Walking through the maze of cubes back to my desk from the snack machines I see a familiar back hunched over a desk, short dark hair, dark tan arms, and a bra strap very visible through her polo shirt. But that was long ago and a different company and I discount the possibility, until I hear her voice, and bizarre laugh, carrying over the cube walls. Twelve years since I have heard that laugh, that raucous voice, that smoky come-hither, vaguely promising tone.

I remember kneeling on an office floor, my head stuck under her desk, fiddling with a confusing mass of wires and plugs, hearing her ask "Are you really getting married?"

I bumped my head getting up. I mean really, what odd behavior. She calls me over to plug something in under her desk and then while I'm under the desk on all fours fiddling with the plugs, asks me that?

Holding my head I crawled backwards from under the desk. "Yes" I answered painfully.

"Oh you poor man" she answered, kneeling next to me, "I am so sorry. Here, let me see."

Which of course raised even more questions. Was I a poor man she was sorry for because I bumped my head, or a poor man she was sorry for because I was getting married?

Whichever it was, she took my dazed head in her hands, holding my face in front of hers, and about to be married or not, I wanted nothing more than to kiss her.

I couldn't of course, not there in the office, but I think she got it. "I think you're plugged in now" I offered. "Why don't you try turning it on?" Which is about as soft a lob as I've ever pitched, and she'd always been a fan of my pitching, standing on the sidelines of the company softball games, cheering, though I always used to think I was imagining it, harder for me than anyone else.

She hit the lob, and hit it hard. "I'd be happy to turn it on," she answered, rising slowly, inch by inch in front of me, though there really aren't very many inches to her. Standing over me, her breasts just over my head, looking down at me, she reached out and played with my hair before hitting the big red switch. "Thank you for plugging me in" she purred, "before you went and got married."

That was the last real conversation we'd had, beyond the occasional nodded hello in the halls. She had taken to jogging at lunchtime with her married boss, and apparently to more than jogging. When she became visibly pregnant they fired him, and not long after that he left his wife and she quit the company and married him.

Twelve years. Twelve long years. The next chance I get I walk back to her cube and knock. She turns, and stares. Then recognition enters her eyes.

"Hey! Wow! Don't you look different!" A comment I am unable to categorize as observation, insult or compliment. She looks no different at all.

"Hey wow yourself," I answer, "It's been a very long time."

"Yeah. Wow. This is incredible. Cool." She stares me in the eyes with that same weird quizzical look she always had.

I throw caution to the winds. "You still jogging at lunch?" I ask. A dumb thing to say, but innocent enough to the casual observer.

I can see several biting responses flitting across her face, but she finally realizes I mean no condemnation and smiles fetchingly. "Nah," she answers, "too old for that. I just walk now."

"Cool. Let me know if you'd like to walk at lunch some day. I'd love to catch up."

She appraises me some more, her eyes sparkling with some inner amusement. "I'd like that," she finally answers. "Let's do it tomorrow."