The woman could not be accepted among them; she was naturally subversive, her presence too disturbing by half. She always insisted on looking her best, and this in itself was somehow offensive, even if every other woman looked her best also.
In the icy square outside the office building, no-one spoke to her. She was condemned from the very word get-go, sentenced to be alone with her eloquent sentences swirling about her inexplicably naturally blonde head, her undyed siren hair swirling about her like a halo of foreign origin. She was the type of angel that could lead entire governments to their fall; he knew it, and he would have no part of that sort of thing.
Tattle-tales and snitches peddled conventional wisdom about the water cooler inside the building; she went outside to smoke. They were duly rewarded and eventually promoted. She, on the other hand, would remain a mere speed typist; the explanation from the brass above being that they could not do without her flawless, inevitably accurate, self-editing 100 wpm: no other secretary in the office could ever manage that; therefore she could never be promoted.
He knew that this was only an excuse on the part of management; yet through it all he stood, tall and solid, sure of himself at all times, as decreed by their unspoken social contract; the one she had not signed.
Through it all, love receded like the hairline of middle age.
