St. Paul Part 2

The radio in the cubicle crackled with another report and again the topic was the merging of Minneapolis and St. Paul. According to the proposal, Minneapolis would annex all of St. Paul west of Snelling thus increasing the size of the states most major city and making it more national.

He stopped paying attention. He heard the name Minneapolis and thought about calling his old roommate Adam. Just a friendly call to see what was happening with Adam's life and his wife; how Adam's dad's money was still treating him. He removed his hand from the phone and went back to his keyboard.

Steve showed up, using his standard midweek salutation "Why, if it isn't the most miserable son of a bitch in the office. Aren't you going to take a break?"

"Yeah." He sighed, pushing the meaty part of his palms into his eyes to show the wear and tear, the stress level work was having on him.

"You want to grab a coffee or something?" Steve asked, playing the same sad part of the ritual out, then teased "If we go now you can see your coffee making girlfriend?"

The girl--woman now, of the coffee shop had graduated from the same college, the same degree and he was pretty sure she was smarter then him. She had chosen to go against the normal walk of work and started up her own coffee shop. They had been friends, it was a small enough school for that, but she had always remained on the outside, always with that boyfriend of hers.

"I think I'm going to order something different today." Steve said, craning his neck like all the other hopefuls at the drink menu.

"What are you thinking of?"

"I don't know, I'm feeling different, maybe something sweeter." Steve squinted his eyes, reading the fine print which explained what was in each of the drinks. Steve suddenly broke away, "Hey, what are you doing tonight?"

"The wife..." He tried to remember what he was doing, but all he could think about was Adam and his wife out for lunch. He did his best to push it back out of his head, looking blankly at Steve he said "I don't know. I don't think anything, but then again I don't run that part of my life."

"We could catch a drink or something?" Steve suggested.

"You could meet my friend Adam, then. He's taking my wife out to lunch this afternoon." He said it with a hope, wanting a weird look from Steve, something to say that this wasn't normal. Wives weren't supposed to go out with their husband's old college roommate.

Steve didn't take the bait, but went back to staring at the menu board "My wife is out of town, so really, I don't have anything. I wasn't thinking too late, just something to miss traffic."

He sighed, disappointed "Sure. This might turn into a regular thing if my wife gets her promotion."

"She's getting a raise?"

"Something like that. She's--" he took a second to collect his thoughts, group them together, let them fall out in the correct order. "She's prepping for the interview this afternoon with my old roommate Adam. Tomorrow she goes in to talk to her boss. She doesn't sound to worried about it though. She has Adam to help her."

"Well, that's exciting." Steve said, and his face clouded over as he did the math. "Hey, doesn't that mean she'll be making more money than you?"

"And she'll be out of town all the time."

"That's a shame." Steve said then moved back to the board. "You know what you're going to get?"