While Sophia had given Jane her phone number at the office, Jane didn’t have time to call until her morning break, after the breakfast rush was over with. Even so, she stared at the phone for a while before daring to dial the number. “So, how are you today?” she asked once her older friend was on the line.

“Feeling a little better,” Sophia admitted. “How about you?”

“Better, I think,” Jane replied. If the truth were told, she hadn’t slept all that well; things had kept turning over in her mind – questions, assumptions, fantasies. “I’m sorry that I don’t have much time to talk, but I’ve been thinking over what we talked about last night, and I’m, well, interested.”

“I have to admit, I was wondering.”

“You’re not the only one who’s been wondering. Look, it’s not a done deal yet in my mind, but I’d like to know more about it.”

“I thought you might,” she could hear Sophia grin. “I haven’t told Rick anything about it yet, so it’s not a done deal on this end, either. I guess we need to talk some more and maybe get down to some specifics before I hit him with it.”

“Sounds like a good deal to me. I’ve got plenty of questions, and plenty of things that aren’t clear in my mind yet.”

“What would you say if we got together the same place as yesterday, about the same time? A little later would be nice, that way I wouldn’t have to take off work. I can probably get there around five-fifteen.”

“That works for me,” Jane told her, feeling like she’d just taken a big step she wasn’t sure she wanted to take. But it was done, and she had to go on from there. “See you then.”

Even though the day was moderately busy, the afternoon dragged past slowly. There was no other way to describe it; it seemed like wasting time while waiting for an important appointment. And Jane conceded that it might well be more important than she thought.

All too slowly quitting time rolled around. For once Rebecca was a little late showing up, which never seemed to happen, but that was fine to a point since Jane was getting antsy and was going to have more time to kill than she’d had yesterday. Finally her relief arrived, looking a little frazzled and reporting that her car had broken down. Jane told her it wasn’t a problem but that it would have been if it had gone much longer.

It only took a few minutes to cash out and clock out before Jane was out of the Mountain Grove, heading up the street to the Silver Rail. Like the day before, it was quiet inside; she went to the same booth she and Sophia had been sitting in the day before. The waitress came over, and she ordered a wine cooler like she’d had yesterday, saying that she expected her friend along shortly.

With the wine cooler in her hand, she had some more time to think. While she didn’t have her mind made up by any means, could it be that this deal was starting to sound a little too good? There had to be something wrong with it . . .

A couple times she all but wrote it off and left, but her curiosity was still strong and it made her decide she might as well stay around and find out what she could. She was just getting antsy, and she knew it. She glanced at her watch after a while; coming up on 5:30. Was Sophia coming at all?

Finally Sophia came in, and came over to sit down across the table from her. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, “But I got to talking with Rick and the time just slipped by.”

“Is he still up for this deal?”

“I think so,” Sophia replied, settling in. “I didn’t want to tell him too much just yet and get his hopes up, but I finally had to break down and admit that I was going to be meeting with a possible prospect. He seemed interested, although I didn’t tell him very much about you. I see that as a victory of sorts.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Well, how do I say this? Let’s just say I don’t have him all the way talked into the concept. I mean, it was all right and good when it was just theoretical, but now that there’s a tinge of reality to it, he still seems interested. That was a little more than I thought I would see.”

“You’re telling me he isn’t crazy about the idea.”

“Well, not like that,” Sophia sighed. “It’s just that it doesn’t, well, seem real to him. I suppose I can understand that. Jane, I guess what I’m trying to say is that he’s been disappointed so much in regards to girls and women that he gave up hope long ago. Now that there’s a possibility that he might actually wind up with a woman is something like a fantasy too good to be true for him.”

“I understand, I guess,” Jane shrugged. “There have been times in the past day or so it’s seemed pretty much like a fantasy to me, too.”

“I suppose that can’t be avoided. Look, Jane, I’m flying a little blind on this one, too. I’ve never done anything like this before but it seems to make sense to me. I didn’t actually come up with this idea until fairly recently. I wound up having to sell it to him a little at a time, having him suggest some things I hadn’t already presented to him just so he could feel like he was having some input on the idea.”

“Leading him on?”

“Well, it’s what has to be done with men, isn’t it? I suppose I pushed it at him a little hard, but he seems to be buying into it a little now. To tell the truth, he didn’t think it could be done but was willing to give it a try. He finally told me to find him someone I think is reasonably compatible and he’d marry her. I think he did it in hopes of getting me to shut up about it, not expecting me to succeed.”

