Watching Jeremy Kendrick clear out his office took me back to the day my wife announced that she was leaving me. In our twenty-odd years on the paper, most recently as assistant editors, he and I had enjoyed an excellent working relationship and became good friends. We did not always see eye to eye, but shared a commitment to produce the best daily newspaper in the state, day in, day out, and that enabled us to bridge the occasional differences that did crop up. Something else bonded us: the editorial staff lived in fear of the executive editor, and we saw it as part of our job to do everything in our power to shield them from his dictatorial caprices. 
        If Jeremy had given me a heads-up, never mind the reason for his precipitous departure, I might have found it less wrenching.  I may even have followed him out the door. Restrained in part by pique, however, I stayed on, if only half-heartedly, until the paper was merged with the city’s other daily.
    
It was common knowledge in the news-room that at the time he left, Jeremy had begun work on a new novel. But even I did not know that he had drawn his inspiration from Francesca, his one-time assistant—or that it was because of her that he walked out. It didn’t take long for a rumor to make the rounds that he had violated some tenet of political correctness—or worse. I knew Jeremy to be susceptible to women who showed any sign of liking him. Nor was he above some occasional harmless flirting.  But a philanderer?
        Married to his high school sweetheart and with two kids in college, I considered him a model of rectitude. A summa cum laude graduate of the City College of New York and member of Phi Beta Kappa, he was a man of high principle, culture, and perfect manners. In short, a rare specimen among journalists. He even looked the part, with his ever-present pipe and the tweed jackets he favored. A taskmaster who could be brutally critical, he also was lavish with praise when it was warranted.  One could almost see his mustache bristle when a reporter handed in anything less than an exhaustively researched story, written in lucid, syntactically perfect prose. By the same token, he was quick to reward exceptional work with plum assignments.
    
Many nights after we had put the paper to bed, Jeremy and I would stop for a drink on our way home at a seedy bar directly across the street from the office. One particularly gloomy, rain-soaked night, Jeremy leaned towards me and said, “You know, Francesca is more beautiful than any woman I’ve ever known.” The TV was on and someone had just hit a home run, and before I could say anything he added, “If only she didn’t have that damn tattoo on her ankle.”  Then, as abruptly as he had brought it up, he changed the conversation. By then I had had too much Scotch to pursue what I should have recognized as a tantalizing clue.
    
It took almost three years before I found out that Jeremy had left the paper at the peak of his career because he was in the grip of a hopeless infatuation. By then the paper had been bought by a large conglomerate, I had gone to work for a New York publishing house, and Jeremy and his wife had opened a bed and breakfast in Vermont. We had kept in touch, but over time our correspondence had grown sporadic and less personal.
        One fall afternoon I stopped at his lovingly restored inn on my way to a conference in Montreal. Jeremy looked fit and happier than when I had last seen him. I was thus surprised to learn as he showed me around that he was being treated for depression. The admission brought me up short; I instinctively decided not to tell him just yet that I had recently run into Francesca in my local supermarket.
    
Another surprise awaited me when I asked him how his latest novel was coming. “I abandoned it,” he said with a dismissive shrug. He seemed reluctant to say more. But later that afternoon, after further prodding and a round of drinks—and after his wife had left us by ourselves—he told me the story at great length, and in more detail than I wanted to hear. He started out with a question: “Do you remember Francesca?”
        “How could I forget?” I answered, perhaps too flippantly. A heartbreaking beauty, Francesca was indeed unforgettable.  Everything about her struck me as distinctive, from her throaty voice and come-hither look, to the expressive way she moved her long hands when she spoke, to how she sometimes collapsed in laughter. Tall and slender, with blue-green eyes and a riot of golden hair, she took possession of a room. Even her name—for some reason no one called her Fran—seemed to make her more alluring. Truth be told, I experienced something—I can’t quite put my finger on it—whenever I passed her in the newsroom. All I know is that I found it hard to take my eyes off her, though I, too, found the tattoo distracting.
    
Throughout the months she had worked for Jeremy, beginning as a summer intern between her junior and senior years at Yale, then as his assistant after graduation, Francesca’s attitude had been a mixture of deference and familiarity. Eager to please, she put in long hours and fulfilled her duties, chief among them shielding him from unnecessary phone calls, with unerring conscientiousness and infectious good cheer. Regardless of what they talked about, she hung on his every word, particularly when the subject was local politics, because her father was a former alderman. Occasionally she brought him homemade cookies or some other delicacies, and once or twice she showed him some accessories she had bought during lunch. Impressed by her keen intellect and talent for writing, he encouraged her to submit pieces to the Sunday magazine. She took his advice, showed him everything she wrote, and was receptive to his suggestions for changes. The first time one of her pieces was accepted, he announced it at the next staff meeting. 
    
