My pleasure at fixing the drawings didn't last past me figuring out that I had nothing else to do. So you know me, give me a minute free, and I'll fill it moping about my newly 'departed for greener pastures' wife.
I was having a hard time working up any animosity towards Lindsey for kicking me to the curb, because I wore heart shaped blinders where she was concerned. That meant, right or wrong, I directed all my animus toward dickhead Blakemore. After all, I rationalized, she was young and naive and easy prey for an experienced seducer like him. It took me a while to figure out that they were birds of a feather.
I was enjoying my favorite fantasy - you know, the one where Blakemore comes into Maybelline's bar after I've had four shots of Jack, and challenges me to duke it out with him in the parking lot - when my cell phone buzzed. I loosened my fantasy grip around Blakemore's neck with one hand and flipped it open without looking at the caller ID display.
"J&L Construction, this is Josh."
"Good morning Mister Fuller, this is Amber Griffith calling," purred my phone.
"My name's Josh, Amber. Mister Fuller is my dad."
"Okay, Josh it is. I know you received your final decree yesterday; the return receipt was in our morning mail. How are you holding up?"
Her question surprised me, and given where and for whom she worked, I wasn't about to provide her an honest answer.
"Won't they make you walk the plank down there for asking me something like that? I'm the enemy, after all, so it's treason for you to be concerned about me. Plus, knowing who you work for, I'll bet the confidentiality clause you signed was eight pages long."
She laughed throatily and her voice dropped an octave.
"Your case is over and I don't think asking how you feel compromises my moral turpitude. They'd be angrier that I swiped your cell phone number out of the file. Beside, I gave human resources my notice as soon as I returned to the office from your hearing with Hawkins."
That wasn't exactly the best of news to me.
"I hope you didn't resign over me, Amber. I'd hate to have that on my conscience."
"Don't worry about it Josh. My official reason was so I'd have the time to take three courses at State during the term that starts week after next. That is mostly true. I've been going to school at night and on the weekends for almost six years, and I'm only three courses away from my JD. I didn't burn any bridges with CF&B. I plan on opening my own family law practice, but who knows, I might need a reference from them one day."
I sincerely congratulated Amber on her grit for chasing her dream like that. I made her laugh when I bemoaned the fact that the world didn't need the lawyers it had, let alone one more. We bantered back and forth for another minute or two, then she got to the purpose of her call.
"So listen Josh; Friday is my last day at work, and I need to discuss a few things with you. Do you think you could buy a poor unemployed girl dinner Saturday night?"
I didn't hesitate for a second, because I was curious as to what we had to discuss.
"Sure, I can do that. What did you have in mind?"
"Nothing fancy please. After dressing up for work these last six years, I'm about over it."
"Good answer! And I know just the place. Would sevenish work for you?"
"I'll be ready; here's my address..." she said.
I copied down her address and we rang off. I was trying to figure out Amber's angle, when I noticed Mitzi leaning against the jamb of my office door with her arms folded across her chest. It was a posture that more often than not, preceded one of her one-way discussions. Sure enough, as soon as she saw me looking, she started.
"Tell me I just didn't hear you make a date with your wife's lawyer."
This time, I fired right back.
"Tell me you weren't listening in on my private conversation."
She spread her arms at waist level and shrugged.
"I was eaves dropping, it's part of my job description under the 'keep your boss from doing something stupid' section. Now answer the question," she huffed.
It was fun finally catching Miss Know-it-All, not knowing it all. It took me a few seconds to line it up in my head, and then spit it out.
"No I did not make a date with my wife's lawyer. I made a date with my ex-wife's attorney's soon to be former paralegal. She gave her notice on the day of my last hearing, and wants to talk to me about something after she officially no longer works there," I explained.
Of course that explanation wasn't enough for nosy Miss Mitzi, so she perched herself on the corner of my desk and quizzed me about Amber. If the CIA had Mitzi quizzing those Al Qaeda terrorist, water boarding would have been superfluous. After she drained me of every drop of information, she nodded and told me to be careful dealing with Amber. I thought that excellent advice.
Since I had nothing much to occupy me, I whipped out my cell phone and made dinner reservations for Saturday night. But hey, I didn't call some smarmy maître d'; I went straight to the top and called the restaurant's owner.
The phone rang twice.
"Mister Poon's, is this take out or delivery?" asked a sweet, slightly accented Asian voice.
"Hey, Iris, it's neither, but I would like to speak to your dad."
"Joshua!" Iris squealed. "He's right here, but you have to talk to me again when you guys finish."
I promised and she gave the phone to my friend Lee Poon, the owner of Mister Poon's Asian Buffet. Lee and I became friends when he hired me to design the mechanicals for his new restaurant. Lee Poon was a savvy businessman, but he had a real problem expressing himself in English. Consequently, I ended up pushing his new place through the permit and regulatory process.
