The envelope was precisely centered on her desk when she returned from lunch at the McDonald’s across the street. No address, no return address, of course no stamp or cancellation. Just her first name, misspelled “Sherry,” neatly printed in the exact center of the white oblong.
Sheri Lane set down her steaming foam cup, shrugged out of her parka, and sat. She pulled the lid off the cup, stirred two and a half packets of Equal into her coffee, took a cautious sip. Hot! She parked the coffee, picked up the envelope, and turned it over. The other side was blank, except for “SWAK” lettered in miniature on the flap. The acronym took her back twenty years, almost half her life, to junior high school romances she thought she’d long since forgotten. Sealed with a kiss.
She picked up the jeweled souvenir dagger she used as a letter opener, slit the envelope open carefully, and slid out a folded sheet of cream-colored notepaper. She unfolded it and read the two lines of printing just above and below the fold: “Sherry, baby: Won’t you come out tonight?”
Although the office was at least forty degrees warmer than the bitter December day outside, she shivered.
“Well?”
She looked up from a sheaf of projections for next-quarter sales. The man standing at the side of her desk, half a step too close for comfort, was vaguely familiar. He was new, she thought. She had the impression she’d noticed him in the elevator once or twice, but she wasn’t sure. He was thin, not quite gawky but not far from it, in a suit that had been in style not long ago and would undoubtedly someday be back in style again. A sprinkling of acne scars marred an otherwise not unpleasant face. His intense brown eyes were his best feature, but they were almost hidden behind thick lenses in an old-fashioned John Lennon wire frame.
“Well?” she echoed, pushing her chair back a foot to reestablish proper social distance between them.
“My note,” he said, smiling, sitting himself easily on the edge of her desk. “ ‘Won’t you come out tonight?’ ”
Her face cleared. “That was you,” she said. “How did you know?”
Now it was his turn to look confused. “Know?”
“The song. It was number one the week I was born, and my mother had a crush on Frankie Valli, so she named me after the song. My father made her change the spelling, though. One r and an i.”
“Oh, God, I had no idea. I pointed you out to John Testa in Marketing yesterday, and he told me your name, and I just thought of the song and left the note.”
“And the SWAK?”
He grimaced. “Just being goofy. I hope you don’t mind.”
She turned away from him, put out a hand to her McDonald’s cup. The cup was empty, but she knew that. She picked it up and drank a fake swallow, buying time.
“It doesn’t really matter,” she said at last, dismissing not only the high-school kiss but the note itself, and him.
Then, realizing she’d been ruder than the situation called for, she tacked on a questioning, “And you are—?”
He washed a hand across his chin. “Darrin,” he said. “Darrin Stephens.”
She blinked.
“No, really,” he said.
“You mean—?” She twitched her nose.
He nodded. “Same spelling, too. Nothing to do with Bewitched, though. My parents never even heard of the show.”
“Poor you. You must have taken a lot of kidding, growing up.”
He was still nodding. “Yup. So, what do you say?”
“Say?”
“About my note? Won’t you come out tonight? For dinner, maybe?”
“Oh.” She shook her head. “Appreciate your asking. I’ve got plans, though. Sorry.”
He hitched himself an inch closer. “Tomorrow, then? We could have lunch, maybe, or just a drink after work, if you’d prefer?”
She took a deep breath, sighed it out. “Thanks, Darrin, but no, I don’t think so.”
His broad smile finally began to fade. “Boyfriend?” he asked.
She refused to be drawn into revelations about her personal life. “I don’t date men from the office, Darrin. I just don’t. But thanks for asking.”
He looked at her closely for a long moment, then lifted his hands in an “Oh, well” gesture and stood up. “I guess I’ll be seeing you around,” he said, and walked off before she could say goodbye.
Lynn Kasza squeezed into the chair across the white linoleum table from her, unwrapped her Filet-O-Fish, ripped open a packet of ketchup and smothered her fries, stripped the paper from a straw and squeaked it through the plastic lid atop her cup. “So?” she demanded. “Is he as geeky as he looks, or what?”
Sheri looked up from her salad. “I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t be coy, girlfriend — inquiring minds want to know.” She took a huge bite of her sandwich, chewed and swallowed, and washed the fish down with chocolate milkshake.
Sheri just looked at her blankly.
“Mrs. Stephens’s little boy,” Lynn prodded. “What’s he really like?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Duh?” Lynn wagged an admonishing French fry. “Your date? With Darrin Stephens? How’d it go?”
“I didn’t go out with Darrin Stephens.” She frowned. “You know I don’t date guys from work.”
“Well, that’s what I thought,” Lynn said. “But Carrie said Lisa said he said you went out.”
“Carrie said —? He said we went out? Where? When?”
“To dinner at Angelo’s. Très chic, non? And then you went up to his place and—” She made quotation marks on either side of her face with her fingers — “hung out for a couple of hours.”
Sheri tossed down her plastic fork. “That bastard! I did not go out with him, Lynn, and I—”
“—wouldn’t go out with you even if liked you, which, believe me, I most certainly do not!”
She stormed out of his cubicle and slammed the door behind her, then turned around and went back inside, leaving the door open. She leaned over his desk, her weight resting on clenched fists. “I’m going to pretend this didn’t happen, Darrin, but I swear to God, if you so much as mention my name to anybody here again, I am going straight to Mr. Brownlee and you will be out on the street so fast your head won’t stop spinning for a week.”
Darrin smiled, a crooked smile that made him almost attractive. “I don’t think so,” he said.
Sheri stared at him. “You don’t think I’ll go to Mr. Brownlee? You just try me, buster, and—”
“I don’t think he’ll can me.” He was wearing the same suit he’d had on the other day, this time with a flamboyant Jerry Garcia tie. The jacket was buttoned, but beneath it Sheri swore there was a plastic holder full of pens in his shirt pocket. “He’s my uncle, Sheri. Uncle Bobby, my mother’s baby brother. He got me this job in the first place. So who do you think he’ll believe, you or me?”
He looked so smug, Sheri wanted to punch him right in the nose. “You son of a bitch,” she said instead, and went away from there.
The phone was ringing when she got home that evening. There was no one she much felt like talking to, so she let the machine pick it up. “I’m sorry,” her voice said, “but I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message when you hear the tone, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”