Over lunch, you feel within yourself a strange, strong urge to touch her. Her hand rests open on the table, next to the pepper mill, and you want to stretch your fingers towards hers. Your eyes drink her skin, absorbing the dull silver of her heavy necklace, and you suppress an urge to tuck a strand of her hair neatly behind her ear. She is a little bit untidy, and you want to smooth her down. She chatters and you eat, and the wine makes a tingling layer like the lightest voile settles over your senses, making your skin feel tight. You concentrate on co-ordinating your cutlery.
You discover that you have a surprising amount in common with each other; your handbags are identical and you both love the same foreign city. The conversation is easy, even though it’s hard to keep track of the digressions. You watch yourself. It takes no effort at all to be charming and interesting, but you’ve never felt this strange desire to reach out and touch such a relative stranger. Normally your sensual urges are restricted to the people with whom you are most intimate.
You enjoy her down-to-earth, relaxed cheerfulness, and you know that you’re in danger of letting down your guard a bit too far. You’re in danger of confessing too much to her, saying things as if to a friend, which would be quite inappropriate in this context. You are not in the habit of having long business lunches, and you were too easily persuaded to have a glass of wine. She says things like you must come round for dinner, and you have to remind yourself that it’s probably a throwaway comment. If you bite her hand off, as you feel inclined to do, you will come across as foolish or desperate.
This reminds you of a meeting a long time before, when you didn’t realise that your future might hinge upon your performance. You had expected a friendly chat, and had been criticised for being too informal; you realised then that your career path wasn’t going to be dynamic, because you didn’t understand the unspoken rules of engagement, which meant you would never build relationships with the right kind of people.
You have finished eating, and the plates have been removed, but the conversation runs on until you realise that you’re late back to work. She pays, and as you thread your way between the tables to the door, she gives your arm a friendly stroke.