"Josh-u-ah, how you feeling?" Lee asked.
I replied with my now standard 'just fine'. Lee knew all about my marital woes, because I ate at least two meals a week at his place, and he always found a few minutes to sit with me. After another minute of friendly fractured English banter, I told him my reason for calling.
"Lee, I need a favor. I have a dinner engagement Saturday night, and I'd like to make it really nice."
He jumped at the chance to help me out. Lee was one of those guys who, if they liked you, would do anything for you. Lee and I yakked for another minute then I asked him to give the phone back to his daughter.
"Hi Joshua," said a sweet, slightly accented Asian voice.
I chuckled and responded.
"Hi Rose, I thought your sister wanted to talk to me."
"Grrr," she growled into the phone, "how do you do that?"
Rose was Iris's identical twin sister, and I do mean identical. Even their parents had a hard time telling them apart. Yet somehow, I could. I could even tell them apart on the phone most of the time. It freaked the girls out that I could do that, and they were forever trying to figure out what trick I used. I couldn't help them in that, even if I wanted to, because I didn't have a clue my self.
Iris and Rose were sixteen year old heartbreakers in the making. They were beautiful and smart, with one foot firmly planted in their Chinese heritage and the other in popular teenage American culture. Being very smart young ladies, they were the perfect dutiful daughters to their traditional parents, but when they were off by themselves, they were an entirely different matter.
I knew about their antics, because I helped them out once when their flirting and teasing backfired on them. It was a very lucky day for all of us when I pulled into the Galleria Mall parking garage, just in time to catch two large college guys trying to hustle them into one of those ugly little Scion xB matchboxes.
I roared up like the cavalry and blocked their vehicle with three tons of Ford pickup. When I hopped out of my truck, I was carrying a two foot section of inch and a quarter diameter oak dowel, and a nasty scowl. I sent the girls to my truck and noticed when they walked away, how little the miniskirts and cropped tops they wore actually covered. I twirled the stick as if it was a baton, then flashed out with it and whacked both frat boys a fairly good lick high on the inside of their thighs.
"If you even walk by my nieces on the street, I'll hunt you down and use this stick to puree your nads," I snarled menacingly.
They got the message.
As latchkey kids, Iris and Rose didn't have to worry about sneaking past their parents when I brought them home. I gave them a short lecture, but didn't rat them out to their parents after they promised they'd tone down their conduct. So anyway, because of the incident and my being able to tell them apart, the girls decided that I was 'Uncle Joshua', and their favorite adult. They also teased me unmercifully.
Iris took the phone from Rose and giggled into it.
"We heard Dad say he'd make things nice for your date. We'll help too."
I thanked her for that and rang off the phone before she could say anything outrageous.
The day Amber called was a slack day at work. The next day was not. I had two site visits to conduct, and once back at the office, preliminary proposals for both jobs to write. But I was busy and my heart especially liked that.
I walked into a pleasant surprise when I returned to the office, and found Gil Weaver sitting beside Mitzi's desk. Even though I was fairly certain they'd never met before, the two of them were flirting as if they were in high school. I had to admit that they looked good together, and I wondered why I'd never tried to set them up with each other. When I cocked my eyebrows at them, Gil had the grace to blush, but Mitzi just smirked at me and winked. Since I'd gotten a reaction out of Gil, I kept on him.
"Hello Gil, did you come here to see me, or to hit on my office manager?" I asked.
Old Gil was pretty fast on his feet.
"Oh I came to see you, Josh, but once I met Mitzi, I forgot why."
Gil remembered the reason he was there as soon as he was seated on one of the comfortable lounge chairs in my office. He dug a sheaf of papers out of his briefcase and handed it to me.
"My friend, Will Hawkins, hired Weaver-Wilson to turn this drawing into a site plan and engineered drawings for a unique twenty-eight hundred square foot, two story log residence. We don't normally take small residential jobs, but Hawk is a friend of mine. I'd like you to take a trip up to the site in North Carolina and see if this is feasible. If it is, I want you to ramrod the job."
The drawings were a professional version of the idea I'd sketched out for Hawk while sitting in his chambers a few months ago. I figured that Hawk had never mentioned my name to Gil about this, because of the appearance of a conflict of interest issue.
"Sure Gil, it looks like an interesting project. When am I going up there?"
"Hawk is taking a week off at the end of the month, can you go then?"
I checked my schedule and told him yes.
