ROY SCHMIDT
Irresistible Impulse
They met at work, online – during the pandemic years, when office spaces were closed down and everyone was remote and meetings took place not around conference tables but on scrum-like video calls.
Her picture jumped right out at him during an all-hands call and he clicked on the org chart to look her up. She was Richa M, Senior Manager, Project Management Office (PMO). She lived in Plano, Texas. Her profile photo was too low resolution. He wished he could click on it and fill his screen with just her, unpixellated.
She reminded him of that actress he had a thing for – the one with the shoulder-length black hair, the long, angled face and crooked mouth, and the expressive eyes that could be at times sleepy and sultry or luminous and captivating, depending on the scene.
He too was a senior manager. He was hiring, and that was enough of an excuse to send her an unsolicited email asking her for advice on finding a candidate who was not just another aggressive white guy with a computer science degree. She responded quickly – just hire the best candidate; thanks for asking; good luck.
Harry had made contact.
Two weeks later she popped up again, this time on a video meeting set up by his boss, the VP of Information Technology. There were only nine people on the call. He looked at her profile again. She was part of the PMO – not IT – so why was she there?
This time she spoke. The way ideas seemed to arise spontaneously in her mind yet were fully thought out enthralled him. They became words that flowed, smooth and soothing, from her lips.
He maximized her window and watched closely until he saw her hands. No ring on either finger. This bad habit he knew was as inappropriate and sexist as checking out a woman’s body, but still he did it. It was a pointless habit as well; plenty of married people didn’t wear their rings, so it revealed nothing certain.
He was married, happily, perfectly, and cleanly. He and his wife had settled into an uncomplicated, trouble-free life. Their home, with bikes and kayaks and two cars in the garage, was half paid off, and the only thing they had to argue about was whose turn it was to get up early and take out the dog. They rarely argued about even that.
After the call, Richa sent him a message: Hi Harry. I’ve been given the OK to get involved with the IT team half time. I can offer all kinds of project help. I hear you are understaffed. Should we have a one-on-one so you can tell me about your pain points?
During their first call, he had a hard time knowing whether his childish infatuation with her was obvious. He remembered a previous job when he had had a crush on a client and had thought it had been his personal secret until he started getting teased about it by more than one peer. His lesson, locked away in his mind, was to avoid work crushes. Or, if one happened, take care of it, decisively.
Richa suggested a weekly touch base. Harry awoke every Tuesday morning cheerful. He always made sure he wore a clean, pressed shirt, had his hair combed, and sat up straight.
She possessed a rare combination of wisdom, experience, and intelligence crossed with humility, empathy, and attentiveness. She rarely argued, but offered her opinions lightly, as perspectives. She listening patiently to his ideas. Together, their discussions grew and diverged and opened up multiple possibilities, rather than converging and dying out – which seemed to be the pattern in conversations with everyone else in his life, from coworkers, to his siblings, to his wife.
After a time, Harry and Richa bantered more like friends than co-workers. Sometimes the fake video background parted to expose the face of her young daughter, or her live-in mother-in-law scooting across behind her. She was married. They never crossed the line to flirting, and wisely so, he thought. Still, it excited him when she used words like ‘love’ in her messages (I’d love to see what use cases you have…), and occasionally responded with a heart rather than a thumbs-up. With forced casualness they avoided talking about their families; only occasionally did either utter the words “my husband” or “my wife.”
Once, she had messaged him, I’m on five projects. I finally missed a deadline, which I’m so mad at myself for.
He had replied, Hope you’re doing well Richa. I imagine you’re frazzled because you are so ambitious! But maybe you thrive off it all. Just take care of yourself and don’t forget to breathe.
When she said, It’s crazy how you can read me like a book, he felt a small but distinct surge of excitement.
In the spring, Harry’s boss notified him that he would need to attend a vendor selection meeting in Dallas. He waited for confirmation, then booked his flight and two nights hotel.
Happy Monday, Richa. How was the weekend?
