"Could you look over the attached and send me your feedback by end of day?"
Joe was used to receiving emails like this at his job. He was an applications analyst and frequently felt like an email traffic cop; the crux of business flow between business, development, and testing. What made this email different is that he didn't recognize the sender's name. Obviously from a female, sent by Debbie Lombardi, the mail originated from the corporate office in Wisconsin. Joe worked at the technology center in Houston. Although he did occasionally need to correspond with corporate, none of his current projects were related to them. "Maybe this is something new," he thought.
He clicked open the spreadsheet, giving it a brief once-over. It looked business rather than technology centric and it didn't seem to jive with any of the projects the tech center had in their backlog. "Must be a mistake," he thought. The company had several thousand employees. Misdirected emails happened more often than you might think. Joe was a common first name. The sender must have selected the wrong "Joe" from the Global Address list.
"I think you sent this to me by mistake," Joe replied. He deleted Debbie's mail from his Inbox.
A few minutes later he received a reply, "Oh my God I am so sorry. Thanks for replying so quickly, this is a critical issue and we need to resolve it right away." Joe nodded to himself, understanding that quick responses helped keep projects churning along. He prided himself on never being a roadblock in that way.
"No problem, glad to help push things along," Joe replied. He pondered for a moment. The corporate office was in Milwaukee. The people he knew that worked there were avid Green Bay Packers fans, and it was in the middle of football season. "Go Pack!" he added, then clicked Send.
The rest of the day passed innocuously. Joe finished up, left the office shortly after 5:00 and drove home to his apartment. He was in his mid 40s, divorced for 6 years. His ex and 2 kids lived a couple of miles away in the house he gave to his ex in their settlement. He considered himself lucky; he saw his kids 2 or 3 evenings a week and they spent the majority of the weekends with him. They were older, in high school, and he had a great relationship with them. He had a 2 bedroom apartment but the couch opened to a sleeper, so there were separate beds for the 3 of them. They were comfortable and he was happy.
Joe was a decent looking man, standing 6'2" tall with short brown hair, blue eyes, and a year-round nice, dark tan. He was rangy and athletic, spending a lot of time swimming, playing sports with his male friends, and soccer, basketball and frisbee with his kids. He was an active guy.
The apartment complex was pretty big. More women than men lived there, many of them divorced or single, most with kids of their own. Although divorced for enough time for the pain to entirely go away, he wasn't looking to get into a new relationship. He valued the frequent time he spent with his kids and didn't want to jeopardize that in any way. But that didn't mean he slept alone all the time. He had more than one friend-with-benefits at the apartments, women who were patient with his wishes and secretly hoped to latch onto Joe fulltime once his kids entered college. He was an excellent, giving lover. If he wanted a bed-partner for a night, he rarely had trouble filling his need.
It was Monday night, a kids-free evening. Joe warmed up some leftover meatloaf and potatoes, cracked a beer and relaxed in front of the tv. He turned on the local news, watching stories of the same old shootings, accidents, robberies, life strife. He sighed, afraid for the world his peers were turning over to his children and their generation. He clicked over to ESPN and watched the Monday Night Football pregame show. The game tonight was a rivalry, Minnesota Vikings versus Green Bay Packers. Should be a good one, he thought. Then he remembered Debbie from the corporate office. Something niggled inside him.
He rarely did this, but he logged into his business email from his cell phone. Several messages that could wait till the morning. Nothing from Debbie. He had nothing better to do, the game wouldn't start for a while yet, so he logged onto the corporate portal to see if she had a profile. And she did.
Debbie Lombardi was a senior business analyst in her 17th year with the company. Okay, Joe thought, she might be close to his age range. Her profile picture was tiny on his cell, so he clicked it and expanded it. Not bad. Debbie had medium-length brown hair, brown eyes, and a really cute smile. Cute was a good word for her. Not stunning, not gorgeous, but good-looking gal next door cute. Her picture was a head shot. He wondered how tall she was, what the rest of her looked like. Okay, enough of that. Curiosity satisfied. Joe finished his dinner, cleaned his dirty dishes, and went to the walking trail next to the apartments. He jogged a few laps, went back home, showered, and watched the game.
Joe found himself rooting for Green Bay. The game was close, back and forth, and the Packers won on a last second field goal. Joe wondered if Debbie was at the game. He hoped she was, it was a really good one. Game over, Joe went to bed.
The next day at the office started out like any other, the usual barrage of emails, brief meetings, decisions, and documentation. No reply from Debbie and by mid-morning she was gone from his thoughts. He'd probably never hear from her again. But he did.
At 10:45 he received a reply from the email he'd sent Debbie the previous day. "Did you see the game?" she asked.
"I sure did. Nice win for your boys!" Joe replied.
"I'm still hoarse!" Debbie wrote back. Joe smiled. There weren't too many women who got so worked up over a football game that it affected their voice the next day. He was becoming intrigued.
"Did you go?" Joe replied.
