The old woman wouldn't stop talking. A frivolous reference to dating had brought forth a well-spring of memory and, like Penelope at work on a broken loom, she spun epic tales of evenings filled with love and romance, sweeping sagas of tenderness interleaved with ancient gossip.

"I remember when I was your age. I always had a date. Many dates. Men sought me out. In droves. I had to turn them away. Beat them off with a stick." She laughed, all the while fingering a stage-jewel encrusted cross that hung heavily between sagging breasts, trapped in a syncline of wrinkled flesh and overly bright rayon. A spot of light glinted off the gold plated surface drawing the younger woman's eyes to the older woman's decolletage. This was not a pretty sight and it made the Marilyn think, for a moment, about age and infirmity and about herself; she had turned thirty-three a month before. God spare her from ending up as this.

"I can't believe," the old woman sang the last word, two rising notes parsing the syllables into separate words. "I can't be leave you don't have dates. A young girl like you. Maybe it's your hair."

God spare me, Marilyn thought again. The words droned on, washing over her as a deadening fog, numbing her senses, rooting her to the ground like a tree about to petrify.

"Yes, well, as I've always said, you can't do for them. They've got to learn for themselves." The old woman vaulted off onto another subject, dating forgotten. She continued to paw at the cross, stroking it like a pet.

Cut my losses, I've got to cut my losses. The thought rose unbidden to Marilyn. But how to edge away without seeming rude. Maybe the phone would ring. Maybe a series of subtle signs and motions would bring the conversation to a conclusion. But subtlety held no sway here, the old woman was too near-sighted, too self-absorbed to notice. As the cynosure, smoke and cries of "fire" would not have stilled her words.

In the end, fifteen seconds made the difference. Fifteen seconds -- the time it took to utter two sentences -- changed Marilyn into a statistic. A rustling sound behind her made her turn, her eyes blinking as if coming out of a dream. Six feet down the corridor, the door to her office was open. Gershwin on a tapedeck and the yellow light of a brought-from-home lamp spilled easily into the hall marking it as hers.

Right then she saw a man standing in the entrance to her office. He was well dressed with sharply creased gray gabardine slacks and a print shirt. Only his worn, scuffed shoes belied the prosperous image. She had excellent eyes. Later she would describe him as over six feet and burly. In the light of the hall he was gorgeous. Not accurate. He must have once been gorgeous, but traces only of his good looks remained like a seam of gold showing faintly from a weathered outcropping. He moved and in this new angle his face appeared ravaged, desperate and thinned by what may have been long exposure to famine. She felt sorry for him, attracted too, but confused by the spike of fear that rose in his eyes, a sepulchral revenant flickering for an instant only to shrivel up and vanish. After that his eyes were dead. She noticed that he sweated, drenched in it, small rivulets at his temples, hair matted down. He sweated as if he ran the middle leg of a triathlon and the race course happened to sweep him past her door.