She replied an hour later. The usual chaos. Had to take my mom to the ER.
Oh. I’m sorry! I hope she’s all right.
No diagnosis yet. She has to go in again this afternoon.
OK. If there’s anything you need – tell me. I can cover a meeting for you or whatever.
Thanks. I think I’ve got this. Maybe I can talk my husband into taking her.
He took a moment to type the next message. So, a bit of news. Do you have time for a call?
There was no reply. The call came instead.
“Hi,” he said, as they both turned on their cameras and adjusted their alignment. “Hey, I like your hair. What are those highlights now? Purple?”
“Come on,” she teased. “Not purple. Lilac. I saw my hairdresser last night, and on an inspiration I almost went back to the old me and went full-on green. Then I remembered I have to keep up my professional appearance, so I just went for some subtle highlights.” She touched her hair. “They are subtle, aren’t they?”
“They are subtle,” he said, then added, “I hope you appreciate that I noticed.”
She smiled and nodded, big, and slowly. “I caught that. I caught that. Well done. Showing your social skills.”
“Hey, one of my rules to live by, you can never go wrong complimenting a woman’s hair. They’ll always appreciate it – especially if they’ve just had it done. But even if they haven’t.”
She put on a fake pout. “Oh, so it was just a play, huh?”
He sat up quickly. “You know better. I could see your new highlights clear as day. Of course I’d notice your hair.”
“You’re lucky – you have an out. I’ll let you escape this time.”
He wondered if she had forgotten about the news flash he had teased. Then again, he had sidetracked the conversation with his not-so-subtle flirting.
“Anyway, my boss asked me to head to Dallas to vet vendors in June.”
She did a little jump in her chair. “Wow! Congratulations. I’m glad he’s given you that trust. That’s great. You must be excited.”
She settled down and leaned back and said, more slowly, “You’ll have time for a lunch date at least, right?”
He nodded. “Of course. I’ll get in on Tuesday, be in meetings all day Wednesday, and fly out Thursday morning.”
“Oh. That doesn’t leave a lot of time,” she said, and settled back into her seat.
“I’ll work it out. I have a hunch there will be some scheduled group meals and maybe even an outing…too many unknowns at the moment, but at least we can block off our calendars.”
On their next weekly work conversation, she said, “Hey, I had a thought about the June thing. Maybe you can get free that first night for dinner. Tell them you need alone time to prep and can’t do anything social.”
In fact he did want some alone time. He would be tired from travel and eager to hole up in his hotel room and review his notes and watch a little TV and fall asleep early. But….
“Good idea – Tuesday it is. Let’s pen it in.”
“Pen it in?” She screwed up her face.
“Yeah. We had it penciled in, now we can pen it in.”
She shook her head. “You idiot. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Lilac Locks.”
– – –
On his travel day, he kissed his wife goodbye at the train station, rode the hour to the city, hopped the light rail to the stadium, switched lines, and rode the rest of the way to the airport. Richa called him on his cell phone just before boarding started.
“I’ll pick you up at DFW,” she said.
“Wait. You don’t have to do that. I can grab a taxi. I’ll just expense it.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I’ll already be driving to meet you for dinner. I may as well swing by the airport. I can take you to your hotel and we can have something there.”
“Are you sure? The airport must be out of the way.”
“I’ll be in the car anyway. It’s only an extra ten minutes.”
He paused. His nature would have been to be alone, gather his bags, hop a taxi, check in to the hotel, and freshen up before meeting anyone.
She persisted. “It will be nice to see a friendly face….”
Any desire for alone time evaporated. He entertained the image of her smiling when he emerged from the plane, waiting for him at the gate, like you used to be able to do before the days of heavy security. She might park and be waiting at baggage claim, and he thought of her smiling there. For a moment, a chill of panic passed through him. What if he didn’t recognize her? He had never seen her in person.
“OK,” he said, secretly thrilled. “I’ll send you my flight details.”
