Stepping Out

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G and Maggie in Cabo, April 2008.

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Me: Slept like a log. G: What a winner of a man who came to dinner. Work: I called; they called.

At nine, I called the office to tell the head boss’s secretary that I was resigning from the job.

“Why don’t you call the account rep?”

“He’s the one who said there were 200 other people waiting for my job,” I replied.

“Oh, oh.”

The day was stunning with powerful blue skies above us and a clear sunshine making the world seem as if we were in the South of France.

G got off early, and we confused our communications a bit when we arrived at the airport to pick up Dee. She called us, we went round and around past the terminal, she has an unlisted phone number so we couldn’t call her back, and only after almost an hour in did I think of the Commuter Terminal. There she was. United flies into two terminals.

We drove up the hill to find her charming bed and breakfast, Little Italy Inn, which I remember seeing last as a derelict Edwardian era apartment building, then touristed a bit before too much food at Fillipe’s. What fun reliving the now. Dr. Dee, her hard won pHD acquired in her fifties, will soon be out of a job as her department is being eliminated. She’s job hunting.

Late in the day at dinner. G’s cell phone rang. There was a rambling message from the account rep telling me I would be missed. At last, the boss called him; he called me. My inbox fills too. “We miss you,” many of the notes say. “You vanished. Are you OK, I looked for you. There’s a new girl there, and she knows nothing.” “She’s nice enough.”

I paused just for a moment. “I could,” I thought, “go tell her what comes in my gate.” Just for a fleeting moment I paused……then I let that cloud of thought go up into the clear blue sky and went back to smiling and G and Dee. Back to life.