Valentine's Day used to be really exciting for me. When I was six, I gave a valentine to my next door neighbor, Jane, and was thrilled when she said she liked it. When I was sixteen, I gave a valentine to Marsha, and was trilled when she kissed me on the cheek. When I was twenty-six, I gave a valentine to Erica, and was thrilled when she smiled, pulled her sweater over her head and said, "Show me".
When I was thirty-six, I was divorced and hating everything about Valentine's Day. All it was, was a holiday commercialized to the point every jeweler's TV ad basically promised any man who gave his wife or girlfriend gold and diamonds would get laid every night until he was too old to get his cock to stand up. They always showed this gorgeous woman smiling when she opened the box, and then throwing her arms around the guy's neck.
By the time I was forty-six, I'd given up on any woman throwing her arms around my neck for any reason. I'd been looking since a year after my divorce was final, but I wasn't finding anything. Forty-six is kind of a rough age if you're looking for a woman. There are a lot of women out there, but they seemed to fall into one of three categories.
There were women who still looked great and were fun to be with. They were also married because they looked great and were fun to be with. Yeah, I met a few married women who wouldn't have minded playing around, but that didn't work for me.
There were women who were single and looked great but weren't fun to be with. Those were the women who'd decided on careers, and they'd become pretty hard to approach unless you were on their professional level. They didn't need a man to take care of them financially, but they wanted a man who'd fit into the circle of their other professional friends. I was never very big on cocktail parties and the like. They just seemed to me to be a bunch of people pretending they were better than everybody else.
Then there were the women who were divorced and actively looking for a husband. Usually, I met them in bars, and they weren't all that subtle about what they wanted or what they'd be willing to do to make that happen. After the second one put her hand on my thigh and asked if we wouldn't be more comfortable someplace else, I decided I didn't want one of them either. It wasn't that it wouldn't have been great. I'd spent a lot of years without a woman, and the thought was appealing. It was just that I wanted her to think of me as something besides a hard cock.
That's sort of what happened with me and my ex. She'd been fantastic in the sack, not so great the rest of the time. I'd let myself get carried away by the way she rode my cock every night, and didn't see how she really was until we got married. It lasted five years before I'd had enough of her bitching at me about everything all day long and then still wanting me to have sex with her that night. I later found out she was suffering from multiple personality disorder, or at least that's what she told me when she said she was on medication and wanted to get back together.
I guess there was a fourth category of women too. They were the women I worked with. About half were of the happily married variety and there were three professional women I didn't care to associate with because they didn't seem to care to associate with me either. The rest were a mix of really young women, girls really, and women who were working because they were single and had to work to support themselves. Most of those women worked on the manufacturing floor. I didn't try to get close to any of the latter because I figured they'd be the same as the women in the bars -- looking for a husband to support them.
Yeah, I know. I'm talking about women like I was shopping for a new fishing rod and reel. That's not how I really felt about women. It's just that after putting up with Cheryl for five years and then getting divorced, I didn't want to end up with a woman who wanted me either for my money or because she didn't think she could do any better. That last part worried me the most. I didn't look like a movie star or a body builder. I was just a forty-six year old guy with a balding head and a few extra pounds around the middle who liked fishing, old movies, and big band music.
It was Tuesday, the fourth of February, when it started, and at first, I thought it was somebody's idea of a joke. I'd walked up to my desk that morning and found a little envelope propped on my keyboard. When I opened it, there was a little kid's Valentine's card inside, one of those like I'd given Jane when I was six. It was a drawing of a little blonde girl holding a heart, and all it said was "Be My Valentine".
I looked for a name, but there wasn't one on the card or on the envelope. I looked around the office then, but nobody was looking at me. I tossed the card in the trash and went back to work on the design for the assembly station I'd been assigned to build.
The next morning there was another envelope on my desk. It was the same size, and inside was the same type kid's valentine card. This one was a drawing of an obviously female lion with hearts above her head, and said, "I'm just wild about you. Be my valentine".
Again, I looked around the office, but all I saw were people talking to each other and other people with their eyes focused on their computer screens. Nobody was looking at me and smiling. I didn't even see anybody look at me and then quickly turn away like they were working.
One card could have been a joke. Two were carrying the joke too far. I didn't even know what the joke might have been unless it was a rumor I'd overheard on the manufacturing floor. The rumor was that I must be gay because I wasn't married and didn't appear to be looking for a woman. When I thought about that though, I couldn't figure out how somebody leaving Valentines on my desk would be funny to anybody.
Like the day before, I tossed that card in the trash. I did do some thinking about it though.
Because my company is part of the military and aerospace industrial complex, a lot of what we do falls under the government's system for classified document control. As a result, not only does the entire facility have tight security, but my office area is locked up tight at six every night and stays locked until six the next morning. An employee can access the office with the digital chip in their badge, but other than that, the only way to get in is to contact security, convince them your reason for being in the office is valid, and let them accompany you while you do what you need to do.
The only employees with access via a badge are the people who work in the office daily, so whoever was leaving the cards on my desk had to be one of them. I had no idea who it might be, but I had a way to find out. I called security and asked them if there had been any badge entries to the office the night before or that morning. When the answer was no, that meant that person had to be sitting in the office right then. They'd just gotten to work before I did, dropped off the card, and then innocently went to work.
The next morning, I pulled into the parking lot at ten 'til six and was standing by the office door at five 'til. When the clock on the badge reader said it was six and the light over the door turned green, I tried the door. It opened, so I went in.
The office was empty except for me...and the envelope on my desk. I didn't need to open the envelope to know what was inside, but I did.
It was a drawing of a gray rabbit with a pink bow around its neck, and it said, "I long fur you. Please be my Valentine". Knowing there wouldn't be one, I turned to card over to look for a name, and found a poem written in the flourishing hand of a woman.
Roses are red,
This bunny is gray,
I like you a lot,
Please don't throw my cards away.
I had to smile at the lousy attempt at poetry, but I was also thinking. The card hadn't been on my desk when I left, but the card from the day before had been in my wastebasket. Whoever left the card must have waited until I left and then dropped off the card. In the process, they'd seen the older card in my wastebasket and had written the poem on the back of the card.
So, whoever it was wasn't coming in early. They were staying late. Well, I could stay late as well as come in early. That night, I stayed until six thirty and smiled when I heard the lock on the office door click when I closed it behind me. I tried it, just to be sure, and it was locked. I'd been alone in the office, and there was no way possible for anyone to get into that office after hours without a digital chip in their badge or having security let them in. Either way, security would have a record of it happening.
The next morning, I got to work at ten 'til six again, stood at the door until six, and when the light over the door changed from red to green, opened the door and went in.
Just like the day before, it was just me in the room and there was another card on my desk. I called security.
The guard sounded a little aggravated.
"Mr. Henderson, I show no badge access to the office after hours, and no record that any of the security detail let anyone in. This is the second time you've asked the same question. Is there a particular reason you don't trust our security system?"
I made up an answer.
"I thought somebody opened one of my desk drawers."
"Was anything missing?"
"No, it just looked different."
I could almost hear him laughing.