“Don’t worry. I’m tracking you,” she said.
“There’s no need to be early,” he added. “Don’t trouble yourself. If in doubt, make me wait for you.”
His flight landed on time at 6:20 p.m., and he took his phone off airplane mode. Her text awaited: On my way.
He grabbed his backpack and hurried to baggage claim. He scanned the room for her face, double checking every woman with dark hair who wasn’t watching the carousel. No one waited for him, no one wore a welcoming smile, and when his roller case appeared, he grabbed it and went out through the revolving doors into the hot, damp, sticky summer air of the Dallas/Fort Worth evening. She was right there, waiting in a maroon SUV.
He waved and reached for the car door, but she came from around the back like a gust of wind, opening her arms wide. She was different from what he had expected: taller, heavier perhaps, but that didn’t matter; of course his fantasy had painted her according to his subconscious model of perfection. She glided to him gracefully and hugged him warmly, and they stepped back and suddenly he felt awkward.
“I keep forgetting – we’ve never met in person,” she said.
“Yeah, me too,” he laughed.
“Let’s put your suitcase in back,” she said. “Did you actually check it? This little thing?”
“If the company’s paying, I’m checking. I hate lugging anything around, through security, into the restroom, to the gate, finding space on the plane, and so on. Easier just to check it. I only waited about two minutes for it.” He was babbling.
“You have a big day tomorrow. There’s nothing in your suitcase you can’t do without? Suit? Tie? What if Delta lost your bag?”
“I guess you’d have to take me shopping for clothes, then,” he said, and realized it was too strong, too soon.
She stopped, looked at him with those wide, inviting eyes, and started to say something, then held back.
He lay his suitcase in the back, next to a large, dark red shoulder bag.
She closed the hatch, and they sat in the front seats of the car. “Marriott, right?” she asked.
He nodded. “I can map it.”
“It’s OK,” she said. “I’ve got it. It’s a straight shot from here.”
At the hotel she dropped him at the door and for a moment he felt unsure what would happen next. He collected his bag and closed the hatch, and heard her say, “I’ll park.”
She joined him at the check-in counter. The desk clerk’s eyes darted between the two of them. “How many keys?” he asked.
Harry always took two keys – in case he misplaced one – but now things were awkward. He didn’t need to overthink; he could just take two, like always. But before he knew it, he heard himself say, “Just one.”
He started for the elevator, conscious of her presence, conscious of her personal space overlapping his. He could ask her to wait in the lobby. At the same time, he did not need to change clothes in his room, only wash his face. It would be all right for her to come along with him. They were more than co-workers after all. They were friends. He decided not to decide, to just see what might happen. When the elevator doors opened, she entered with him.
He opened the door to the room, and she followed him in.
“Nice room,” she said, sitting on the bed with a bounce. “Comfy mattress.”
“I’ll just…leave my bag and use the restroom,” he said.
When he came out of the bathroom, she was lying on the bed, eyes closed, head on two stacked pillows, elbows out and hands folded behind her head. He stood, silent, looking at her. Her blackish hair, the lilac highlights barely visible in the low light, fell across half her face, which bore no expression, other than perhaps peace. Her silky blouse clung to the upper half of her body. She was an adorably typical woman – no supermodel features, but everything pleasingly put together. Her soft, ruffled skirt had climbed its way up her thighs and he imagined the feeling of his hands on her soft skin.
Her eyelids flickered, and he realized that she had probably been aware of him standing there, looking at her, the whole time.
“I just about fell asleep. I forget how rare it is to get a moment with nothing to do but relax.”
He smiled, uncertain what to do. He resisted a strong urge to crawl onto the bed and lie next to her. They could both recline, as friends, side by side, each taking a moment to relax. Or, something more might happen, something romantic. Or, he could be dreadfully wrong, misreading the possibilities, and end up ruining everything. “Shall we…go find dinner?” he said, finally.
