Prelude

How do you know your soul mate? Does your heart beat faster? Do your knees quake at the sight of him? Or do you suddenly spin down a hole, like Alice and Wonderland, waving your arms and flexing your legs, screaming at the top of your lungs, NO!!!!!!!?

Perhaps, finding your soul mate is all of these. At least for me it was.

I worked in Legal Aid, as an assistant for Mr. Sanders.  Straight out of San Jose State, in the top 10% of my class and with some law classes under my belt that gave me a leg up on other candidates, I’d felt like life was a silver Porsche, sweeping me off to great adventures, to happiness.

My boss was a kindly, elderly man, the ideal employer. Not only had he immediately accepted me as a valuable employee, but he had enveloped me into his unbelievably rich and comfortable life. Childless, he and his wife had large hearts for young neophytes like me. They more or less adopted me, begging me to spend Christmas and Thanksgiving feasts at their home two years in a row. Of course, I wasn’t the only one there. Ed and Judy Sanders were well known for their benevolence, but they made me feel extra special, loved even, a strange emotion to garner from one’s first boss – at least one not interested in the usual extra-marital sort of relationship.

Luckily, there had never been any hanky-panky with Ed Sanders, not that I knew of. As well as I could tell, he and his wife were as much in love as a young married couple, still holding hands during cocktail hours, as if they were dating instead of celebrating thirty plus years of connubial bliss.

I enjoyed my almost weekly visits with them. I sipped exquisite wines, sampled exotic cheeses, dined on gourmet food, and savored their CD collection of opera. The Sanders spoiled me, and I felt warm and at ease with their friendly banter and the frequent extravagant gifts they showered on me.

There were only two drawbacks to the situation, the first being the fact that Judy Sanders’ principal occupation was matchmaking. Each and every dinner she hosted found me sitting with a new and approved bachelor, each of which was bored to death with me and considerably embarrassed at the overt pressure placed on him. Mrs. Sanders needled the men for commitment before they’d even pronounced my name. Needless to say, they ran faster than floodwater.

I could endure the awkwardness of that and the men’s subtle putdowns as they brushed me off like I was dandruff that had fallen on their black suits. Indeed, they played their part in front of Mrs. Sanders, earnest to climb Washington’s ladder of success, but there was never any footsie under the table, no requests for my phone number, or offers of lunch the next day.

Not that I expected it, of course; I wasn’t much for looks. My long dark-brown hair was straight. I still had bangs at age 24, and I rarely used much make-up. I suppose that all could have been overlooked. I was obviously a favorite of the Sanders, and they were the cream on top the milk of the influential. However, I was also plump, the social faux pas of the fashionably up and coming.