Ida was fifty before she realized there could be more to life than reviewing compensation claims filed by stressed-out, middle-aged careerists with noone but themselves to blame. The symptoms she checked off [with her brushed-nickel Rotring 600® propelling pencil] were those she herself had been experiencing for some time. It just wasn't fun any longer to put on a yellow helmet, a pair of sinusitis-inducing safety glasses, and a papery lab coat, so that she could visit her claimants on the very spot where they irradiated the nation's never-to-be-spotted fruit.

The joy, somehow, had left Hamilton, Ontario. Ida decided she should try to catch up with it, wherever it had gone.

It was much easier than she'd expected. She was standing in Metro Central Reference Library one day, looking over the fifth-floor railing into the stairwell and calculating the average age of the toiling readers and photocopyists below her, when she noticed something familiar in a figure leaning against the German section shelves. Just as she recognized him, he looked up and blushed. So, Karl, she silently asked him, did you ever meet the woman of your dreams?

She didn't dare repeat the question, however, once they had crossed the street and made themselves snug in the back room of the little Cuban café. But Karl seemed ready enough to answer.

"Still with the patent office?"
"Indexing away. And you? Still patching the unpatchable?"
"No, as a matter of fact. I've just given it up. I'm retired, so to speak."
"So to speak is most of the way there. Lucky you. I'm surprised you don't look happier."
"I will look happier, eventually. Right now, I'm feeling the slightest bit marooned."
"You need some new friends to talk to. -- Let me introduce you to the gang."
"You were always a great advocate of friendship."
"I didn't know the half of it then."
"So. Is Brenda still in the picture?"
"Well, fancy your remembering Brenda!"
"And Karen?"
"Ida, you're going to fit in perfectly. It's like you know these guys already."
"Nicht wahr?"

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