In A Relationship

In a Relationship

The late afternoon sun blazed through my office window. Three-thirty.  Thirty more minutes till I could get the hell out of here.  Sandra, of the long legs, walked past my open door.  The tap, tap, tap of her high heels stopped suddenly and then her face floated back into my doorway.

“Want to get a drink?  I’m fried.  I need to get out of here.”  She tossed her sun-streaked brunette hair back over her shoulder.

“Uh, sure.  Sounds great.”  I quickly swallowed the lump in my throat.  Sandra and I had been office buddies for quite sometime, but that’s as far as it went.    She worked in IT and I was in accounting.  We gossiped about our colleagues and I think that we had the same sarcastic sense of  humor.

I tried to act nonchalant. “Where you want to go?”

“Meet me in the lobby.  I stumbled over a great little place this weekend.  You’ll love it.  It‘s totally fetch.”  We both laughed. Sandra and I had started a campaign to make “fetch” the new “sick”.  It wasn’t working, but we were having fun,

At four-thirty we were walking side by side up the sidewalk.  Salmon swimming against the current, as it were.  Most of the pedestrian traffic was heading south toward the subway, but we were heading upstream looking for Avenue E. 

“I know it’s around here somewhere.  Wait, I’ll look it up on my phone.”  She stopped abruptly in the middle of the heaving crowd and jabbed at her phone.  She punched a couple of buttons or something then yelled  “Come on. This way.“

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like new technology as well as the next guy.  But for some strange reason I believe that phones were invented to make phone calls. I have one myself, it’s simple, black and utilitarian.  I make phone calls with it, lots of them.  But I despise texting.  There, I said it. So sue me.


“Don’t you just love this place?”  Sandra swiveled in her seat till she was facing me with her high heels resting on the bottom rung of my barstool. 

“I do. It has a Jetson's kind of  hing going on. "  Mmmmmm.  Mmmmmm. Mmmmmm.  Her silver phone was buzzing and spinning on the zinc bar top. 

“Just  a sec.”  She frowned and stared intently at the screen , then, using  her thumbs, she attacked the keyboard and punched in a stream of disjointed numbers and letters.

“Now, what were you saying?”  She turned back to me and I noticed that her eyes were the most interesting shade of sapphire blue.

“Oh, nothing much…”  Ding-ding.  Her phone went off again.  New message.  Another stream of jack hammer pounding with her thumbs and I had her attention once more.

“Yea, this is a great place.  How’s the food?  Want to get an appetizer?”  My stomach was growling since I’d skipped lunch.

“Sure!  We can even order from the phone.”  She looked as excited as a kid with a new toy. 

So that was the big attraction.  It seemed that even waitresses had been replaced by smart phones.  We made our selections and Sandra texted them in. 

“Is it still okay to order a drink from the bartender?”  I was feeling a little annoyed and outdated.  We ate and finished our drinks with only two more interruptions.

“Well, see you tomorrow.” We were standing on the sidewalk, ready to head for home.  I wanted to bend over and kiss her, but the buzzing of her phone stopped me cold.  As I walked off she was standing in the middle of the sidewalk texting like mad.

A couple of  weeks went by before I saw Sandra again.  Cheryl in personnel told me she had taken a week of her vacation time.  I was walking by the supply closet when I saw Sandra bending over the ancient copy machine.

“Hey, did you have a good time?  Where’d you go?  The Bahamas?”  She was a tan as a Brazil nut. “Want to head over to that little bar for a drink after work?”

“Sure, I’d love to.  I’ve got so much to tell you.  You won’t believe it.” 



“So, what’s up, pup?”  I glanced down at the bar and saw only her purse.  No phone in sight.

“I went to Cupertino, California.”  Well that explains the great tan.  But kind of a funny spot to pick for a vacation.  Then it dawned on me that it was in the heart of Silicon Valley. Mecca for all things techno.

“Sounds interesting.  What did you go there for?”  This girl was unusual to say the least.

“I signed up to be a beta-tester.”  she blinked then looked around like she thought someone might be eavesdropping.

Our beers arrived, hers a lager from Half Moon Bay, a micro-brewery up in northern California, and mine a more pedestrian Molson’s Golden Ale from implacable Canada.  We sipped our beer and I became aware of a lag in our usual easy banter.

“Can you keep a secret?”  she asked.

“I’m as silent as the grave.”  It occured to me that we’d been in the tavern for almost thirty minutes with no interruption from her phone.

“They’re beta testing this new device.  I signed up ages ago and they called me to come out.  The even paid my airfare and put me up in great hotel.  It was totally amazing.  I had a fantastic time.”  Her wide navy eyes met mine and my heart skipped a beat.

“Tell me more.”  My eyes traveled down her legs to the high heels which were once again perched on the bottom of my barstool. 

“That’s about all I can tell you.  I had to sign a confidentiality agreement, and believe me, they’ll know if I violate it.”  She seemed to be searching my face for something.  “Hey, let’s get out of here.  I‘ll fix dinner.  I’ve got some great mussels and some killer Camembert. I'll make you a feast and you can fill me in on all the office gossip.”


Much later that evening I found myself entwined with Sandra on her living room floor.  We’d consumed large quantities of alcohol, mussels, french bread and assorted cheeses and I guess you could say that we had ‘hooked-up’.  I was astonished at how natural it felt.  Like I’d been here before, or if not, like this was where I should have been all along.

“That was amazing.”  I stretched on my side and supported my head on my right arm.  She was sweet, funny and easy to be around.  I hadn’t felt like this in quite a while.

“You know I don’t go in for the casual sex stuff, don’t you?”  She was laying on her side facing me with her head propped on her left arm. 

“Yea, I think I knew that.”  I was totally at home with this girl and ready to see where this ride was going to take us.  “What are you doing Saturday?  I thought maybe we could head down to the shore. “

“We’ll have to keep this quiet at the office, you know.”

No problem.  I wanted to see a lot more of this girl.


“Okay then.”  She deliberately winked her left eye at me and I thought I saw a tiny white f reflected on her pupil.

“Hey, there’s something in your eye.”  I bent close but couldn’t locate the offending letter. 

“It’s okay, It's nothing. I just updated my status.  Hope you don’t mind.”  She giggled, rolled over and pushed back against me. Her butt fit perfectly against my stomach and thighs.  I leaned into her,and wrapped my arms around her waist.  Soon she was breathing evenly. I ran my fingers  through her long, silky hair, then brushed it to the side in order to kiss the nape of her neck,  I froze in mid nibble.  At the base of her neck, just under her hairline, was a USB port.  A little blue light next to it blinked on and off, on and off,  Something that looked like a micro flash drive was plugged into the port. 

I backed away from her slowly, careful not to wake her up.  I grabbed a chenille throw and wrapped it around my waist and went to search for my laptop.  After logging on I punched up her profile page, and sure enough, there it was.  Updated just minutes ago, it said  that she was:    in a relationship.