As temps, we both had multiple bosses, who each gave us tasks to do, and thankfully, didn’t always communicate very well with each other. So if any one boss saw us filing papers or writing a report, they understood that we were likely doing this under the instructions of another boss. This allowed Mireille and I to do things like leave work Friday afternoon at 2:00 and go drink wine and talk for an hour and a half at a cafe and then come back and finish off the rest of the work day. Or if we snuck out at 11:30, we’d take long lunches and walk around the South of Market Area of San Francisco and not return until 1:15. Each boss just figured we were doing something for another boss. We were never questioned. It was a wonderful time.
What I loved about Mireille was her exoticism and intelligence. She was ridiculously hot with a style all her own, but the fact that she was French and we could speak to one another in what was for me a foreign tongue really turned me on. It somehow made all those French classes and a year studying and working in France worthwhile. (I was temping at 26 and wondering what the hell I was doing with my life and education; thus romancing Mireille seemed like a miraculous affirmation of all my studies.
She had a way of questioning me and America and her own world in a way that made me think, and we had wonderful conversations during our wine stops and long walks. It's hard to convey here, but her mind turned me on as much as her face and body did.
One day, Mireille arrived at work decked out in something completely different. She wore professional black leather pumps, a tight gray cotton skirt that fell just above her knee, and a tight black halter top. She wore her blond hair up that day, coiled behind her head in a way that exposed the soft beauty of her neck. I wasn’t there to witness her enter the office that morning, but as she told me later, her outfit caused quite a stir among the normally respectful and well behaved professionals on the 5th floor. She made a point of coming down to the 2nd floor later, ostensibly to get some files. She sauntered by my cubicle, ruffled her papers and said, “Hi.” I turned to see her smile, cock her head ever so slightly to the right, and walk into the other office room. I still remember the way her slightly tanned shoulders looked under the black straps of her halter top, her slender neck shifting to the right, and the firm profile of her breasts under that halter top. I careened my head to watch her walk away in her tight gray skirt.
About a quarter to noon, she sent me an email: “Lunch?”
I wrote back, “Absolutely. By the way, you look so, so hot in that outfit.”
“
See you downstairs in five minutes,” she said.
I pushed my office chair away from my desk and exhaled. I knew right then and there that, no matter what, I was going to have her for lunch that day.