Ronald Patrick Murphy, Duke to his friends, stood alone in the living room of his small apartment, surveying the collection of cardboard boxes stacked against the wall. They didn't seem like much when you considered that they represented just about all he owned after fifty-eight years. Running his hand across his grey haired crew cut, the still trim, former office manager wondered once more if he'd made a mistake in accepting the early retirement package his company had offered.
The situation had seemed clear enough at the time. The company was downsizing his department, and if he wanted to stay, it would've been at a greatly reduced salary. Additionally, there was no guarantee that if he stayed on a few more years, the package he got then would be anywhere near as generous.
In the background, the baseball game he'd lost interest in an hour before still droned on and the once frosted mug of beer sitting on the table next to his chair had long since grown warm. There was no escaping the fact that, after initially being excited about all the things he could now do with his free time, he was already becoming bored.
Come tomorrow, the movers would be here to transport the boxes, and whatever other worldly goods his ex-wife had failed to spirit away following their divorce three years before, to the small house down by Saint Petersburg that he had inherited from his Uncle Wallace. By the end of the week, Duke would be there as well, leaving his old life eight hundred miles behind him.
Thankfully, the bequest had come after the final divorce decree; otherwise, Caroline would've been entitled to half the house as well. Not wanting to sell the house, Duke had kept it as a vacation retreat. Not that he'd been there often enough in the last year to need much more than a change of clothing in the closet. The job always came first, which was one of, but hardly the only grievance Caroline had laid out in her divorce complaint.
Duke clearly recalled the day his twenty-six year marriage had finally fallen apart, when, over dinner, Caroline had simply stated she was leaving, or rather she wanted him to leave. The announcement coming with no more drama than if she'd asked him to pass the potatoes. While it had come as a surprise, he couldn't honestly say it had been totally unexpected.
Their union had been in increasing decline for two years, dating back to the death of physical intimacy soon after Caroline's forty-ninth birthday. A declaration, Duke remembered, that had come with similar abruptness. Like many couples, their frequency of sexual congress had slowed over the years, and its cessation could've been overcome - but not when any and all other semblance of a relationship followed. By the end, they'd become virtual strangers sharing a living space.
After Caroline had left, Duke became even more involved in his work, if such a thing was possible. In fact, some of the boxes awaiting the movers hadn't even been unpacked since he'd moved into the apartment, but had simply been moved into the spare room and then forgotten. The house he had paid the mortgage on for twenty-five years had gone to Caroline.
Unpacked boxes were hardly the only thing Duke had proved oblivious to. As word of his new bachelorhood spread around the office, more then one female coworker expressed interest in knowing him better. Without fail, every overture went unacknowledged. Duke had long ago convinced himself that he was far too old to rejoin the dating scene and start over.
'Well, I'd better get used to it,' he told himself as he walked over to where he'd left the remote and used it to turn off the television. 'As the old saying goes, today is the first day of the rest of my life.'
As he carried the now undrinkable beer out to the kitchen, where he poured it out into the sink and then rinsed out the mug, he couldn't help but think how little comfort those words brought.
The unexpected chime of the doorbell abruptly interrupted his melancholy musings, replacing them with the thought of who that could be at this hour. Anyone he knew would undoubtedly be at work in the middle of the afternoon. Leaving the glass on the drying rack, he tightened his bathrobe around him and headed for the door. That he was still in his robe was yet another sign of his dissatisfaction; having been unable to fall asleep last night until long past midnight, he had consequently slept in until well past noon.
-=-=-=-
"My, we have really gotten into the swing of retirement life, haven't we?" the young, dark haired Hispanic woman who had been at the door remarked when she saw how Duke was dressed.
Maria Gutierrez was twenty-seven years old and stood a half-foot shorter than Duke's five foot ten. Olive skinned with jet black hair that reached just below her neckline, she had a slim framed build and small rounded breasts, perfectly proportioned orbs that filled out the sleeveless green dress she wore. Up until a week ago, Maria had been Duke's administrative assistant.
Four years ago, when she had first walked into Duke's office, the then fifty-four year old had mistakenly assumed the young woman was one of the high school interns the company usually hired for the summer. She had looked that young, and even today was still sometimes mistaken for a college student.
When told she had been hired to fill the recently vacated assistant's position, Duke had wasted no time in calling Human Resources to voice his objections. He needed someone with a head on their shoulders, he'd said, not some airheaded millennial who felt society owed them a living. Much to his chagrin, HR informed him that the job was hers and he was just going to have to live with it.