I was nervous in the service Saturday night, when I stood at the door of Amber Griffith's townhouse. Even though I was still refusing to call it a date, taking Amber to dinner was the first time in six years that I'd been out socially with a woman other than Lindsey. As I stood hesitating in front of her door, I hoped I wasn't dressing down too much in jeans, a collared shirt and my good python skin cowboy boots. Only one way to tell, I figured, so I took a breath and knocked on the door.
Amber opened the door a few seconds after I knocked. She took one look at me and grinned, because her outfit was almost identical to mine. She was wearing an above the knee denim skirt, and a solid color burgundy button-up blouse the same shade as the predominant color on my plaid shirt. Her legs were bare and she wore tassel loafers. Her make up was minimal and her blond mane was pulled back in a long ponytail. Amber was a very pretty woman, no matter what she wore.
"I'm taking us being dressed alike as a good Omen, Josh," she said, kissing me on the cheek.
We made light conversation as I drove towards Mister Poon's. Amber told me about her going away luncheon, and how she was going to miss some of the people she worked with.
"I'll miss Cindy and some of the other admins and paralegals," she'd said, "but I can't think of a single attorney there I'll miss. That includes Sonia Peoples, and I worked for her for three years.
"To me, practicing law means making sure my client is treated fairly and that the scales of justice are balanced. At Crossman, the attorneys are never satisfied until the scales are tilted fully to the side of their client. When I saw that Sonia had misrepresented the truth to make that happen for Lindsey, I decided I'd had enough and put my college plan into action."
When we walked into my friend Lee's restaurant, I was expecting to receive a friendly greeting from him and a nice reserved table in a quiet corner near the buffet, but out of traffic. That is not even close to what happened though, as both Lee and his wife Ling met us at the hostess station with respectful bows.
"Mister Josh-u-ah, welcome back to my humble restaurant. Your usual table is ready, please follow me."
Lee said that line with surprisingly good diction. I figure his daughters must have rehearsed him a few times with it. I was curious, but acted as if it was the norm for my visits, and bowed slightly in return.
"Excellent, Mister Poon, lead the way," I replied.
Lee surprised me when he went right on by the large customer seating area, to a door marked private. We went through the door and down a short hall way until we came to a lighted 'EXIT' sign above a steel fire door. An older smiling man in a white chef's smock and hat opened the door for us.
"I cook special for you tonight, Mister Josh," the old man said with a bow.
I gave him a slight bow in return.
"I'm sure it will be excellent as always, Chef Kang," I replied formally.
Kang was the head chef at Mister Poon's, and a very nice gentleman — outside his kitchen. Inside his domain, though, he was an absolute tyrant. Because of his insistence on cleanliness, his kitchen was one of only three in the entire city actually commended by the health department during the last annual inspection cycle.
I knew where we were when we stepped through the door, because I had a hand in the creation of the small tranquility garden in front of us.
The garden only totaled about two thousand square feet, but it was so artfully laid out, it appeared much larger. One side of the garden was bordered by an eight foot tall, stucco covered, concrete block wall that separated it from the parking lot. Since I designed the wall, and I hate boring straight lines, the wall had two sensuous curves in it. I also had the cells of the concrete blocks pumped full of foam to deaden the traffic noise from the parking lot and road.
A ten by twelve wooden pagoda style gazebo sat on an elevated mound in the center of the space. The pagoda was oriented so that each side was facing in a cardinal direction. Narrow gravel paths radiated out from the pagoda towards the points of the compass. The paths divided the garden in four different areas. Each area was planted in different plants and flowers, with the one closest to the kitchen door dedicated to herbs and spices.
Normally there were a few wrought iron benches under the pagoda where employees sat when they were on break. However, tonight, the benches had been replaced with a table and two chairs. Standing behind each of the chairs was one of Lee's daughters. Iris and Rose were wearing identical high collared, tight fitting red Mandarin gowns with intricately detailed peach blossoms embroidered on them. The girls looked stunning in those dresses, with their hair piled atop their head in some complicated do.
Lee walked us up to the pagoda and patted me on my back.
"Enjoy your dinner Josh-u-ah and Miss Amber. I must work now, or Ling not happy," he said with a grin.
Amber and I exchanged so-longs with Lee, and then turned back towards the table. When we did, the twins gestured toward the chairs.
"Welcome, Sir and Madame," they said simultaneously in bogus sing-song accents.
I suppressed a smile and went along with them for the moment. I said thank you in Cantonese, and seated my dinner companion. The table was set beautifully, with colorful blue and yellow Chinese dishes. I let the girls fuss over us another minute, then grabbed Iris, pulled her into my lap, and tickled her. Iris squealed in surprise, but didn't try to get up. Amber looked shocked, but Rose just giggled.
"Amber, I'd like you to meet Lee's beautiful daughters and my favorite teenagers. This is Iris, and the cackling one beside you is Rose."
