Yeah, I think so."
Shifting off her burning hip, she reached forward with a shaking hand to touch her stinging knee and stuck her numb tongue out, using her other hand to feel if she might have actually bitten off the end. The fingers of both hands came away with smears of blood, but when she looked at her knee it was only a scrape, just an abrasion. She swallowed blood and turned to spit out the rest. The man was helping her stand, but the moment she put weight on the hip, she flinched and groaned. However, when she shifted her weight to her other side, her ankle caused her to squeal with pain.
The man leaned over, put his arm behind her knees, and with a grunt, lifted her into his arms, saying, "Put your arm around my neck." He walked a few steps and sat at the table Gail had used for her breakfast.
With Gail settled on his lap, he asked, "Do you need an ambulance?"
"No, no, just give me a minute to quit shaking."
The man slid his hand down the calf of her leg and lifted her leg. There was already some swelling around her ankle, just above the edge of her shoe. "You can't walk on that."
"Oh darn. No, I guess not." Gail tried to feel around under her hip, but couldn't get her hand between his lap and herself, and she didn't want to lean over too far for fear he might drop her.
For the second time, the man looked at his watch. "I've got a few minutes. If you live near here I can take you home."
"Yes, it's ... I live about two miles down this street. Yes, if you could do that, I'd appreciate it."
Despite her mild protests, the man insisted he could carry Gail to the car, make her comfortable lying down on the back seat, and carry her into her apartment building. Gail was so busy telling him what to look for on the street ahead, she did not remember to introduce herself, nor did she ask him for his name.
As the man carried Gail down the hallway to her front door, she asked him to stop for a moment so she could push her neighbor's doorbell.
The older woman who opened the door across from Gail's apartment gasped, "Gail? Are you alright?"
"Yes Mrs. Hamilton. Can you..."
Just like the charge nurse she had been before she retired, the older woman took over, getting Gail into the apartment, lying on the couch to take pressure off her hip, an ice pack on Gail's elevated ankle, and a glass of ice for her tongue. During that time, the man apologized quickly, but said he needed to get back to the park or he would miss his ride to work.
In all the rush to get Gail home, the confusion of getting her into her apartment, plus the examination of her various injuries, neither Mrs. Hamilton nor Gail remembered to ask the man for his name. Nor could she remember the make, model, or even the color of the car he was driving.
During the following days, Gail or Mrs. Hamilton would mention the good looking man, with both of them commenting how lucky Gail was that he was there in the park at such an early hour, and so willing to help. Those same days saw the bruises on Gail's hip grow darker and finally begin to fade and the abrasion on her knee healed. The swelling in her ankle, likewise, lessened and the soreness of her tongue faded. Gail finally started to look forward to resuming her morning run to the park and slower walk back home.
After a few weeks of recuperation and six weeks of resumed exercise, although she varied the times she arrived and left the park, the man she wanted to thank was never there. Once when Gail and Mrs. Hamilton went to a Saturday afternoon movie matinee both of them thought they recognized the man they had jokingly called Mister X. However, when Gail approached the man in the ticket line, she knew she had been mistaken. The man buying a ticket for himself and his companion wasn't tall enough, nor did he look strong enough to pick up a 130 pound woman with so little effort. There was also something she remembered about the color or look in his eyes that told her she had not found Mister X. Yet, the memory of the way he had said, "Have a nice day, beautiful," rang inside her head.
One other time, as Gail left a downtown office tower, she thought she recognized Mister X, dressed in a business suit rather than as she remembered him, in a casual shirt and jeans. He was going through the revolving entrance door across a plaza as she passed through the revolving exit door. By the time she left the revolving door, was able to get back through the other door, and into the lobby of the building, he had disappeared.
One set of elevator doors was just closing on a car full of people. She stood for a few minutes watching the numbers above the doors, for the different floors where the elevator stopped. When the elevator reached the top floor, it had stopped seven times.
Gail looked at the directory on the wall opposite the elevator doors but the number of offices and the size of the building made her laugh at herself. It was foolish to consider trying to find one person, whose name she did not know, in all the possible office spaces on those seven floors. Nor could she imagine how to find him in the large restaurant, with several different dining rooms, or one of the conference rooms, on the top floor.
Several weeks later, in the middle of the night, Gail sat straight up in bed, awakened from a dream where a man leaned over to whisper in her ear, "Have a nice day, beautiful." It was a dream she'd had on several other nights for the previous six months. It wasn't something that haunted her, but it did send chills up her spine as a pleasant memory. Yet there was something about the look in the man's eyes when she looked up at him that caused Gail to think about him for the remainder of the day.
It was difficult to have her day continually interrupted by memories of the strange man she did not even know. Gail didn't have time for such thoughts. She had too much to prepare for the day and evening. Her boss was leading an afternoon discussion group for a day-long international conference and he was the primary speaker at the evening banquet. She had to manage all the printed handouts he would give to the afternoon participants.
Gail had teasingly warned him that if he tried to change anything in the handout, she would shred his speech and delete the file from her computer. It was a threat she would not follow through with, but he understood he caused her additional work when he made late changes to even one page. He had kept his promise to deliver the corrections when she returned from lunch the previous day. She had managed to update his handouts and printed all the required copies by seven the previous evening. That left all morning to make last-minute corrections to his speech, print the pages in the large type he preferred, and put it in the folio he customarily used for such things.
After the afternoon's program was over, Gail went home to dress for the evening. With a little trepidation rumbling through her, she took a deep breath and pulled the dark red dress up her hips. After she fastened the halter top at the back of her neck, she was reminded that the draped front of the dress showed a little more cleavage than she would have preferred. She pulled her long, light brown hair into a handful at the back of her head, held it on top of her head, and then let it fall around her shoulders. She decided on the last look as the one best suited for the bare-shouldered dress. She looked in the full-length mirror, turning to see more of the dress and groaned aloud. The bra, which the sales clerk had assured her would work, was showing several inches above the low back of the dress.
Almost wailing in frustration, Gail opened her front door and stepped across the hall to ring Mrs. Hamilton's doorbell.
"Oh wow, Gail," the older woman laughed lightly and teased. "No one is going to be looking at Gerald Gordon when he speaks. They'll be waiting for you to bend over."
Turning around to show the back of the dress, Gail complained, "Help me."
The two women walked into Gail's apartment, discussing the simplest solution to go braless. "Just take the bra off and let's see if you can get by with it," Mrs. Hamilton advised.
After doing so, they both agreed that the draped front would help. However Mrs. Hamilton seemed to have another problem. "Those panty hose have to go, too."
"What!" Gail twirled around, the slit that went halfway up her left thigh separated as she did so.
Mrs. Hamilton ran her finger across the front panel of the clinging material, "The waistband is too thick, and the seam shows. It's the same way in the back, too."
Although there was no need to do so, Gail whispered when she said, "I can't go naked under this dress."
Mrs. Hamilton shrugged her shoulders, "Who's going to know. Take 'em off, let's see," she instructed, and finally nodded that it was the only way to wear the dress.
"Oh God," Gail moaned. "I don't have another dress to wear and I don't have time to change anyway."