She sat up. “You’re not going to leave your clothes in your bag, are you? You should unpack. Hang up your dressy clothes at least so the wrinkles come out. You’ll probably have to iron them anyway, but hang them up now.”
He obeyed, hanging his two shirts and slacks, suitcoat, and tie, and placing his shiny dress shoes on the floor in the closet. All the while he felt her watching him.
When he reached for the doorknob, she rose from the bed, straightening the hem of her skirt and pulling it back down to her knees.
They chose a rounded booth in the hotel restaurant. He slid one third of the way in, waiting to see where she would sit. She seemed ready to follow him, then paused and went to the other end of the curve, and slid in a third of the way from that end. They sat, equidistant from each other and the ends of the curved, padded booth.
He ordered a Shiner Bock, she a margarita. As he ate and drank and they chitchatted about work he began to feel more and more comfortable, less anxious about his vendor meeting, more at home despite being out of his usual environment, and more enamored with Richa. Gradually they inched closer to each other, further from the open ends of the booth.
He felt the side of her shoe touching his.
They laughed about a co-worker; he touched her arm.
Her napkin fell to the bench seat and as she leaned to pick it up, their thighs pressed together.
“You know, your hair looked really nice during the DGC call last week,” she said.
He felt the line being crossed.
“Thanks,” he said, his attraction to her growing. “I always love your long hair.”
She smiled, and her gaze settled into his eyes.
He thought about his room, six floors up, and the bed, slightly ruffled where she had lain upon it, and his clothing, and his toothbrush, and his cell phone, and the call he would be getting from his wife, and whether he would try to take it in the bathroom, which would not be subtle enough, or in the hallway, where Richa, if she were in his room, would still know what he was doing. And what about her cell phone? The call she would be getting from her husband? They could acknowledge what was about to happen, agree to get the calls and the lying done at the same time at different ends of the hallway, and then come back together and pretend neither of them was a deceitful cheater, but just a person momentarily in love, taken hostage by an irresistible impulse.
Except it was not an impulse. It was weeks of fantasizing, escalating flirtation, and ultimately, implicit planning. It was a progression of intent. There was no way of rationalizing it.
Irresistible impulses, by their very definition, were not anticipated, planned, plotted, or considered; their consequences were not weighed. They were defined by acting, spontaneously, upon a sudden opportunity. Also by definition they could not be resisted.
The moment had come. His test was pitifully passive: “It’s getting late. How long is the drive home?”
She bit her lower lip, her body turned to him, her eyes locked on his.
“I have a confession to make. I took the day off tomorrow.”
Something surged through his entire body, a mix of energy and anxiety.
She continued, “As a matter of fact, I’ve taken the next thirty-six hours off. I’ve taken vacation from home as well. My family’s not expecting me back until the day after tomorrow. I’ve actually got no place to go.” Those sultry eyes, that sleepy smile.
Now everything was clear. They did not need to say anything about it. They could still pretend this was a pretty, romantic fantasy and they were not dirty, deceitful cheaters.
His life was like a perfectly clean counter top. There were no imperfections, no spots, no stains to stand out and remind him that all the rest was perfect. He lived in a dream life, but perfect had become mundane. Something new and exciting and flashy had taken his focus, distracted him, and he had been chasing this attractive thing, forgetting his perfect life, unaware he was about to risk throwing it all away, years of built-up trust, years of guilt-free future. Just for something fleeting and shiny.
She was shiny, the shiniest ever. If he had been in the right place, at the right time, years before, he might have met and courted and dated and married her. But how would their life have been? Would they each, tonight, be in this same situation with someone else, in that alternate life?
He prided himself on a few personality traits – commitment, follow-through, honesty, courage when called for. Decisiveness. To him it was important to do the analysis, make the decision, and then stick with it, never looking back, never wavering, never doubting, never reconsidering. He had followed with Richa this progression of intent, this progression of acts, to this point, but still to some extent as a rider, not fully as the driver. The process of decision was not yet complete, the decision not final.
He let his face drift ever so slowly toward hers.
