We all have our dreams and she was his. You wouldn’t know it to look at her. Apart they didn’t look like people that would be found in the same room, much less the same heart. Nor was it a question of her as an object of fantasy. For though her beauty was exquisite, it had no character of the unreal perfection that movies and models had nurtured in every adolescent boy. No she had the looks of a soft smile. The kind that taps you on the shoulder and reminds you of your best friend when you were eight. The kind that is only covered up, instead of enhanced by make-up and designer clothes. If she tried too hard, as is the nature of the insecurity that comes to us all at some point in our lives, it seemed like you were looking at a Cezanne painting that had been put into too lavish a frame. Her beauty still remained, but anything that distracted from what made her truly her seemed somehow blasphemous.

They had met on an airplane. Well no not exactly, they had met on the bus to the airplane. No, that’s not quite right either. He had first seen her before even getting on the bus. She wore a simple blue dress, the kind made for flight attendants. It was not particularly complimentary, as it was as if someone was trying to make her fit to their formula. He was on his way to California, another boring business trip and with a stopover in Chicago he was fairly hyped up. He did that on long trips, got out of bed and on the road with energy to spare. Having just got off the subway and waiting for the bus he felt slightly agitated as he looked over those also waiting. Perhaps if there were some high fashioned dressed New York model standing alone he never would have noticed her. It is probably true that life is full of these kind of high tragedies where one misses the thing one is most looking for. How many misses it takes to make the one kind of meeting they had this day, it would be interesting to know.

When his friend’s spoke of him they described him as a nice guy. Someone who wasn’t terribly exciting, kept to himself in that kind of not sure of himself way that socially inept single people did. He in fact went further then that, as he was the first to downplay his importance. It did and didn’t make sense he was in middle management, as that self-expressed put down put him where we had to be, never a leader. But he pushed hard to be the best at everything he fell into, and his work for this clothing retailer was no different.