“And now that it looks like it might really happen,” Jane surmised, “he’s more than a bit surprised.”

“That about sums it up,” Sophia nodded. “Look, it became clear to me not long after I became his secretary that my real job was going to be to trying keep him more or less sane. He was going crazy from not having much to do, but there was too good a reason to not just quit, and both are still true. It comes down to the fact that I figure Rick needs a life, and I think the key to getting one is a wife. He needs the things a wife can do for him.”

“You mean like sex?”

“Well yes, but more than that. If it was just sex, hookers are easy enough to find, well, for most people, maybe not for him as shy as he is. He needs someone to cook his meals, at least something other than pizza, do his laundry, things like that. Someone to bring order to his life, give him something objective outside himself. Like I said yesterday, he needs someone to engage his imagination and his interest. Other than me, he doesn’t have that now.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s a little hard to imagine. I’m having trouble getting a good mental picture of him.”

“Well, I suppose that’s understandable. He’s not bad looking, just, well, average looking. I have no doubt he would clean up pretty well but he mostly wears jeans and T-shirts to the office, which is one of the reasons higher management isn’t thrilled with him. They’re stuck with him just about as badly as he’s stuck with them. Comsector isn’t like some of those little computer companies that appreciate genius. It’s a big outfit, and it’s been around a while. The bigger they get and the older they get, the more they get away from the quirks that go with the brilliance their technology depends on. That makes him seem, well, out of place, and a little odder than most of the people who work there. If it was one of the new-line high-tech startups, like he’s worked for in the past, he wouldn’t seem out of place at all.”

“I suppose that’s something that can be lived with, or at least adjusted to. I mean, given a chance, I’m pretty blue jeans and T-shirt myself.”

“Oh, it’s something that could be modified to make him be at least a little more respectable, especially if you were to go about it right,” Sophia pointed out. “On the other hand, it might not be worth trying to change. Whatever happens, he’s not going to be at Comsector ten minutes after his contract runs out if he lasts that long. He’d leave now if he could figure out something else to do, but he doesn’t have any idea what that might be. That’s the real issue. Clothes don’t make the man, at least in this case.” She let out a sigh before she continued. “In fact, it might be just as well that you’re pretty much a jeans and T-shirt type yourself. I’m afraid a beautiful, high-maintenance woman would scare the crap out of him. You’re reasonably attractive, but obviously not high-maintenance, so he’s going to be more comfortable with you. In fact, that was one of the things I was looking for.”

“I have to ask what other kinds of things you were looking for. You mentioned yesterday that you had a list and that most of the women you talked to didn’t meet the qualifications.”

“Well, not so much a physical list as a mental list,” Sophia admitted. “A candidate would have no other attachments, obviously. No particular career she can’t walk away from, at least for the period it would take to get comfortable with Rick. Not on any kind of a heavy head trip, especially not a religious trip, and he isn’t either. No kids; I think he could get along with them just fine but to start right out with them, I think they’d be more of a complication than he could handle.”

“That makes two of us. I’m not opposed to the idea of having kids, but I want to know I’m in a stable relationship before I have them, and I can see it might take a while if I were to go through with this. What else?”

“Oh, the woman would need to be moderately attractive, low maintenance, weight somewhat proportionate to height. She needs to be friendly and outgoing, tolerant of differences in people, and willing to go the extra distance to reach out to a guy who’s more than a little bit of an introvert around other people. You caught my eye right away as a restaurant hostess because you were cheerful and service-oriented, wanting to make people happy. A candidate needs to be intelligent and willing to be interested in a variety of things that might interest him. In other words, flexible and open to change and options. Really, in the beginning I thought it wouldn’t be all that complicated.”

“It strikes me as being tougher than you might think,” Jane said. “I was sort of comparing that list to my roommate, and she probably fails on most of the items.”

“You’re right,” Sophia shook her head. “Yesterday I was surprised at how hard it looked like it was going to turn out to be. But at this point I haven’t seen anything that would disqualify you. In fact, you’re beginning to look like a pretty good match for him.”

“I’m worrying that I’m being oversold,” Jane admitted flatly. “Look, my roommate has a boyfriend who seemed like a pretty good guy when I first met him. A little arrogant and full of himself, but you have to expect that with a lot of guys. But once I got to know him even a little I began to realize what an asshole he really is. The hell of it is that my roomie doesn’t seem to realize it in spite of all the trouble they’ve had in just the short time I’ve known them. This Rick guy may seem like a pretty nice guy to you, but it’s what you don’t know yet that could hurt.”

