Working together
two or three evenings a week, we got to know each other pretty well. I don’t
mean I got to know much about her personal life except that she lived in West
Hartford and was married to a guy who drove a black Jag -- she was very guarded
about her private life beyond that, but I did find out what made her laugh and
what made her blush. I found out that purple was her favorite color and irises
were her favorite flowers, Chianti was her favorite wine, Mozart was her
favorite composer, Paris was her favorite city, Chaucer was her favorite poet .
. . and I was her favorite bartender.
For a month or so I never saw her
outside the restaurant and whenever I did see her she was all dressed up and
looking her best. She wore her dresses beautifully. She had a figure that made
my hands shake a little, a definite hazard for bartenders and brain surgeons,
and that worried me. I was beginning to look forward to the nights I’d be
working with her, and that worried me some more. I even tried to get her to go
out for a drink with me after work and was very unhappy when she said she’d
have to take a rain check. I was very impatient and hated to wait for anything.
She didn’t keep me waiting very
long. Three nights later she cashed it in, and after we closed up the banquet
room at 11:30 we left the restaurant separately. We didn’t want our co-workers
to see us having a drink together, so we met at a hotel bar that was the least
likely place to be frequented by other Octavio’s staff. I wouldn’t have
suggested one of the usual hangouts regardless -- she was in another league
entirely and dressed the way she was she’d have fit in about as well as a
panther at a cat show.
I was delayed slightly and when I
arrived she was already there, sitting at a secluded table. She smiled when she
saw me but was otherwise composed and somewhat remote. That might have put some
men off, but her poise, her sang froid, as the French call it, roused my
blood for the chase.
We made some small talk about seeing
musicals in New York (Les Miserables was the rage at the time) and then
I just lost control and started talking about myself, telling her much more
than I usually revealed to women on a first date, let alone a casual drink. I
realized I was trying too hard to impress her and felt myself in freefall, but
it was too late to stop. She had that effect on me. It was usually the other
way around -- I was the aloof one and the women did all the work -- and this
was a new and very strange experience. I struggled to shift the focus back to
her, to find a chink in the fortress somewhere, but she was closed up tight,
and I couldn’t resist her -- she was too much of a mystery, a very fascinating
and dangerous mystery.
“What kind of work does your husband
do?”
The expression on her face went
flat. “He’s a headhunter for Aetna. Brings in the really big ones.”
“And gets paid obscenely big bucks,
no doubt.”
“Indeed he does. And has the ego to
go along with it.”
“Maybe he can help me find a job. A
real job.”
She gave me a curious glance. “You
don’t strike me as the executive type.”
I laughed in self derision. “I’m
definitely not, but I’m burned out on bartending. Been tired of it for about a
year now. But please don’t say anything to anyone.”
“Wouldn’t dream of telling anyone.
You know, it doesn’t show. You are very good.”
“Thanks. I can’t let it show. Soon
as I save up enough I’m going to buy some more real estate, some investment
property. I figure I’ll start relatively small with a rundown Victorian in the
West End, fix it up real nice and sell it for about double what I paid for it.
Then just go up from there.”
“You want to be a real estate developer?”
“I want to be an entrepreneur. But I’ve
got to start somewhere and real estate will give me some working capital.”
“There are faster ways. Do you own
property now?””
“I’ve got a two-family in the South
End. It’s owner occupied. In other words, I live there.”
“I got it the first time.” She
smoothed out the edge in her voice when she said, “Do you know much about
business?”
“I know enough to get started. Both
my father and grandfather were in business for themselves. They were building
contractors, did very well for a while and then lost everything in some bad
deals. I plan to avoid their mistakes. I want to make as much as I can in real
estate while it’s still hot and then get out. Move on to bigger things.” I
paused and smiled archly. ““Like the restaurant business. I could buy Octavio’s
and fire Regina and Franco.”
She laughed and her face lit up but
she didn’t tip her hand. If she was interested in buying the place for herself
she was awfully good at keeping it a secret.
However, I could see that money and the idea of making a lot of it,
making a killing, had the same effect on her as it had on me. It was a
stimulant that worked like a powerful drug, like an aphrodisiac. Her body
seemed to quiver with excitement, and I thought I could feel an electrical
charge leap between us.
“Maybe I can help you there.”
I was riveted. “Oh really? How?”
“The director of Connecticut Bank
and Trust is a good friend. I could arrange a sort of informational meeting --
you could get together and discuss business ideas without the usual
formalities. Ask some intelligent questions -- he likes bright young people. I’m
sure you’d make a good impression. And if you play your cards right you could
get yourself invited to a party where you could do some serious networking.”
I
had hit pay dirt, except for one problem. “What if he finds out I’m a
bartender?”
“That would probably kill it for
you. He’s a nice man but he’s a snob.”
“So what do I tell him I do for a
living?”
“Dress like an entrepreneur. . . .
And just act the part.” She winked.
Obeying a strong impulse, I leaned
over and kissed her on the mouth. She let me do it and even kissed me back a
little. It was a bold move, I admit, but audacity had always worked for me as a
seduction tactic, whether or not the women were married.
After that night, we started
spending a lot more time together. She would close up the banquet room, I would
close the restaurant, and then we’d meet somewhere for a nightcap, always
someplace elegant and relatively quiet. After a couple of drinks we’d go for a
ride in her husband’’s black Jaguar. We’d drive to a suburban neighborhood and
go to a park which would be deserted after dark and where we would make out in
the Jaguar without making love for about an hour. It still amazes me how brazen
we were. That first aggressive kiss in the hotel bar really started something,
stoked up fires that had burned down to embers over the years of a loveless
marriage. But that’’s as far as it seemed to be going -- all this kissing,
caressing and fondling in the car was making me feel like I was undergoing some
sort of sexual endurance test, and I had a very low threshold for this
particular form of torture.
One night, after about a month in
training for the Kama Sutra Olympics, I told her I was getting very frustrated.
The edge to my voice let her know that she had to give herself to me or give me
up. She looked away and I thought she was going to say she had a mental block
and couldn’t go through with it, but instead she reached over, put her hand on my
thigh and said, “My husband’s out of town.”
