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supportive. A little. At first he seemed more surprised than anything else. That’s probably because we never discuss our private lives at work. All I know about Mr. Spaulding is what I can tell from his appearance: a man in his mid-sixties with a receding hairline who wears nice blue suits with gaudy ties because he thinks they make him seem hipper than he is. He used to wear a wedding ring and keep a picture of an attractive middle-aged woman on his desk.Then one day the picture and the ring disappeared. A few weeks later someone tacked on the cafeteria bulletin board a photograph of him with an extremely young woman from the Society section of a suburban newspaper. I was sure he’d freak when he saw it. But no. He just smiled and re-tacked it straighter.
    Okay, so I also know he’s a big pathetic cliché. If our office building had a garage he’d be cruising around in a cherry-red Corvette with a license plate that read “Loaded.”
    But Mr. Spaulding was decent about my engagement. After cautioning me not to use company time to plan my wedding, or to allow my wedding to interfere with my job—the monthly review and assignment of feature articles—or with my new appointment as editor of our annual “Faces in the City” issue, he gave me a hearty handshake and reminded me to request my honeymoon time as soon as possible. Of course I will. That’s #3 on my list of Things to Do.
    Do men get this much “counseling” when they announce their wedding at work?

august 23rd
    I had dinner with Suzy Parks tonight. It’d been months since we last spoke, so she hadn’t heard about the engagement.
    I met Suzy eight years ago at South Publishing when she was a junior-level editor in the Y.A. division. She hired me after a summer internship to be her assistant. That was back when I was still naïve enough to find book publishing attractive and glamorous. I quickly realized that only masochists and people with trust funds can survive in book publishing. Suzy is the first and has the second, so needlessto say she’s done well for herself. She’s moved up through the ranks and last year at age forty-two was appointed Senior V.P. of East Coast Publishing. We get together for dinner every few months to catch up and for her to admit to a secret fantasy of my returning to work as her assistant.
    While Suzy respects my career choices, it seems that I’m the best “message taker” she’s ever had.
    But I don’t mind. It’s flattering, in an odd sort of way. After all, I consider Suzy to be my professional role model. Besides, she
always
picks up the check.
    After an hour of chitchatting about our jobs, books we’ve read, movies we’ve seen, and dream vacations we’d take if she had the time and I had the money, I told her I was getting married.
    Suzy fell silent, and before I knew it her eyes were welling with tears. Now we’re talking! This is the type of reaction I expected from all my friends.
    As her tears rolled down her cheeks and her nose began to run, she tried desperately to catch her breath and say something. But she couldn’t. She was overwhelmed with emotion and I was amazed at the depth of her love and affection for me.
    Then I started to get emotional. So much has happened over these last eight years. I remember back when Suzy used to dream of being a senior editor. And I used to dream of dating someone for longer than six weeks, and here I am getting married!
    I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of kindness toward Suzy. I even considered answering her phones for a couple of days.
    Suzy continued to cry. Her napkin was soaked. I gave her mine and when the tears showed no sign of stopping I signaled the waiter for more. He took one look at the river ofmucus flowing from Suzy’s nose and raced to the stockroom. It occurred to me that Suzy must care more about me than I realized. That after all these years she’d come to look at me as a little sister rather than a friend.
    But now I was starting to get