Page 10 of Call Off the Dark

They didn’t shake hands because they were beyond shaking hands. Helen had the uneasy feeling that Tyler was a practiced flirt, and maybe he did funny and charming things like this all the time.

“How old are you?” Helen asked.

“Twenty-five,” Tyler said. “You?”

“Twenty-three.”

They were both still young enough that asking each other’s age was acceptable, even expected.

“Do you ride the elevator often?” she asked in a pretend-earnest tone.

“No, sometimes I take the stairs,” he said with equal earnestness. “You?”

“Everyone’s always trying to outdress each other on floor seven, so I’m usually in heels.” She made a face.

Tyler nodded sympathetically. The great unfairness of high heels. “Right. I don’t have that problem myself.”

“Usually I do like taking the stairs. Sometimes I even race up them.”

He smiled. “You mean you run up the stairs to get there faster, or you mean you try to beat the person you’re with to the top?”

“Both.”

“Ah, competitive.”

Helen shrugged and smiled, and Tyler laughed. “Why do I feel like you’re challenging me to a race?”

“I don’t know,” Helen said, in a tone that meant she did know.

“I’m a runner too.” The corners of Tyler’s mouth curved slightly.

Helen wanted to ask him his mile pace, because immediately the idea crystallized: We could be running partners! But goodness, she was getting ahead of herself, mapping out plans with some guy she’d just met. So instead she said, “Well, unfortunately, I probably should go to my desk and do some work.”

“Me too.”

Neither of them made any move to leave.

He asked, “What’s on the seventh floor?”

“Marketing. What’s on this floor?”

“A global communications agency that specializes in technology and information systems.”

“Wow.” She raised her eyebrows to emphasize just how wow it was.

“It’s nowhere near as important as it sounds.”

“It never is.”

He paused and then smiled, and she could see the hopeful expectation behind it. She inhaled.

He asked, “Will you go to dinner with me?”

“Yes.” She exhaled.

The next evening, Helen began the four-block walk from her apartment to an Italian restaurant. Tyler had suggested the place without knowing it was in her neighborhood, and she was trying not to think of it as a cosmic sign. She’d never been inside the restaurant, but she could tell from the pristine awning and the gleaming valet stand that it was nice. So nice, in fact, she’d tried not to grin too eagerly when he had suggested it. Yesterday, in Coleman Geyer’s fourth-floor kitchen, they’d exchanged phone numbers, and she’d said casually, “I’ll meet you there at six thirty.”

Then Helen had gone up to the seventh floor and stared at the letters and numbers on her computer screen as she replayed in her head every moment that she could recall with him. She did that for over an hour, until a coworker appeared and reminded her about the meeting in the boardroom. So Helen went into the boardroom with a notebook and fixed her face into a pretense of listening as she daydreamed herself back onto the fourth floor.