"The answering machine was full of messages for you when we got home," Marcia said from the bedroom, sticking a head covered in hot rollers into the living room.
"Your coworkers were worried about you, and Mimi didn't think you were serious.
She wants you to come in over the weekend to finish a project." She disappeared back into the bedroom.
"I put it in writing," I said with a sigh. "I don't know how much more serious I could be."
"You quit, just like that?" Gemma asked.
"Yeah, angry snit and all."
"She finally pushed you too far."
"That, and I already had another job lined up. I'd planned to give notice, but Evil Mimi persuaded me otherwise."
Marcia came into the room, wearing her bathrobe, her hair still in curlers. "What other job?"
I launched into the story I'd concocted about Rod getting back in touch with me and apologizing. "So it turned out it was for real, and it was a good opportunity," I concluded.
"That's why you called in sick yesterday!" Marcia said, sounding like Sherlock Holmes when he's just solved the case. "You were out interviewing. But why didn't you say anything?"
Fortunately, I had a story ready for that, too. "It was a decision I had to make for myself." Even as I said it, I realized it was the truth. "I lean too heavily on you guys to help me figure out what I should do, and I needed to figure this out on my own."
"Well, congratulations," Gemma said. "Now, hurry and get dressed. You're going to be late."
"Late for what?"
"Our big blind date."
My heart sank. "Oh, that." I supposed it was too late to call it off, but I was so drained that all I wanted to do was curl up on the sofa with some ice cream and watch an old movie. But if I'd managed to tell off my boss and stalk out of the office, I could face a blind date. "What should I wear?"
Apparently, I'd said the magic words. Okay, so it wasn't real magic, but it worked almost as well as anything Owen had demonstrated. Gemma was off the couch in a heartbeat. "I've already got something picked out for you."
* * *
We met Connie and Jim at a cozy Italian restaurant in the Village. With Jim were three uncomfortable-looking guys. I wondered if he'd had to bribe his friends to show up. He'd shown time and again that he was willing to do just about anything for Connie, so I wouldn't put it past him.
Jim made the awkward introductions as we stood on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. Marcia's date, introduced as Ethan Wain-wright, was tall and lanky, with wavy brown hair and glasses that hid his eyes. He not only looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there, he looked like he wasn't entirely there. Maybe he really was invisible and only I could tell that his physical form wasn't entirely solid. Gemma's date, Will Ericson, basically looked like the male version of Gemma—sleek and elegant. It looked like Jim had done a good job with that match. My date was named Pat, and I forgot his last name almost as soon as Jim said it. Not only was my mind mostly elsewhere, but he wasn't a very memorable person. He looked like he didn't want to be there, and when we were introduced, he didn't even try to fake interest in me. Jim must have managed to get Yankees playoff tickets to get him to come tonight. Was I so hard to match up that the best he could do was a fairly blank man?
We all went into the restaurant, where they had a long table set up for us. Connie took care of the seating arrangements, putting us in boy-girl order with each of us sitting across from our date for the evening. I was on the end, with Pat across from me and Ethan to my left. This was going to be a long evening.
Once Jim had ordered a bottle of wine for the table, I put on a smile and attempted to make conversation with Pat. "So, Pat," I began, "what do you do?"
"I work in finance." Wow, a complete sentence. Then again, that was better than Owen had managed in our first attempt at conversation.
"Really? You work with Jim, then."
"Yes."
One-word answers weren't especially helpful for keeping the conversation flowing, but I plugged on."Are you from New York originally?"
"No."
"There don't seem to be many people who are," I said with an attempt at a laugh. "I guess all the natives move away, and they're replaced by the newcomers."
No response. Gee, would it kill him to ask me a question or two? I felt like I was running an interrogation. I'd have to break out the lead pipes to get him to talk. In desperation, I turned toward Marcia and Ethan, hoping I could flow into their conversation. That might bring Pat out of his shell. What was it with me and shy guys lately? Except there was a big difference between someone who was shy like Owen and someone who just plain didn't want to communicate.
Marcia was already arguing with Ethan. Apparently, they hadn't even made it to the
"What do you do?" part of the conversation before he made a statement that she challenged, and then he questioned her facts, setting off a good debate. It was hard to tell whether that was a good sign. Marcia didn't mind a good argument, but she had issues about having to be the smartest one in the room. Gemma should try setting her up with a himbo sometime. That would probably work better than the brainy
types people usually picked for Marcia.
On the other side of Ethan and Marcia, Jim and Connie gazed at each other adoringly across the table, seemingly oblivious to the chaos caused by their matchmaking. At the end of the table, Gemma seemed to have fallen in lust at first sight with Will. That wasn't unusual. She liked all men who had an appropriate level of admiration for her.
With a sigh, I turned back to Pat. "What do you enjoy when you're not at work?" I asked.
He shrugged. "I watch sports." Bingo. Jim had definitely bribed him with tickets to some big event.
The argument next to me died down as Marcia and Ethan studied their menus. I glanced at my own menu and decided to order lasagna. It was the easiest of the pasta dishes to eat because it didn't involve twirling spaghetti around on a fork and then trying to get it all in your mouth at once, something that's just asking for a disaster on a date.
As I closed my menu, Marcia put on her best fake smile and asked, "So, Ethan, what do you do?"
He frowned at his menu, then looked up at her. "I'm an intellectual property attorney."
Her fake smile remained in place. "Oh. Interesting."
Desperate for conversation, I asked, "What does that mean, exactly?"
"A lot of what I do involves employment cases and patent infringement."
"Employment? Are you saying that people are considered intellectual property?"
He shook his head, and for once he looked solid, like he was really there. "No, but some of what people have in their heads is considered company property." He picked up the saltshaker in front of him. "Say you've got this employee here. His job is inventing a gizmo for company A. But then company B offers him a job." He moved the saltshaker from the candle to the floral arrangement. "Then he invents a newer, better version of the gizmo for company B—based on what he invented for company A. That could be considered a theft of intellectual property because he took work he'd done for one company and essentially gave it to another company."
I nodded. Normally, I didn't much like talking about work, but this was fairly interesting. Well, more interesting than Pat's sullen silence. "But it's usually more complicated than that," Ethan continued. He was now talking directly to me, as Marcia had turned to chat with Jim and Connie. "What if the gizmo at company B
isn't based directly on the gizmo from company A, but the employee does use things he learned from inventing the gizmo for company A to invent the new gizmo, and because of that they
can get a better gizmo to market sooner?"
"I don't know," I said. "It's not like you can wipe your employees' brains when they leave a company. Everyone learns things at one job that they go on to use in the next job." I had a mental image of Mimi with a giant vacuum cleaner, trying to suck out my brains, and I shuddered.