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Right.”
    “So far he’s just some guy,” I retorted.
    “As long as you remember he’s not Jason Stewart, that should be more than enough.”
    “Jason who?”
    Sandy smiled. My e-mail alert dinged again.
To: [email protected]
That’s the piece of data I needed. Unfortunately, I also just got a call from work. Apparently the morning’s problems have made a repeat appearance, and I need to take care of them. But I’ll call you. Soon. Good night.
    Well. That would teach me to get all worked up about giving my number out. At least I could be pretty sure he wasn’t a psycho. He definitely wasn’t in a rush to ring my phone off the hook. But I understood better than anybody how work could creep out of the office and pounce when no one was looking. I wondered how long it would take for him to get out from under it all. Looking at my own pile of payroll records, I had a bad feeling I knew how long it could be.

Chapter 5
    S EVENTEEN HOURS. N OT THAT I counted how many it took before Ben called. But when my cell phone rang midmorning on Tuesday with an unfamiliar number, I had a hunch as to who it was. I swiveled my office chair to face the outside window and answered.
    “This is Jessie.”
    “Hi, Jessie. This is Ben.” He sounded warm and confident.
    “Ben . . . Ben. You mean Ben of bathroom towel-cape fame?”
    “No, this is Ben, president of the TWITs.” He sounded pretentious, and I smiled at his playfulness.
    “The president? I feel so honored.”
    “Normally I have my assistant call to invite new members, but she said you were a potentially big TWIT, so I thought I’d better call you myself.” I could hear a smile in his voice.
    “Wow. Quite a club. But I have a question. Is tweeting required to be a TWIT? Because I can’t handle one more social network.”
    “No tweeting. That’s for hipsters. We take ourselves too seriously for that.”
    “Well, I’m impressed with your member services so far.”
    “Oh, it gets better. It’s customary for us to treat new members to lunch in the downtown Seattle bistro of their choice.”
    “Really? How do most of your new members feel about that?”
    “I don’t know. It’s a new custom. I started this club yesterday.”
    “I think I remember reading that somewhere.”
    He laughed. “I’ll give our PR department a raise. How’d they do selling you on lunch?”
    I hesitated for a minute and then answered, “That’s tempting, but I can’t.”
    “I see,” Ben said, followed by a long pause. “Is this because you think my club is stupid?”
    “No,” I said, laughing. “I have a lunch meeting today.” After a long breath, I took the plunge. “But Thursday looks good.”
    “Hmm. Yeah, Thursday works for me. Do you have a preference, or should I pick a place?”
    I frantically wracked my brain for a moment. I wanted to pick somewhere that sent the right message. Noodle Ranch? No. Great food but not a first date kind of place. Chez Shea? Candlelit tables would be too over the top. Finally I asked, “Do you know Trattoria Fredo?” It would be cozy without screaming romance and quiet enough to have a conversation without yelling.
    “Near Pioneer Square?”
    “That’s it. Sound okay?”
    “Sounds perfect. I’ll meet you there Thursday at noon?”
    “Yeah, Thursday.” Stupid Wednesdays, always getting in the way.
    Silence hummed on the line for a moment. I wondered if he was trying to figure what to say next too. I needed to get back to work, but I didn’t want to hang up yet. When the quiet verged on uncomfortable, Ben spoke again.“We should work out a signal to be sure we recognize each other. Maybe I could wear a purple polka dot tie, and you could wear a big floppy hat.”
    “That’s a good idea. Or we could double check each other’s pictures before then.”
    “Yeah, that was my backup plan.” He hesitated. “Except I look kind of different from my picture.”
    Uh oh. Had he gained fifty pounds or shaved his head or something? I had