'We'll see about that,' had been Duke's thought before he'd even hung up the phone.
He assigned her every crap job he could think of, allowing barely the time that a more experienced assistant would have needed to complete them. Then on top of that, he'd added personal errands and some of the thankless tasks usually reserved for interns.
Much to his surprise, Maria did not voice a single complaint, to him or to HR, but completed every assignment on time and in a manner that not even Duke could find fault with. Eventually, he began to give her real work, which she handled with equal success, forcing him to rethink his preconceptions about her generation, or at least about her. In time, they had even become friends, or as much friends as two people a generation apart could be.
"Very funny," Duke said as Maria walked past him into the apartment. "I overslept this morning."
"I love what you've done with the place," Maria said as she saw the stacks of boxes, ignoring the fact that she knew he was moving.
Closing the door behind her, Duke wondered what she was doing here. Several possibilities presented themselves, only one or two of which he would consider good news. The cold expression on her face said she hadn't stopped by to say a final goodbye.
"Is something wrong?" he asked, concern in his voice.
"Possibly," she said as she dropped her bag on the coffee table and turned back to face him.
"What happened?" he asked, moving to within a few feet of her.
"Jim Walsh called me into his office this morning," she began.
'Oh my God, did that idiot fire her?' Duke thought, recalling the number of people who'd been let go during the reorganization.
"He offered me your job," Maria said matter of factly, "well, not exactly your job since I'd only have a third of the staff under me that you had - but it's still office manager."
"Maria, that's great," Duke said as a wave of relief washed over him.
"You think so?" she replied.
"You don't?" he asked.
"All the way over here, I kept asking myself," she answered, "when exactly did Duke lose his mind?"
"What does that mean?" Duke asked.
"You did recommend me for the job, didn't you?" she replied. "Even though everyone expected it to go to Bob Johnson, someone who's been there for nearly twenty years."
"Yes, he has," Duke agreed, "but he's not what that department needs right now. It needs someone who can think outside the box and not constantly fall back on the way it used to be. In my mind that's you, not Bob Johnson."
Maria didn't reply right away, taking a few moments to digest what he'd said.
"You really think I can do this?" she finally asked.
"Maria, as fond as I am of you, I'd never have recommended you for the job if I didn't have absolute faith that you were the best person for the job," Duke replied.
Another long moment passed until a small smile began to form at the corner of her mouth.
"You could've at least warned me," Maria said, her tone now softening as she dropped onto the end of the couch. "At least then I wouldn't have been so surprised by the offer."
"I didn't think that would be a good idea," Duke said as he sat down beside her. "After all, I honestly didn't know if they'd even pay any attention to my recommendation. And if they didn't, well, even just knowing that you had been considered could've spoiled your relationship with Bob, if they followed conventional wisdom and went with him instead."
Again, she considered what he'd said, and again realized that he was right. If she'd known she'd been considered and passed over, it could very well cause friction between her and Bob Johnson. Especially since there was no guarantee that he'd value her input the same way Duke had. She would've always been thinking, if only she was the one in charge.
"Well, it was a hell of a surprise," she said. "I never imagined that I'd be offered office manager."
"Oh come on," Duke laughed, "you can't tell me that you haven't wanted my job almost from the day you first walked into my office."
"You mean the day you tried to fire me before I could even find a desk," Maria clarified with a grin.
"Yeah, that day," he smiled as well.
"Well, maybe," Maria replied. "But that was when I thought you were some outdated dinosaur stuck in the stone age, before I learned that old ideas weren't always necessarily bad ones."
"Just as I eventually learned that they weren't always the only ones, or even the best," Duke admitted.
"Dios mio, where do I begin?" Maria exclaimed as her mind finally shifted from concern to acceptance. "I have so many ideas."
"And I'd love to hear them," Duke said, a broad smile filling his face as he recognized the familiar pattern in his former assistant, "that is, if you want my opinion."
"Of course I want your opinion," Maria quickly replied. "I'd be a fool not to take advantage of it."
"Fine, but do you mind if I grab a quick shower and get dressed first?" Duke asked.
Looking again at the well-worn robe that had seen better days, Maria agreed.
"Why don't you order us some lunch while I clean up?" Duke suggested, knowing that Maria's normal idea of breakfast was a granola bar washed down with a cup of coffee.
"Sounds like a plan," Maria said, the idea reminding her that she'd even skipped that meager fare this morning. "How does Chinese sound to you?"
"That would be fine," Duke said over his shoulder before disappearing into the bathroom. "Just order what you think I'd like."