Gradually at first, and then with a force he struggled mightily against, Jeremy became besotted (his word). Crazed with images of her with men her own age, he often found it hard to concentrate. Away from the office, he constantly found himself wondering what Francesca was doing. Some weekends he felt as though Monday would never come. That was when she would come in and tell him about the movies she had seen, sporting events she had attended, and, of course, the men she had met, usually at singles bars. He listened with feigned amusement, but in reality was sickened with envy. One morning she came to work flushed and more ebullient than usual and told him about a man named Stephen, a first-year medical student. One glance at her face and he knew how she felt about Stephen. Instantly his pretense gave way to outright jealousy.
    
Another morning, a few weeks later, Francesca was late for work.  She had always been punctual, often arriving at the office well before him. Worried that something had happened to her, Jeremy called her at home. Her roommate said that Francesca no longer lived there. “Doesn’t she know we have a paper to get out?” he yelled, and snapped a pencil in half, something I’d seen him do dozens of times. 
        After that, she often came in late, but he could not get himself to say anything. And just before Christmas, when asked by the executive editor what he thought of giving Francesca a tryout covering city hall, he readily expressed full support. “She’s been eager to try her hand at covering a beat,” he said, finding it hard to keep the tremor from his voice, “and I’m sure she will do an outstanding job.” Inwardly, he was thrown into disarray, so accustomed had he become to sharing an office with her.
    
The following April Jeremy and his family flew to the Bahamas during spring break. The whole time he was there, Francesca was never far from his mind. He drank heavily, and one night he was too drunk to undress himself. When his wife questioned him about his drinking, he attributed it to a “hangover from office politics.”
    
The Monday morning he returned to work, he almost collided with Francesca as she was leaving the employee canteen.
        “Good morning, Francesca” he said, with a pang at the sight of her. By force of will, he acted as though nothing had happened during his absence. “Just got back.”  
        “So I see.” She would have walked right past him had he had not stepped into her path.
        He pointed to the Styrofoam container in her hand. “Coffee smells good,” he said. “Everything okay with you?”
        “Just fine.”  She looked annoyed and tried to walk around him.
        Struck anew by her loveliness—had he really been away only ten days?—he said, “You’ve done something to your hair.” 
        “I cut it. Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.”
        “How do you like covering city hall?”
        “It’s what I wanted.”
        “Quite a step up.”
        “Yes.”
        “I will miss our working together.”
        “If you will excuse me…”
        “I understand you already had your first byline.”
        She nodded without meeting his eyes and took a sip of coffee.         “I still remember how excited I was when I got my first byline on my college newspaper.”
        She tried again to pass him.
        “Can we talk?”  
        “I really must go.”
        “On deadline?”
        “Please. Let me pass.”
        “How about lunch later this week?”

         She shook her head.
        "Coffee then?”
        She emitted a long “noooo.”
       “Some time when you’re less busy then,” he said.  “Can we sit for a moment?”
        “What’s this all about anyway?” she asked and took one step back.
        “I want to talk to you.”
        “What about?”
        Taken aback by her defiance, he suppressed an urge to seize her by the shoulders. “It would be better if we sat down.”
        “I don’t have time. What’s on your
mind?” 
        “Why the rush?”
        “I just told you. I’m busy.”
        “At least tell me how tan I look.”
        “Okay, you look tan.”  
        “Do you know that the publisher called me in Nassau and practically ruined my vacation?”
        Her eyes grew watchful and then she looked down.
        
He had been called to the phone just as he was leaving with his family for the beach. Dumfounded and tense, he had felt like a mischievous child about to be punished.   “He ordered me not to pay you so much attention. I immediately offered to resign, though now I don’t for the life of me know why.”
        “Well, you’re still here.”
        “And I have no intention of leaving. But I also don’t appreciate being made the butt of embarrassing gossip.”
        “That’s not my fault.”  
        “Oh? You know, Francesca, you don’t have to be a journalist to know that every rumor begins with a single source. So why did you report me?”
        She glared at him in silence.
        “I’d like to know what I did that somehow offended you.”
        She looked at him intently. After a moment she said, “You wouldn’t leave me alone.”
        “I don’t understand.”  
        “What do you want of me?” she demanded, her voice rising.
        “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” He felt the back of his shirt grow damp.  “Okay, so after you got your promotion I stopped by your desk a couple of times to see how you were doing. I thought of you as my protégé as well as a friend. Then suddenly, you find it necessary report me—and quite possibly cost me my job.”
        “There’s more to it than that.”
        He took a deep breath “Tell me. I’d like to know.” Stunned by the change that had come over her, he had a fleeting sensation that the conversation was taking place in a dream.
        “I don’t want to get into it now.”
    
