Featured image by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay

My bank of elevators was at the far end of the corridor. It also had a guard. I had to wait for someone to come down and escort me up. I must admit, if this was a last minute setup, they did a nice job. All of the entries in the security database. Massive building with tons of foot traffic. Easy to hide in plain sight here. I wonder if they were the ones who insisted on asking for a driver’s license without asking for a name? Ordinarily I would have had to sign in and get a visitor’s badge. Never been in a building this size which didn’t make you do that. They just handed me one which was already on a neck cord.

A pretty little thing, couldn’t have been more than twenty three, bounced out of the elevator in her business suit and heels. Skirt just above the knees, bright smile on her face beaming with happiness and energy. She shakes my hand and we hurry back to the elevator she came out of before it closed. Tall building equals long wait for elevator and she only has enough small talk for the ride up. When I shook her hand I let me finger feel the fabric of her jacket at the cuff. Not cheap stuff. The kind of thing a young girl treats herself to when she first starts earning money at a real job. Of course, to buy stuff this nice on an entry level income you have to have roommates, at least in a big city. She obviously doesn’t take the subway or walk down streets which have people ramps overhead.

I’m taken to a conference room where another woman is waiting for me. The floor doesn’t matter. This has the feel of a rent it by the day office space that charges by the hour for conference rooms. Not the entire building I’m sure, but this floor is definitely that. There’s a big open pit with kids circling up over laptops with beverages at the far end of the room. At least the big room I passed on the way here.

Honestly, I didn’t pay any attention to the woman’s name when I was introduced. I simply shook her hand and sat before she offered. I could tell that really pissed her off. Somewhere deep inside me a twelve year old boy chortled with glee.

The pretty little thing left us and I made a quick mental assessment of this woman. She had said nothing other than hello when we shook hands. She wore a cheap blue polyester business suit with knee length skirt. Even cheaper nylon pantyhose. The kind where you, from six feet away could see the upward ridges which formed them. I hadn’t seen those on a woman in over thirty years. The yellow shell under the jacket didn’t look cheap, it also didn’t look new. The short, almost pageboy cut hair had been brown at one time. Now it was a mish-mash of light brown, some fading yellow highlights and streaks of gray. Nature was not kind when her face was handed out either. Those wide framed brownish colored horn rimmed glasses weren’t doing it any favors. In short, her pudgy frame and image is what every little boy imagines as the nasty school principal or Mother Superior at a Catholic school to be.

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