Chapter 4

I ended up not following through on any of the ideas I might have entertained about asking Evelyn out on a date. Instead, I played a large assortment of head games with myself, indulging in assorted reveries about how this or that scenario might have played itself out.

Doing this for a couple weeks gave me enough time to regain a somewhat more realistic perspective on what I'd be giving up if I were to try to restart my former relationship with Evelyn.

By the time of Obama's inauguration, I really started believing that I had myself back under control once again.

Rick and I were still making the rounds to the various clubs we spent our free time in, going out on most weekends for at least one of the nights. Life had settled back to what passed for normal with me.

There was one big difference that I noticed. Unlike before that bet with Evelyn, now, when I went out clubbing, more often than not, I ended up bringing someone home with me.

Casual, uncommitted sex seemed attractive to me once again. I wasn't certain that this represented a change for the better. Still, I didn't dwell on it. It wasn't as though I was hurting anyone by what I was doing.

I would have liked it a lot better if the game of musical beds I was so busy playing had resulted in ridding myself of all these unwanted thoughts I kept having about Evelyn. Instead of doing that, it had an opposite effect on me. I won't claim that I was constantly obsessing over her, but she was in way too many of my thoughts for it to be comfortable to me.

I was at home one weekend when I suddenly decided it was well past being a reasonable time for me to finally get started on cleaning up the huge mess in my hallway closet. I wasn't sure why it came to me that this was something I'd put off doing for long enough. The closet had turned into an embarrassment though. Whenever I needed to open it, junk would come crashing out of it onto the pathway of the hall.

It took me over two hours to go through everything that was in there. I ended up getting rid of some of my college text books, some clothes I hadn't worn in a few years, and probably never would have worn again, especially several pairs of grungy old tennis shoes that I'd failed to throw away when laces broke or holes in the soles had developed. When I was done weeding out the junk that was now headed for the dump, the remaining mess was at a much more manageable level.

I had happened across a box of old photographs while I'd been cleaning out this closet of mine. A lot of the pictures were from as far back as my early college days. Others were more recent one's, pictures that I'd taken while on vacation, or when doing things with various friends. Included in among all these pictures were a number I'd taken during that short period of time when Evelyn and I had first started dating each other.

Glancing at these, it really seemed to me that the two of us looked pretty good together. Seeing these pictures brought back plenty of memories about some of the good times we'd shared together, back before we first started having all those arguments about where our relationship was supposed to be heading.

I'd found some other pictures too, pictures that I'd taken during this same time period. These were pictures I'd taken of this other girl I was also seeing at that time. It was funny, but I couldn't seem to dredge up much in the way of memories about this girl. All I remembered was that she was a girl I was seeing at the same time, back when Evelyn and I were having our little fling.

That little trip down memory lane did nothing to diminish the amount of time I kept spending thinking of Evelyn. It sure didn't help things that I separated all my pictures with her in them and took them into my bedroom to save for my later, more careful, perusal.

I was starting to recognize some disturbing signs in all this. Unwelcome signs that I sincerely wished weren't present in any of my thought processes. I've never been one who was too dense to understand when my mind was beginning to make some important shifts in its thinking. I knew what was happening, and how my mind was in the process of adjusting itself.

I spent the next three weeks, while all this was happening, not going out, and not doing anymore clubbing at all. Rick was beside himself, because of this. Our every conversation seemed to be filled with all these dire predictions he had about the direction my future would soon be taking if I persisted in staying with my present course of what he called pure madness. I knew he wanted to have a running buddy he could depend on, for his own clubbing. Strangely, both of us knew that each guy always did better with the ladies if he was accompanied by a male friend. Sometimes, two guys together were much less frightening to a new female acquaintance than one guy, all by himself, would have been.

Finally, despite my own past firm resolve not to be the first one to make a move, I approached Evelyn. I'd waited for a time when she and I were two of the last people on our floor who were still in the office. I'd been staying after every afternoon for more than a week, just waiting for the right set of circumstances to offer itself up to me. Looking all around, seeing or hearing no one else. I headed straight for Evelyn's office from my little work cubicle.

