It was late in the evening when Marjorie finally decided to stop work for the day and go home to her husband. She stretched and looked out of the window at the snow falling silently. The buildings across the narrow street were masked by the snow and the car headlights travelling along the slick road were blurred.
“Yuck!” she thought to herself, as she knew that against her better thinking and her husband’s advice, she had left home that morning without the appropriate attire. Yes, she was wearing an overcoat, but that was because it was cold and not because snow had been forecast. She hadn’t believed the weatherman on the TV the night before as he strongly advised his viewers to not only bundle up because of a strong northeaster, but because it was winds such as these that brought a chance of heavy snow. Marjorie had latched onto the word ‘chance’ and she told her husband as she kissed him goodbye that morning, that the word chance was a weasel word which they used just in case they were wrong, which they were 75% of the time. Marjorie‘s husband, a successful attorney, was more logical than Marjorie, who owned her own design house and tended to be more emotional. Even though he pointed to the heavy dark clouds which appeared to be moving in, Marjorie pointed to the patchy blue sky as a rebuttal. But Marjorie‘s husband, Todd, had been right. She knew that when she returned home, she would not be able to live it down.
So Marjorie stood in the large covered doorway of the building, wearing her heavy full length coat, which she herself had designed and was a best seller, but on her feet she wore a pair of medium-height heels which of course were totally inappropriate for the weather, or time of year. No hat or umbrella for that matter. She stood there for a few minutes contemplating her next move, as stragglers from her building passed her, all appropriately dressed for the weather.
Marjorie walked to and from work as she and Todd lived on the same street as her building, only about a mile away, but today that mile might as well be 20 miles.
“On your way home?” she heard someone behind her ask. Marjorie didn’t recognise the voice but upon turning around she came face-to-face with a very distinguished looking man probably in his late 50s, with deep green eyes, white hair, dressed immaculately in an expensive Armani suit but with no overcoat on. At first Marjorie was lost for words but finally nodded her head. He smiled at her and raised a very large umbrella he was holding in his hand.
“Why don’t you take this then?”
“Oh, I can’t,” Marjorie blurted out, “you don’t have a coat.”
“And you do. You’re dressed appropriately for the weather whereas I am not, and anyway, I’m not going home right now I have a lot of work left to do.”
Marjorie hesitated for a moment unsure of what she should do next.
“You walk home don’t you?” the man turned the umbrella around so the handle was pointing towards Marjorie. After a slight hesitation she took it. “I’m sorry I don’t have any shoes for you to wear though,” he added laughingly. Marjorie managed a smile and began to open the umbrella.
“I don’t know what to say other than you’re my saviour. Oh, where shall I return the umbrella?”
The man shook his head, “No need, it is a golf umbrella, I have many of them.” With that the man bowed, wished her a good night and walked back into the building. Marjorie was in a state of shock. But having opened the umbrella she began to walk home. Her high heel shoes not offering her feet any protection though.
About half an hour later Marjorie opened the door to her apartment building closed up the umbrella and surveyed the damage done to her shoes, the bottom of her pant suit and by extension, the bottom of her overcoat. Her feet were frozen but the rest of her was in remarkably good shape, thanks to the kindness of a stranger. She would love to know who he was and what office he worked in. Marjorie had worked in that building for about 10 years and had never seen him before. Admittedly, the building had 20 floors and there were simply hundreds of people working there. But then it dawned on Marjorie. The man had obviously seen her before and that sent a slight chill up her spine, but she certainly wasn’t spooked by him. He was too good looking and too well-dressed to be afraid of.
Todd greeted his wife with a laugh when she opened the door to the apartment but thought better than to rub her condition in her face. She kissed him quickly and walked briskly into the bedroom to change out of her wet clothes and into something more comfortable and definitely drier. Once that was completed, she walked into the living room where Todd was standing with two drinks, one of which he handed to her.
“Here’s looking at you kid,” he said, smiling at Marjorie who was now standing in a beautiful blue silk nightgown, “the weather forecast is on the TV right now if you would like to watch it,” he added amusingly. Marjorie ignored him and after taking a sip of sherry, proceeded to tell him the story of the umbrella.
“I must thank him,” he said after Marjorie had finished the story.
“As must I,” she agreed, “though I must first find out who he is.”
The rest of the evening was taken up with the preparation of and eating dinner and getting ready for work the following day. But all evening the two of them in their own ways were trying to figure out who Marjorie’s guardian angel was.
The next day Todd gave Marjorie a ride to work because the roads were still not in any condition to walk on. As she leant over and kissed her husband goodbye, she saw the man from the previous evening out of the corner of her eye enter the building. But before she could alert her husband, the man was gone. When Marjorie unlocked the door to her office, she was always there before anyone else, she noticed there was a note someone must’ve slid under the door. She bent down and picked it up. She waited until she had taken off her coat and boots before she read it. It was rather long, and it was obvious who the sender was, but it was the last few sentences that caught her off guard.
“Todd and I were in law school together. Casablanca was our favourite movie. We saw it together many times. What I did, is what Rick would’ve done. Here’s looking at you kid.” Marjorie smiled as the workers began to fill the office.