“What are we doing?” he whispered.
“I think we both know,” she whispered back, her eyes dilating even more.
He knew that whatever he was about to say might break the spell, but there was no other way to ask it. “Richa,” he put his hand lightly on her thigh. “Have you ever done this before?”
She shook her head. He could sense the thrill she felt.
“Neither have I.”
He could feel the warmth of her body, smell the soft perfume.
“I asked myself why….” he said, and she hushed him with pursed lips.
“Don’t ask,” she said. “Just do.”
“No. I should finish.” He waited for a sign she would let him continue, that she would hear what he said. “So, in a normal life we only get a few chances to have a crush on somebody, in our teens and twenties I guess. The very final time is when we meet the person we’re going to marry, and that’s literally the last time in our life we get to have this amazing experience. Slowly revealing ourselves to another person. Becoming intimate, peeling away the onion layers of ourselves is so thrilling. It’s like slowly undressing in front of each other. You don’t know if they’re going to like what they see. Or if you are! It doesn’t seem fair that we’re expected to spend the last half century of our lives never again getting to enjoy one of the most wonderful experiences in life.”
She was listening, intently. Her lips parted. Her face hovered an inch from his. He smelled sweet alcohol and sugar on her breath; he wanted to bury his face in her hair and just breathe. He sensed how the softness of her lips and the curves of her body would feel pressed into his.
But he was on to something with those words he had just said, some river of thoughts cascading, leading him to other thoughts and conclusions, conclusions he could not deny. This sudden, unstoppable journey surprised and frightened him as it took him in an unexpected direction, away from the fantasy he had been imagining for months.
“And yet,” he continued, “if you take one single amazing experience that lasts one night, it can be equal to a bunch of other, smaller delights that happen over the many years, right? They all add up, like a sum total. The moments your husband looks at you with trust. Or admiration. The times your daughter tells you you’re the best mommy ever. How proud do you feel? How nice is it to know, any minute of any day, that you have nothing to hide, no lies you have to remember to conceal?”
All movement stopped. Their lips hung suspended in space, half an inch from each other. They started to back away, almost imperceptibly.
She spoke, softly, in a voice he had not heard before on the video calls, and had dreamed only of hearing when they were together, talking sweetly, lying in bed, stirring in the morning after the night of his fantasy. “There are these moments, when we’re watching a movie scene where someone has had an affair. Sometimes I think to myself, how lucky are my husband and I that we can sit through scenes like this, and not have anything to feel awkward about. I know him. He’s beyond trustworthy. We’ve both been faithful and honest for all our years. I can’t imagine how some couples sit through shows that have infidelity in them. It must be hell.”
They leaned away from each other.
“I don’t want to lose that,” she said.
He took her hand. “With respect, I feel like you would be worth losing a lot of things, but….”
She smiled. “I know what you’re trying to say. It’s not about me, and it’s not about you.
We’re both intensely attracted to each other. But it wouldn’t matter if we were perfect soul mates. There are some things you just don’t do, and we can still save ourselves from taking on probably a lifetime of guilt.”
He sighed, a deep, relieving sigh.
“You know, now I want to kiss you all the more,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “We just keep being more and more perfect together.”
“Do you think we can keep it to a tight workplace friendship?”
“I think we can,” she said. “I’ll still be your work wife.”
“And I’ll still be your work husband.”
“Without benefits I guess,” she said, and gave his hand a firm, playful shake, and thrust out her lower lip in a pout.
He put the dinner tab on his room bill. They walked to the parking lot, saying nothing. Crossing the lot, he knew he could have held her hand. He resisted the urge.
“Good luck with your meeting tomorrow,” she said.
“Thanks.” He began to fall into her eyes again. He knew he could probably cap off the night with just one secret, shared kiss. They deserved it.
He pulled her body into his but leaned to the side, letting his cheek brush lightly against hers, leaving her with a lingering hug.
She drove away with a wave and a satisfied smile.
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