His mind reeled back to one of the many nights they had worked late and shared the remains of a bottle of Chivas Regal he kept in his desk. Afterwards, as they waited to hail a taxi for her—and he wondered whether it was prudent for him to drive home—he told her that if he were single and thirty he’d propose on the spot. “Forty would be okay, too,” she replied cheerily. That was the closest he’d ever come to making a suggestive remark. Nor had he ever touched her, except one time when he gave her a hug on her twenty-fourth birthday.
        “You never gave me the impression that my visits bothered you.”
        “You came around more than a couple of times.”
        “Maybe I did. But my visits were hardly what I would call lecherous advances.”
        “And your Christmas card?”
        “What about it?” 
        “Do you remember what you wrote? ‘To my all-time favorite blonde, with love.’”
        “What’s so terrible about that?”
        “And the flowers you sent on Valentine’s Day?”
        He looked around to see if anyone was coming. “All right. So I was flirting. Since when is that a crime?  Flirting is not always about sex, you know.”
        “Please, can I go now?”
        They looked at each other for a time. Then he said, “Do you remember once you were doing the crossword puzzle and asked if I could think of a five-letter word for trifle? Do you remember what I answered?” 
        “No, I don’t.” 
        “I said, ‘Flirt, as in what I’m doing right now.’”
        She didn’t say anything and looked past him.         “Too bad you’ve forgotten, because I jokingly predicted that some day you would report me.” She seemed about to say something but he cut her off. “I even remember your reply. ‘Quote, Not to worry. After all, I’ve been flirting right back.’  Now do you remember?”
        The question hung in heavy silence. Then she said, “If I did, it was a long time ago.”
        “I also remember telling you Oscar Wilde’s definition of flirting: ‘attention without intention.’”
        Though amused at the time, she now looked at him with contempt.
        “You know, I recommended you for the city hall job.”
        “Thanks. Now if you’ll let me get by…”
        “Couldn’t you have spoken to me first?”
        “I did what I had to do.”
        “I’m flabbergasted.”
        “Please, I’d like to pass.”
        “You know, Francesca, you seem to have forgotten that after your internship you specifically asked to continue to work under my supervision.”
        “Who told you that?”
        “Never mind. It’s true, isn’t it?”
        “That was then, and this is now.” 
        “What’s wrong, Francesca? People don’t change overnight.”  
       
Seemingly talking across a distance, he realized that the intimacy between them had existed only in his head.  For the first time in years he hungered for a cigarette. “I also thought you’d be interested to know that I have an idea for a new novel,” he said, attempting a more forbearing tone.
        “Good for you,” she said with a disparaging glance. “Now can I get by?”
        “Don’t you even want to know what it’s about?”
        She looked over his right shoulder as if hoping someone would come along to rescue her. “Okay, what’s it about?”
        “I really wish we could sit.”
        She shook her head.
        “Okay, have it your way. Actually the idea came to me on the plane coming back.” From the look she gave him, he could have been talking to himself.  “It’s about a young editorial assistant and…”
        “Does your wife know about any of this?” she flared.
        For a second or two he could not trust himself to speak. By then Francesca had darted past him with the litheness of a ballerina. Tears came easily to him and he quickly retreated to his office. The next day he resigned.
    
“Any regrets?” I asked.
        “None whatever.”
        I had a feeling that he wanted to say more and so I waited. After a long pause, he said that at one time just being in Francesca’s presence had brought him pure enchantment and sent his energy soaring. Lately, though, he had begun to wonder whether he could ever eradicate her from his mind entirely. Her image and persona still seized hold of him at unexpected moments. Only a few days ago, he said, he had become so convinced that she was sitting a few rows in front of him at an auction of antique furniture, her head resting on a man’s shoulder, that he left his seat in a state of agitation and fled into the night.
    
It was getting late and, as I got ready to leave, I realized that I still had not said a word about meeting Francesca. She was pushing a shopping cart and had a little girl with her.  If she hadn’t spoken first, I probably would not have recognized her. She had gained weight, and her once golden hair was shorn to scouring-pad length and streaked with gray.  She greeted me matter-of-factly.  Our conversation lasted little more than a minute, just long enough for me to ask what she was doing in New York.
        In a flat, abstracted tone, she told me that she and Stephen got divorced the year he finished medical school and that she was job hunting.
        “Why did you leave the paper?” I could not refrain from asking.
        “I was let go,” she said with an affected smile.
        “Nice to see you,” we said almost in unison and pushed our carts in opposite directions.
    
Jeremy walked me down the long oak-paneled hall as far as the heavy glass door. We promised to stay in touch. Outside it had grown dark, and a misty rain was falling. We shook hands, then fell into an embrace. The last words Jeremy said to me were: “My God, but she was beautiful.” The remark brought back something Somerset Maugham once said: “Let’s face it, beauty is a bit of a bore.” I left it unsaid, however, waved good-bye once more, and hurried down the leaf-covered path to my car.
  
  
               About the Author
  
        Pete Philipps is a former writer and editor at The New York Times and Business Week magazine, among other publications.  Several of his short stories have appeared in various literary magazines.  He is currently working on a collection of his short stories, one of which, the winner in a contest, was subsequently made into a one-act play.
    
    
    
                                  Copyright © Peter Philipps