Let me start by assuring you that I'm neither rash, nor prone to acting without forethought. My name is Emma Thornton, I'm thirty-seven, with two kids in their mid-teens and a career in commercial property brokerage. My old man couldn't cope with the stresses that having a young and growing family inevitably brought, and headed out for easier grazing in newer pastures. We haven't seen or heard anything from him ever since he left.
It took a year to stop falling further behind and nearly eighteen months for me to stop blaming everything and everybody else for the predicament in which I found myself. For the last fourteen years, as a result of hard work and astute judgement, things have improved each and every year. We've reached 'comfortable' now, with an old brick property that we've renovated and extended ourselves. The rest of the county seems to have come round to our way of thinking and these days this is a very popular place to live, so I'm paying a mortgage on it that's less than six percent of its value.
The kids have learned to ski and Genie, my youngest, keeps a pony in the paddocks that are between the house and the road. Last year Kira, ever the tomboy, decided to save up what she earned at her gardening jobs so that she could purchase an off road motorbike, which she takes for long rides through the wilderness of the huge mountainous national park which adjoins the edge of our property.
Mostly I just make sure that there are adequate supplies in the house and they just get on with their lives. Don't get me wrong, we all spend time together and get on as well as any family I've ever come across; it's just that we're all busy and happy in the independence within the interdependence that we have. My girls and me... we're good friends.
Sometimes my work makes me suffer long hours; occasionally I have to meet clients who've travelled after hours. I'm a great salesperson and it's because I've done the hard graft that over the years I've worked my way up to the position of senior partner in the business.
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Manchu Industries need a continental headquarters and this evening I'm meeting with their Director of Expansion to discuss the possibility of his corporation taking the entire development that our company is building an hour and a half over the state border from the new international airport. We have a lot going for us, not the least of which is much cheaper rates than they would get if they located in one of the cities which were trying to attract such a prestigious name. We have better housing and transport than any big city and I'm going to show him that just living somewhere as beautiful as we do makes for better working conditions than any city could ever offer.
The site nestles just off the interstate with forest-covered mountains offering a fantastic frame to the offices where we will meet; there are two staff members waiting with me, Steve Hunter runs the legal and contracts side of the organisation and Mandy Ewing manages the office staff back in town.
There are eight tables set up, each with a scale model of another of our interpretations of their specifications. If any of them are taken up our company will profit by many millions.
He's late; I walk over to the air conditioning controls, and it surprises me to find that they're not set very high; I'm sweating because the wait is getting to me. I pick up my bag from the floor by the small conference table set just beyond the models and decide to freshen up in the ladies room at the end of the corridor.
If the office felt hot then the chill from the ladies room almost makes me stagger; immediately the sweat is gone. I rinse my hands quickly at the sink; checking while I do that my makeup is fine and needs no improvement. I spray a quick shot of breath freshener into my mouth and examine myself in the long mirror on the back of the door. I'm wearing a matching calf-length blue pinstripe skirt and conservative jacket over dark hose and shining black pumps.
For just a second, as I look, my mind wanders as a shiver of loneliness bids me to ask myself why it was that I was feeling so lonely lately, and what was so wrong with the way that I looked that it was more than a decade since the last man had made a pass at me.
I shrug my shoulders and push such thoughts to the back of my mind as I head back along the corridor to the office; I'm just in time.
If you had asked me how he'd be arriving, I would have said in a limousine with a driver who would be wearing a uniform and cap.
The windows at the front shake at the bark from the car which arrives at some speed in front of the building. It's an angry red streak and then, in an instant, it's stopped. Darkened windows hide the driver as it pulls alongside my Mercedes. Next to the Merc I can see how low slung it is. It makes my beautiful silver saloon car look like a clumsy off roader; you'd be forgiven for expecting to find a gun rack in the back and some baling twine in the glove box.
There doesn't seem to be a straight line involved anywhere in its gorgeous design - it's curvy and sensuous, made to a European ethos a zillion light-years from the macho brutality of American sports cars, made to insinuate itself between the molecules of air - not to smash them out of its way.
I'm so jealous that I throw myself a one liner to cheer my spirits. "But I bet he's only got a small dick."
Mandy and Steve laugh politely until the door of the car opens and she steps out.
She's wearing tight black leather driving gloves, a black flared trouser suit above slim super-shiny unadorned slip-ons with two inch squared heels. Her skin has a definite, if light, Asiatic hue to it, but the shade screams falsehood at the viewer because of the shocking white-blonde short spiky hair that tops her head. Her eyes are covered at first by large round sunglasses in black frames. She removes the shades and looks directly along the mirrored windows, before walking assuredly towards the entrance.
I was all thumbs for the entire meeting, but it didn't matter, the decision had already been made in China. She seemed about to hold out for a better deal on prices, but changed her mind after a short walk around the prepared ground. Two and a half hours later she informed us that she was satisfied and that Manchu were willing to head with purpose towards contracts and told Steve that his counterpart at her company would contact him by lunchtime the next day.
As the meeting was drawn to a close I asked if she'd like dinner or if she was heading back to the big city. She told me that she had the last two days of the week and the weekend to compile a report for the boards' perusal on an expected schedule for the eventual opening of the Manchu facility here. She told me that she was booked into a hotel inside the national park and that she was heading that way.
We were standing at the back of the offices looking at the wispy clouds gathering in the last of the evening sun; in early summer around here the sunset doesn't happen until way after ten, but we were heading up to that time. Mandy and Steve made their exit with quiet goodbyes; Steve reminded me that a cleanup crew were due inside fifteen minutes and that they would lockup afterwards.
"My name is Mitsui; it is alright in American business for us to become less formal after work?"
"Oh, yes... please call me Emma. Would you let my company treat you to dinner here before you head off to your hotel?"
"How about if we share the bill and go as friends - not as anything to do with business? But before we go anywhere I've been wearing these all day and I need to change into some more comfortable clothes. I could do it in the bathrooms here, I suppose?"
"There's no need, my house is ten minutes away and I could get changed too, you could follow me in your beautiful car."
"Would you like to ride in it? I could bring you back here for yours after the meal, if you'd like?"