Amber was darting her eyes from one girl to the other when Iris slapped me none to gently on the arm.
"Don't listen to him, Amber. We are just poor immigrant serving girls and he is our lecherous old uncle trying to corrupt us," Iris said.
Amber and I both laughed as I helped Iris off my lap. Then both girls disappeared into the restaurant to bring out our food.
I know that I probably messed up the twins' plan, but when Amber looked with big bright eyes at the long stemmed pink rose lying across her plate, I had to do something before she got the wrong idea. Lee and the twins had gone all out, thinking I was bringing Amber here for a romantic evening. That wasn't the case at all, so I needed to tone down the mood before Amber decided I was just another creep trying to weasel my way into her pants.
"I've never seen more identical twins. How in the world do you tell them apart?" Amber asked as soon as the girls were out of earshot.
"I don't have the faintest idea. I just know which is which, no matter how hard they try to fool me. It drives them bonkers that I can do that."
Amber smiled and looked around.
"This is a beautiful little spot. Sitting here, it's hard to believe that we are in the middle of the city."
I nodded and told her about it.
"I helped Missus Poon design it and my carpenter crew and I built this pagoda as a surprise for him one weekend when he was out of town. The staff pitched in with the construction, and they also take care of the garden without ever being asked. They relax out here on their breaks, and consider it theirs. The plants, flower bed and herb garden are all their work. All we did was put in the pagoda and paths."
Chef Kang out did himself that night as course after course of my favorite Schezwan hot and spicy dishes came through the door. Kang had also prepared a more traditional menu for Amber. Each dish was perfectly cooked and elegantly presented.
The girls left after delivering a tray of fresh cubed melon and pastries. They both gave me kisses on the cheek and told Amber they were please to meet her. Iris also managed to whisper a parting shot in my ear.
"She is smoking hot, Joshie, good luck tonight," she said, then for good measure the little minx stuck her tongue in my ear.
With the meal finished and us all alone, I looked over at Amber expectantly.
"You said you had some things to discuss with me," I reminded her.
She took a sip of the excellent Gougi Jui (wolfberry wine) that the girls had poured, and her cheeks turned pink. I thought she blushed because of the potent wine, but that wasn't the case.
"Ah yeah, well about that, I really could have told you on the phone I guess. I just wanted you to be certain that I wasn't involved in anyway in figuring the first settlement Lindsey proposed. Like I hinted at before, Sonia probably did that at Blakemore's instigation. After that second meeting with Judge Hawkins, I overheard Lindsey tell Sonia that Mister Blakemore meant you no harm, he was just being over zealous in protecting her interest."
She gave me an embarrassed smile and continued.
"I know how you still feel about your ex, but look how nice an evening we're having. I like you a lot, Josh, and I can help you get over her. We can have fun, no strings attached and no hidden agenda. All you have to do is give me a chance."
I sat back in my chair and let the air escape my lungs through my pursed lips. I had been halfway expecting Amber to dish me some dirt on Lindsey and Blakemore, or maybe warn me of something sneaky about to happen to me. What I never in a million years expected her to say was what she came out with. I looked at her as she searched my face for some reaction to her confession. Her look was curious but guileless, she'd put her feelings on the table and left it up to me to decide what to do.
"That's an incredibly appealing offer, Amber, and I'm probably a fool not to jump on it, but it was out of the blue to me, and I need to think about it. Okay?"
She smiled and bobbed her head.
"Fair enough," she said.
We spent nearly three hours sitting in the gazebo talking. Amber told me about growing up poor, as the last of six children in a proud, close-knit family. She'd been raised to be self-sufficient and was proud of what she'd accomplished on her own so far.
I told her about my family and my time in the military. She was intrigued by my description of my parents, because hers were just the opposite. She laughed disbelievingly at some of what I said.
"Don't say you haven't been warned," I warned.
It was just after eleven when I walked Amber to her door. The evening had gone by at the speed of light for me, and I was tickled to death about that. Amber was the exact opposite of Lindsey in almost every way, personality wise. Where Lindsey was serious and seldom smiled, Amber saw the humor in almost everything I found amusing. She laughed at my good jokes and groaned at the bad ones. Amber was focused on achieving something, but she wasn't driven like Lindsey.
I don't remember how Amber and my lips came together, but I sure remember that kiss. Amber put more passion on our goodbye kiss after our first date than I'd gotten from Lindsey in six years of knowing her. When Amber broke the kiss and leaned back, I opened my eyes and looked into hers. Her pupils were huge and her eyes a mile deep.
"I knew kissing you would be this good," she panted.
Then she kissed me again and the second kiss was even better.
We stopped at two kisses and I headed home to think about what she was offering.