The following story is my Valentine's Card to my beautiful bride, Kate. Some of what follows is fiction, some of it is based on events that led to our twenty-plus year love affair. I'm placing this one in 'Romance' and keeping the actual sex private. Happy Valentine's Day.
SMILE
It was her smile that first caught my attention, the best way to describe it is 'open'. The kind of smile where the entire face is engaged - her eyes, cheeks, nose and mouth. She'll have lines on her face when she grows old, but they'll be laugh lines and, if I'm lucky, I'll still be alive to see them every morning when I wake and every night before I close my eyes.
She was one of the thirty people here to take a tour of the Fermilab facilities. Ten House Representatives and their staff, half from the Energy Committee and half from the Appropriations Committee; here to decide whether Fermilab had a future considering the European consortium CERN was building a particle accelerator outside Geneva, Switzerland several time more powerful than ours here in Batavia, Illinois.
I was one of the two tour guides; my fellow public relations co-worker Tom Gunnar was the other. I gave a short slide presentation to start, an orientation explaining our research at Fermilab. Our job was to convince this group -- most likely none of whom has taken a Physics class since leaving high school but who now held our future - why Fermilab would be relevant after the CERN facility was operational in eight years. Some members of the committee were ready to cut our funding, thinking our research would become redundant.
I saw her across the room and for some reason felt we had a connection. It's still hard to explain, but it was there. Despite my nervousness I did a professional job, finishing my canned presentation, and we split into two different groups to allow each group a better opportunity to hear and ask questions during the tour. Tom took half and I took the other half.
Was it lucky or unlucky that she was assigned to Tom's group? Probably lucky because it allowed me to concentrate on my responsibilities, except for the moment when our two groups crossed paths on the tour. She caught my eye and flashed that smile -- I smiled back. Immediately after that moment passed I looked to my left to see an older woman grinning at me. She knew.
"Can you tell me her name?"
The woman barely held the laughter out of her reply. "Her name is Katherine Pricer, everyone calls her Kate. She's a member of Thompson's staff, the Representative from Southwestern Washington."
I knew there was no way to pursue the affair, the moment we shared would be just that, two smiles between strangers.
***
A year later I was recruited by a bio-tech company based out of Seattle to be their chief spokesperson. My undergrad chemistry degree and my MBA with a Marketing emphasis puts me in a unique position, recruited by tech/science firms. Now I was given an excellent opportunity to escape the brutal Midwest cycle of cold winters and hot summers. Seattle, although it sits on the same latitude as International Falls, Minnesota, has a very temperate climate. Winter lows in the thirties (not thirty-below) and summer highs in the low eighties.
It was a warmer than normal May afternoon, the sun was shining, the Sunday Street Farmers' Market was in full swing down below from the pub where my teammates and I were celebrating our win over a rival softball team. I was just finishing a toast with my first pint when I saw her.
She was sitting with two young women at a table next to the large windows that line the east wall. Each of the three women had a bag of produce next to them, a baguette sticking out of the top. Their conversation was quite animated, I watched her laugh at whatever one of the women said. I considered going over and introducing myself but thought to myself, "Why ruin the one moment we already shared? What could top that one moment?" I turned and started talking to one of my teammates.
A minute later I saw the look in his eyes, staring over my shoulder at something that, by his facial expression, must have been delightful. I turned to see her standing behind me.
"Hi Kate." I intended to shock her by remembering her name.
"William, right?" Using the name I used when I worked at Fermilab.
"Yes, but all my friends call me Bill. It's good to see you again." I shook her hand. For the tour she was wore the ubiquitous Washington DC power suit of navy blue slacks, jacket and low heels; today she wore a pretty sundress with wedge sandals. There was a slight scent which reminded me of my mother's garden and I was suddenly aware my own bouquet consisted of sweat and beer. Kate didn't seem to mind because the smile didn't leave her face.
"What brings you to Seattle?" she asked.
"Been here almost six months, I'm working at Global Bio on Elliott. What about you? On vacation from DC? I recall you were on some Representative's staff."
"I took a job with the Mayor's office after Thompson resigned three months ago. You must have heard about it, it was non-stop news because of the scandal."
"It's probably the wrong thing to say to someone in your line of work, but I'm a political agnostic. Never figured it made a difference who gets in, they all say one thing to get elected and then leave the office rich."
She gave me one of those looks which is impossible to interpret. Did she agree or just want to avoid an argument? "Wow, that is so jaded."
"Tell you what, convince me otherwise. Have dinner with me some day this week."
Kate realized my game; if this were chess, I just declared 'Check!'.
But not Checkmate, Kate instead asked the bartender for a pen and slip of paper, wrote her number and handed it to me with, "We'll see, call me." before returning to the table where her friends sat watching, amused at our interchange.
The next day I figured, 'what the hell' and instead of waiting three days, I called Kate. She answered on the first ring. I asked her to dinner the following day. That's when I found out I was missing an important bit of information about Kate.
"Sorry, weekday dates are difficult, my son lives with me during the week and with his dad, my ex, on weekends."
I was taken back by the fact that, one -- she was divorced, and two -- she had a child. "How old is your son?"
"Frankie is nine. And to answer your next question, his father and I have been divorced for four years. Right before he married his high school sweetheart."
I found it strange she would share such an intimate detail with me, a virtual stranger. My silence in response must have spoken volumes. Her voice seemed ethereal. "Bill, you didn't ask but I've had too many men see me in a certain way. I'm not that woman. I'm a twenty-nine year old divorcee with a nine year old son. My son is the most important person in my life right now. I've had dates with five men in the past four years, I don't think I met their expectations because none of them have asked me for a third date." I don't think she took a breath during the entire speech.
"Would you like to have dinner with me Saturday night?"
