Elevator Music

I was devastated. Crushed. My world had collapsed. The words, “I don’t want to be married to you” echoed around in my head. I hovered perpetually on the brink of nausea.

For months I had hidden this news from all except my family but moving out of the house was a fairly public event. One of my staff members commented, “If you two can’t stay married, who can?” But that statement only shows how no one really knows what is going on inside your house, maybe not even you.

What had begun as casual laments that we were “not soul-mates” had degenerated into what an HR professional might call a “hostile homeplace environment.” Maybe there were things I could have and should have done differently but now it was too late, I was a piece of flotsam being tossed about in the surf.

I wanted to blame the arsenic. I really wanted to blame him, but at that point I did not know what he had done and how depraved he was.

About this time, only days after I informed my staff of the separation, I noticed an interesting phenomenon in the elevators at my office building. Women who worked in the building, not in my office and heretofore unknown to me, started making eye contact. They began smiling at me, saying “hi” or “good morning” and even attempting the 45 second elevator conversation. When I mentioned this to Diane, my saucy and faithful executive assistant, she explained it to me in her Texas drawl as follows:

“You got a good job, you’re a family man and you’re not butt-ugly.”

Well, I was indignant. After all, I was in mourning – the ring was still on my finger, there was still some hope, wasn’t there? And already the vultures had begun circling. I asked how these women found out and Diane shrugged, “word gets around.”

Most interestingly, the phenomenon lasted only as long as my world was falling apart – evidently I was exuding some pheromone that they picked up on. Even before the final decree was signed by the judge, once I faced reality and emotionally pulled myself together the smiles faded and the eye contact dwindled to nothing.

The scent had dried up and I was invisible again.