Lunch

Lunch

He took me to lunch, once, at Marshall Field’s Department Store in Chicago. He, being from Chicago, was giving me a local treat, while the other conference goers were more likely eating at hotels or tourists spots. He was a professional friend, meaning I saw him a couple of times every year at professional meetings, and so I knew a lot about his public self, but not much about his private self.

We studied the menu.

“I’ve never cheated on my wife,” he said, “and I never will.”

I looked up at that.

“But if I did, you would be the one. “

I wasn’t sure what the proper response would be.

“You’re such a classy gal,” he went on. “You’ve always turned me on.”

“Well, OK then,” I said, and turned back to the menu.

And when he died, too young, I wrote to his wife, “I want you to know how much he loved you and your girls. He told everybody so.”