“There is that risk,” Sophia admitted. “I’m doing what I can to try to minimize the risks, but there’s always going to be some remaining. Like you say, it’s what you don’t know. If something comes up you can’t manage, well, that’s why the prenuptial option is there. Worse comes to worst, it’s nothing that can’t be solved by six weeks in Nevada. If that happens, I’d suggest Reno over Las Vegas. Catch the season right and Lake Tahoe is pretty nice, or at least so I’m told. Once you get past the glitz, Vegas is just a dull place in the middle of a pretty uninteresting desert.”

“Well, yeah. I’ve never been there but that’s pretty much how I’ve always figured it.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Sophia said. “If you go through with this, I’m hoping you’ll be willing to look at it as having potential in the long term. If you’re thinking of this as putting in a year or two years and then bailing out, we might as well know now. I don’t want to saddle Rick with a girl I would think of as a gold digger. All I’m asking is that you intend to make a reasonable attempt at developing a long-term relationship.”

“That’s how I want to think about it,” Jane told her. “But you never know what’s going to happen.”

“That’s true, but there’s a good chance it will work out. As far as I know, Rick doesn’t have any real bad habits other than being a bit obsessive about things. He gets involved with coding and computers and stuff and loses track of time. He’s not violent or anything, but he doesn’t have a lot of self-esteem in anything other than computers, and he doesn’t care about himself very much. I mean, clean clothes, food, and things like that tend to take the low road, so he needs someone to be gently on his ass about it. He’s not perfect by any means, but there’s material there to work with.”

“Well, yeah. But I mean, what happens if we go through with this and then I find out all he’s interested in is anal sex or something?”

“You want the simple answer to that? It takes two to tango, and it’s as simple as that. If he wants to pitch, you have to be willing to catch or it’s all theoretical. But I’d have to say that it might be worth some experimentation. I can tell you right now you’re going to be having him do things he’s never done before, and that means sex as much as anything else. But that also means the chances are going to come up to do something you’ve never done before, and there’s no point in having a closed mind about it.” Sophia grinned and went on. “Who knows? You might like it. But I have to add that as far as I know he’s never had any chance to develop the taste for things like that. I mean, I’ve gone through the history file on his computer a few times and there’s nothing extreme there. I think his interest in what porn he does look at is mostly wistful dreaming.”

“You really keep a watch on him, don’t you?” Jane grinned.

“Well, of course I have to if I’m going to look out for him,” Sophia laughed. “Like I told you yesterday, even though I was once a hippie, I’ve become a Jewish grandmother, so I meddle. It’s part of the job description. If I didn’t meddle we wouldn’t be talking about this.”

“I suppose not,” Jane grinned.

“Look, I realize this really seems a little out of line, but it’s something that’s going to have to get done, because Rick will never get off his ass and do it himself. Bluntly, he’s too scared of being rejected again. I’m in a good position to lend a hand, and I’m of a mind to do it, so I do. And don’t think that if this goes through that’ll be the end of me. I’ll do what I can to make it work, and if that means I have to stick my nose in where it really doesn’t belong, well, so be it. But I’m in this for the long haul, too. If you need a friend, a mediator, a confidant, an advisor, well, I’ll be available, at least most of the time, even after I retire. I want to be your friend as much as I am Rick’s, and maybe I can help make something work if the two of you can’t seem to figure it out yourselves.”

“Well, if this gets off the ground, I expect I’ll be needing some help. Why might you not be around?”

“I’m planning on going on some of my husband’s research trips. Most of them are to places that are hot, primitive, and uncomfortable, and for those I’m just as happy to stay here in Colorado. But next winter he’s planning on going to Australia to do some research. He doesn’t like winter any more than I do, and it’s summer there when it’s winter here. I probably can’t be of much help with the research, but I’m sure interested in seeing some different territory.”

It was nice for Jane to think about something that wasn’t directly related to her concerns about this potential arrangement with Rick. “What’s that all about?”

“The book Rob’s working on. There are some records he needs to see that probably are only easily available in Australia. It’s nice that he has something to keep his mind occupied, or else retirement would really be a drag for him. I think that’s why I’m so sensitive to the problem Rick has with not having anything to do. I can see it dragging him down, just like it dragged Rob down.”

“I suppose that could be an issue.”

