Flawed Red Silk Ch. 11

Chapter 11: Seeing Red

What had I done? I sat in the taxi heading back home with tears running down my face. It was a poor end to what had started as a great evening.

I had met Tony a few weeks ago at a conference. He was good company while we waited for one of the boring speeches to start. We exchanged whispers about the quality of the delivery while the speaker droned on and on. We just stayed together in the interval. By the end of the day we had exchanged office telephone numbers and email addresses. If nothing else we could be useful contacts for each other. We weren’t working for competing companies but our problems, failures and successes could be useful information because we were in similar fields.

One thing led to another and we were conducting an internet flirtation by the end of the week. It was better than previous ones I had tried because we had met and enjoyed each other’s company. I knew Tony wasn’t a nerd pretending to be something he wasn’t. I presume the same applied to him. He knew what I looked like, what I sounded like, how I dressed at least while at work, that sort of thing. It made the flirtation less forced.

He invited me out for lunch the following Wednesday. It fitted with my diary so my acceptance was in his inbox almost as soon as he’d asked. Had I been too quick? Had I seemed too eager? Was that what went wrong?

We went to a pasta restaurant. The food was acceptable. The important thing was that the service was fast. Both of us really didn’t have time to spare for lunches that weren’t working lunches. We talked mainly about work and office politics. He didn’t say anything about me or us. I was disappointed because it was unlike his emails. Apart from that I enjoyed the lunch. We had a similar sense of humour and a healthy disrespect for our bosses. If we had both been female I could have understood but there was none of the intimacy of his emails.

Back at work that afternoon I was so subdued that my colleagues noticed. There were no emails not even a reply to mine thanking him for the lunch. I left work confused and rather sad for what might have been but didn’t seem to be happening.

The next morning there was a long effusive email from him. He’d been caught by his boss on his return and dragged into an unscheduled meeting that lasted late into the evening. He was sorry that he hadn’t replied to me yesterday, but you know how it is? I did. I’d been there. Bosses seem to think that their staff have no homes to go to and no outside interests that could possibly be more interesting than work.

I responded by inviting him to a pub halfway between our offices after work tonight. He accepted and I was happier all afternoon, too happy, because people noticed the contrast with yesterday afternoon and drew the correct conclusion that a man was responsible for both moods.

At the end of the evening I was still not sure about Tony. He had been great company and we spent a lot of time laughing at each other’s jokes. Did he know I was a woman? Did he care? Did he like what he saw? I had changed from my power-dressing suit into a slinky black dress that I kept carefully rolled up in my desk drawer for emergencies but it seemed that I needn’t have bothered.

I showed him some leg. He seemed disconcerted by a flash of thigh. My thighs are great. I have had experts tell me that they are. I know that rolls of fat or hairy legs couldn’t have repelled Tony because I haven’t got either. I would have risked some cleavage but refrained after the failure of the thighs. That would have been the end of a potential affair until I idly asked him whether he had heard of a sales representative who had visited me that afternoon.

I pulled the rep’s card out of my handbag and handed it to Tony. He looked sheepish then reached inside his jacket to get out his glasses. The thickness of the lenses told me that his unaided eyesight was poor. The poor mutt probably couldn’t see me without his glasses on. When he started to take his glasses off I stopped him.

“Tony,” I said, “You need those glasses. I bet you can’t see me properly without them. I wear contact lenses.”

“Oh,” he said, putting his glasses back on. “I didn’t know you wore contacts, Alison.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. Can you see my face without those glasses?”

“No, Alison. All I see is a blur where your head is.”

“Then don’t be so stupid. Leave your glasses on and tell me what you can see of me.”

He settled the glasses on the bridge of his nose.

“Let me see…”

“You can see now, you idiot. You couldn’t before.”

“Please let me conclude my examination,” he retorted.

“You are good looking, with blonde hair, a slight trace of brown at the roots, that falls either side of your face and curls inwards. You are wearing a black jersey dress with a silver belt and apparently very little underneath. You have normal coloured tights, at least I assume they are tights…”

“They are.”

“…on slim legs with pretty ankles. You are wearing black high heeled court shoes.”

“Could you see any of that before?”

He shook his head.

“So you invited a woman to lunch the first time and you had no idea what she looked like? How did you recognise me?”

“I didn’t. You recognised me. Remember?”

“So I did.”

I’d walked straight up to him and said ‘Hello Tony’.

“So what do you think of me now you can see me?”

“I think I’m very lucky to be with such an attractive lady.”

“Why don’t you wear your glasses?”

“When we met I had been reading the conference papers and my eyes were tired. I’d just put my glasses away when you sat next to me. I had intended to close my eyes during the speech but you spoke to me. I liked the sound of your voice and once I found I liked you as well I didn’t want to put you off by wearing these thick lenses which do nothing for me…”

“…except make it possible for you to see anything at all.”

“Yes. That is true.”

“So if you weren’t wearing your glasses and I did a strip tease you wouldn’t notice?”

“I’m not quite that blind. I’d notice the movement and the colour of your skin but I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the act.”

“I think you had better keep your glasses on while we are together. Can you see this?”

I flashed some thigh under my dress. OK, my tights covered it but they are translucent.

“Yes. That has definite possibilities,” Tony said.

I kissed him.

“Do you know that I was thinking that you were a cold fish because you didn’t respond the last time I did that?”

“No. But I couldn’t see it, could I?”

“No, you couldn’t.”

Things seemed to get better between us from then on until tonight, St. Valentine’s Day. I suppose we should have known better. Everyone goes out on that evening. The restaurant was overcrowded, the service was poor, and the food was too.

After the meal I was feeling annoyed with myself. We would have had a better evening just walking down the main street window gazing. It had been expensive and disastrous.

Tony passed me his Valentine’s Day present. I opened it at the table. He had bought me a wonderful pair of French Knickers. Even now as I sit in tears on the back seat of the taxi I regret red silkiness of those knickers.

It was the wrong place, the wrong time and I was in the wrong mood. I was upset and embarrassed because half the restaurant saw what he had given me. I shoved them back in the packaging, pushed them across the table at him, stood up, slapped his face and walked out.

I hailed this taxi which came past just as I reached the street. Now I’m regretting slapping him, wailing for a lost relationship and coveting those knickers. What a mess!

My mobile phone beeped to announce a text message. I peered through my tear-filled eyes at it. Expanded to normal English it read.

“Sorry. Please forgive me. Tony.”

I sat for a few seconds and texted back.

“On my way. Be outside.”

I told the taxi driver to take me back to the restaurant.

“Is he worth it?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “He is. I just didn’t realise that he was.”

“OK, back we go.”

We collected Tony. I had to drag him off the pavement into the cab as he apologised profusely. I told the taxi driver to continue to my flat and stopped Tony’s objections with my lips.

I paid off the taxi driver who winked conspiratorially at me.

“Good night and good luck, Miss,” he said as he drove away.

I’m modelling the red silk French Knickers for Tony. Soon they and his glasses will be off. He’ll have to rely on his sense of touch for the rest of the night.