It has been several months since my latest divorce (my third) was final. It's a beautiful Saturday morning and I'm sitting on the back porch of my home in Walnut Creek savoring my first cigar of the day and a cup of Starbucks (Pike with cream). I always indulge myself in a Starbucks coffee and a cigar on Saturday morning. I have a golf date at my club up the road in Moraga, but my t-time isn't until 11:30, so I can savor a beautiful spring morning. Life is good this morning: not on an airplane; not at the office in Redwood City and no need to hack my way through Bay Area traffic to get there today; no calls or appointments with lawyers; and no calls from my ex (I guess she has decided she has all she is going to get out of me). Couldn't be better.
Well, okay, there is one thing that might make it better. It would have been better if I had awakened this morning to find a warm, naked woman lying next to me, her backside curled against me. We would have made slow comfortable love, and now she would be sitting beside me here, wrapped in a barely-there gown, asking what I wanted her to fix for dinner tonight when I return from my round of golf. Okay, yes that would have been better, but I wasn't worried. Little droughts like this one had occurred before and somehow, they always took care of themselves. Some lovely woman, badly in need of what I had to offer, would come along and
voilà
—my life would be complete again.
Of course not all the women I made love to became long term or even short term affairs. Some were just one time events (I prefer not to use the term "one night stand." It sounds so tacky). For example there was Cathy. I chuckled l as I realized I didn't know her last name. I never knew it at the time. Nor, when I thought about it, was there any reason to believe her first name was necessarily "Cathy." Someone had called her Cathy, but there was no reason to believe she was correct or knew her any better than I did.
I was about ten years out of college the night I met Cathy. I had just wound up my first marriage (Don't ask. It wasn't pretty). I was at one of those events big companies throw for their customers' key executives. It was at some resort down in the Carmel Valley—good meals, great golf (there is no course better than Pebble beach, not even Augusta National), lots of booze, and just enough sales and technical presentations to keep the lawyers and accountants satisfied that the whole bash was an "ordinary and necessary business expense," and not something more akin to bribery. Spouses were invited. They went off on shopping trips to Carmel while we played golf or had a sales presentation. These events were always one of my favorite parts of the job. Needless to say, the nerds who wrote the code were not invited.
During a pre-dinner cocktail party on the second night of this modest little affair I noticed a young woman (maybe 30, but no more) talking with a group of men and women across the room. She was quite animated and seemed to have everyone's attention. She was short, maybe only about 5-3, although she wore tall heels to make up for her height. Her black hair was cut pixie style, barely covering her ears. She was dressed in a black dress that came just to her knees. It fit her nicely rounded hips snugly, but there was room in the top for her breasts to shimmy nicely as she moved from person to person in the group. Very attractive.
I turned to my boss standing next to me and asked who she was.
"Beats me. She doesn't work for Oracle and isn't a spouse that I recognize. She must be married to one of the customers. Cute isn't she."
"Yes."
Andrew," my boss said, "Don't mess with the customer's wives. Were here to sell software. Not to get laid and ruin marriages."
"Right boss. Got it." I had heard this lecture before. My boss was Mormon and very straight laced. But aside from that unfortunate outlook, he was a good guy and a hell of a salesman—no one better to learn from.
The dinner was good, but boring. The after dinner speeches were mercifully brief, and everyone adjourned to one of several cocktail lounges the resort maintained. I had just walked into one when I ran into a sales manager I knew. Unlike my boss, Ron was a guy who really liked to party, and by this time in an evening was likely to be well lit.
"Andrew, he said. "What's a single guy like you doing still wandering around alone at this time of night. I figured you'd be hooked up by now."
"No such luck."
"You've been hanging around with that Mormon boss of yours, haven't you? He's a bad influence."
I laughed. "I don't know about that. He sells lots of software."
"Oh shit yes. We all know that. I mean he's a bad influence on your social life."
I smiled, thinking that, given the way my marriage had ended, my social life could use a little dampening. Getting caught
in flagrante
with two of your wife's best friends is not the best way to run your social life.
"Come with me," he said. "There's going to be a little after party in my condo."
"Sure, why not."
When we got to his unit, the party was already going. There were 10 or 15 people, and the music was blaring. Open bottles lined the kitchen counter next to a tub of ice and there was a strong smell of marijuana in the room. Ron disappeared immediately, sliding into the arms of not one, but two women who had been dancing together, transforming their same sex couple into what I'm sure he hoped would be a
manage a trois
.
I worked my way through the crowd and poured myself a drink. Then I turned and leaned against the counter watching the crowd. I didn't see much of anyone I knew, but after a moment I realized the girl with the pixy cut was on the other side of the room. She was chatting with a group of people, but when she looked my way, she looked a little longer than I expected and gave me a sexy smile. I nodded in response.
A few minutes later she worked her way through the dancers towards me, holding out an obviously empty glass.