"Can I speak with you for a minute, Evelyn?" I could see that me appearing like I had, in her open doorway, had startled her.

"Oh, it's you, Dennis. I wasn't expecting anyone to still be here. Sure, what did you want?"

"Its about my employee evaluation. I'm sure its been more than six months since my last one, and I was kind of wondering if there might be some sort of problem you were having with completing mine?"

"Problem? No, I don't think so. In fact, I'm certain I laid a copy of yours on your desk, last month. It was in a sealed white letter sized envelope, one with your name typed on the front."

As soon as she said that, I remembered seeing just such an envelope about a month prior. I'd put it in the top drawer of my desk, unread. As far as I knew, it was still in there, still unread too.

"If you did put it on my desk, I sure don't remember ever receiving it. Do you have a copy of it handy, one that I could read?"

"If you're worried, Dennis, you needn't be. I certainly wouldn't stoop to lowering your performance ratings because of any personal differences we might be having."

"It never even occurred to me that you might. I like to save copies of all my employee reviews, so when this one was so late, I started worrying about it. I'll look around my desk area to see where it might have gotten to. Sorry to have bothered you with this."

I left, no closer to getting any signs of social interest from her than I'd been before going to all this effort to try speaking with her this time. I'd wasted more than a week of unpaid overtime, and for nothing at all. I did go back to my cubicle to open that envelope to see what she'd written about me. It was the usual compendium of corporate double speak. Many large syllable words that, in total, really signified little or nothing.

My review praised my promptness in getting my assigned work completed in a highly satisfactory manner. It concluded with her writing that I seemed particularly well suited to remain in the position I now occupied. Since my position was an entry level one, there was no way that last part could ever be construed as any kind of a compliment. It was true though. I was well suited to do what I now did. Evelyn and I both knew I was capable of doing much more, and that my lack of ambition had been something of a sore spot between us in the past.

I had just finished putting her review of my past work performance in the folder where I kept all my other one's, and was about to leave for home, when she walked out of her office, straight over to my cubicle.

"I was in my office thinking, Dennis, and I decided that I really had no interest in heading straight home to my empty place, or in fixing myself something to eat tonight. I was wondering, since we're both here working late tonight, if you might be interested in joining me in going out somewhere for a quick bite to eat? If you are, then we could maybe also go somewhere for a drink or two afterwards? It just doesn't seem right for people to go to all the extra trouble and expense of eating out if they're only going to be all by themselves when they do. Nothing more pathetic than that, is there?"

"Sure, why not? I've caught up with everything I needed to now anyway. Chinese okay with you, or would you rather we go for something Italian?"

After what she'd just gotten done telling me, I saw very little good that would come from my pointing out to her how relaxing eating alone could really be. Not to mention how much less expensive it was, having to pay for only a single meal. Some people seemed to have a strong need to make special social occasion's out of a simple restaurant meal. I ate about ninety percent of my restaurant meals alone, preferring it to getting stuck with the obligation to be entertaining, when all I'd really wanted to do was go out to eat a halfway decent meal.

"If we were just going to get Italian, I know about this great new pizza place that has free delivery. They have the best pizza you've ever eaten too. We could go over to my house to eat it, then not have to go through all the hassles of waiting for for a table to be ready, or for someone to come over to even take our order. I could call them right now, and the pizza would be ready for delivery shortly after we got there. You still prefer your pizza loaded up with all the toppings, right?"

I was surprised by several things while she was speaking. First, was her suggesting now that we go to her place. That was an unexpected, but not unwelcome development. Second, was her remembering how I preferred multiple toppings on my pizza. Third, and by far the most important of the three, were the way her nipples thrust outward from her blouse while she stood there talking with me. Headlights were definitely high beaming from her, and that was usually a very good sign for what was likely to follow.