Business as usual: lunchtime fun with colleagues

Janice and I entered the restaurant and looked around with some mild curiosity as we approached the hostess’ podium. Carlito’s was one of the newest fine restaurants in the downtown area, and already had a reputation as a great place for lunch, with relatively quick service for a formal restaurant. As such it had become very popular among the business elite crowd for lunch breaks. Janice had called ahead this morning to get us a reservation, and all throughout the two hours since then I had been wondering if it was a sign that the attractive, thirty-five-year-old businesswoman was flirting with me.

When she had invited me, it had certainly seemed to be purely as one coworker to another … but few people invited a coworker they knew only on a business level out to lunch alone. If Janice was flirting with me, I wasn’t sure how I might respond. Normally I didn’t pursue older women—not that her thirty-five years made her very much older than me; I myself was thirty. On the other hand, Janice was quite attractive, and we got along well.

I was still undecided when we arrived for lunch.

“Welcome to Carlito’s,” the hostess greeted us. “Do you have a reservation with us today?”

“Rourke,” Janice announced.

The hostess quickly found Janice’s name, greeted her again by name, and then led us to a small table and offered us menus.

“Chef Marceau has prepared a few excellent dishes this afternoon,” the hostess began her spiel once we’d been seated. “We have an excellent nova smoked salmon, served with asparagus and capers in a dill lemon olive oil vinaigrette. We also have a dish of cheese fagottini served with olive oil, garlic and sherry tomatoes, drizzled with white truffle oil.

“I think you’ll find Madam Grinauld’s servers are also in quite excellent form today. In the ladies, we have a petite twenty-year-old blonde, a full-bodied Latin brunette of nineteen, and two twenty-two-year-old blondes with classic hourglass figures. In men, we have two twenty-one-year-old blondes, both slim; a sturdy Asian twenty-year-old with dark hair, and an athletic eighteen-year-old African American.

“Suzie will be your waitress today; she’ll be right over to take your orders.”

“Thank you,” I told the hostess.

Janice and I looked over the menus. The lunch selection was excellent, but I almost regretted being here for lunch and not dinner when I saw their wine menu. The color head-shots of the servers looked promising as well. This was obviously a quality establishment.

“What do you think?” Janice asked me.

“Hmm…. Well, I think that salmon sounded pretty good,” I mused. “But the shrimp linguini looks good, too. How about you?”

“I’m thinking about the pasta special,” she said, tapping a finger on her pursed lips.

A young woman in a short apron approached our table, with a small, gold name tag that read “Suzie” pinned above her left breast. “Hello, folks. My name is Suzie. Can I get you some drinks?”

“I think I’ll have an iced tea,” Janice ordered, when I gestured for her to go first.

“Just ice water for me,” I said. “No lemon, please.”

“Okay,” Suzie said. “And are you ready with your server orders, or should I give you a minute, and take them when I bring the drinks?” she asked.

“Why don’t you bring the drinks first?” Janice said. “I’m still looking them over.”

“No problem,” Suzie said, and walked off to get our drinks for us.

“What are you thinking for a server?” Janice asked me after a minute, still looking over the menu.