“As far as I’m concerned, it is the main issue,” Sophia said. “And realistically, it’s one I can’t help much with. I think it’s going to take more than a woman for him to deal with it. It’s going to take a wife.”

Jane picked up her wine cooler – she hadn’t touched it since Sophia had been there. Right now she needed a moment to think. She wasn’t sure she’d found out whatever it was she wanted to learn, but she wasn’t sure that she was going to be able to get it from Sophia, anyway.

The whole thing sounded like it could have potential, there was no doubt about it, she thought as she took a sip of the drink. In a way she felt sympathetic to what Sophia described as Rick’s problem of not knowing what to do, because she felt that way herself. It was clear that art history wasn’t going to be putting food on the table or paying her rent anytime soon, yet she couldn’t figure out what it was she wanted to do, nor could she see a way to do it. The best she’d been able to come up with was to find a different job, hopefully something that would hold her interest better than being a restaurant hostess had done for her. And she hadn’t had much luck with that.

She was dissatisfied with where she was in life, if not downright bored. Her life consisted mostly of hanging on, hoping something better might come along. It was hard to say, but there was the chance this could be it – or at least something different. More and more, it began to seem like it might be worth a try. If Sophia was right, if this Rick proved to be a nice guy, then it might be worth the effort.

To face facts, in the last day or so Jane had started to realize that she needed someone else in her life. She’d never had much luck with finding anyone she really wanted to stay with, and the few dates she’d had had turned sour early on. When she thought back over her own history, it was surprising she’d managed to be with any one guy long enough to get as far as having sex, not that her sex life had been any good at all.

Rick might not be all that great a prospect, but considering her track record, neither was she. She thought about Madelyn and Walt, and if ever there was a disaster bound to happen, there it was. This at least seemed to avoid some of those pitfalls thanks to Sophia’s involvement. Would it work? There were no guarantees in life, after all. And, if it didn’t, there would at least be the pre-nup option, and she’d come out of it with some money and hopefully a little wiser.

And the alternative? More of the same little or nothing she’d been tired of for quite a while, that much was sure.

She held the glass in front of her face, turned it all over again in her mind, then took another sip. “All right,” she said finally. “I’m not sold yet, but I’m about ninety percent there.”

“But?”

“Two things. I just can’t make myself go into this totally sight unseen. I’m not saying we have to have a long dating relationship, but I want to at least meet the guy and see if any obvious red flags wave at me. I realize that one meeting may not tell me very much, but I at least want to say I’ve taken a glance before I leaped.”

“Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?” Sophia grinned.

“I think it’s getting worked on hard enough as it is,” Jane replied dryly. “I’m already so far out of my comfort zone on this it’s not funny. This is not like your grandparents, who at least shared a culture where this thing was common and the likelihood they would be pretty compatible.”

“Fair enough,” Sophia said soberly. “To be honest, I think Rick would say pretty much the same thing. How about if my husband and I were to take you and Rick out to dinner, maybe tomorrow night? Rick gets along pretty well with Rob, so that might avoid a few awkward silences.”

“That’d work. You pick the time and place, and I’ll be there. I really don’t want my roomie to know about this just yet. She’s going to be a real pain in the ass about it if it happens, and I’d just as soon she doesn’t have that much time to pick at me about it.”

“Let’s make it early, say seven. I’ll make reservations somewhere and let you know. Rob and I are pretty much early-to-bed, early-to-rise types, and that’ll give us some time without it getting late for us. You might want to dress up a little. I mean, nothing fancy, but something besides a T-shirt and jeans. I’ll lean on Rick about it a little, too. After all, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.”

“I suppose,” Jane sighed. “But, well, dressing up a little might not make the first impression either of us want to have.”

“That might be true, but it’s more important for you than it is for him. What was the other thing you had in mind?”

“I want to make sure the pre-nuptial agreement is all worked out and signed, with all the questions ironed out. I’m hoping I don’t have to use it, but I want to have the fallback there in case I do.”

“I hate to say it, but you’re probably right. I suppose I’d better let Rob handle the financial aspects of it. Since he spent a lot of his life doing tax preparation, he’s certain to be better at it than I am.”

“Sounds reasonable, but we’d better have a lawyer sign off on it.”

“That can be arranged,” Sophia smiled. “I’m sure Rob will know someone who can do it on short notice. Anything else?”

“No, not really.”

“Then let’s have another drink to celebrate. I have to say this turned into being a lot less of a problem than I really expected it would be.”

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