The Invitation

THE INVITATION

By

Kimberly Zant

© copyright March 2004 by Kimberly Zant

Cover art by Jenny Dixon

New Concepts Publishing

5202 Humphreys Rd.

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

I had been told that I was a prude, frigid, uptight more times than I liked to think. Not surprisingly, this name calling did nothing to improve my sense of insecurity and lack of self-worth. I’d always prided myself on my appearance. I worked very hard to keep my figure in shape and to dress neatly, but, deep down, I knew I was only average—average height, weight, intelligence, and physical appeal. I had a good figure because of my hard work, and I’d had the good fortune to be born with pretty hair, but I was so ‘median’, and quiet, people were more inclined to ignore my presence than to notice me.

I was almost embarrassed, under the circumstances, to admit to being a librarian when anyone asked what I did for a living considering the fact that I represented the cliché to an absolute T, but I loved my job, for all that. No one who’d ever breathed could possibly have loved books any more than I did, or found any more succor for the lack of a happy and/or exciting life through the pages of a book.

In a general way, I was happy enough to be ignored. After a childhood of being tormented by other children, it was almost comforting to have attained invisibility. The catch was that the one man in the world I wanted almost beyond breathing was as completely unaware of my existence as everyone else in the world.

Unlike me, Remy was one of those ‘package’ deals that was to women what catnip was to cats. Physically attractive in the way of those big boned, loose limbed, purely male looking man’s man sort of ways, his charisma left even his physical appeal in the shade. If ever there existed a man who could charm the birds out of the trees, Remy Chevalier was he, and the Cajun accent he’d worked so hard to rid himself of that indicated his origins only enhanced his appeal.

He’d been married once, briefly, but after only three years, he was free again to delight and tempt every female over eight and under eighty who had even the most remote contact with him.

I had such heart palpitations any time he even so much as glanced in my direction that it was all I could do not to simply fall down in a twitching, humiliated puddle. No amount of self-counseling helped. Every time I thought I’d braced myself to behave like an educated, intelligent woman the next time I saw him, he would stroll into the library with his briefcase in hand and head for the law books and I’d turn into an awkward, empty headed teenager all over again--as the saying went, I couldn’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. If he actually smiled in my direction, which he often did, for he was a friendly, easy going individual, I’d drop something or trip over nothing at all.

Stupid, clumsy and totally average—that was the image I realized I projected. I longed to change it, to, at the very least, project cool, collected sophistication, but as frequently as he came to the library to research some case or another, I was caught off guard every single time I turned and saw him striding down the aisle, sitting at one of the tables with a mound of law books, or trying to catch my attention so that I could xerox copies of documents for him.

He had a small law practice. His partner was the femme fatale of Littleburg, Louisana and speculation was rife that she’d be the next Mrs. Chevalier. She’d been a cheerleader, homing coming queen, beauty queen and had the looks for Hollywood. Instead, she’d decided to use the brains she’d been born with and become a lawyer.

This is how I’d come to the conclusion that there either was no God, or he was more in the nature of a cosmic prankster than a benign deity. There was absolutely no sense of fairness in His gifts. Some people had it all. Some had nothing, and then there were the complainers like myself who lingered in the world of ‘not quite’ and resented not having any special gift at all, however grateful they might be that they hadn’t been born to creep along through the misfit world of ugly but brilliant, beautiful but stupid, retarded but gifted, etc.

I might have drifted forever in my mediocre world, but something had finally happened that had lifted me out of it and taken me into that dream world where fiction became reality and all things wonderful finally came to the heroine who waited patiently and virtuously.

Not that I was particularly patient or virtuous. I was the next thing to a virgin only because losing my virginity had been such a humiliating and disappointing experience that no opportunity had arisen since that was so tempting I couldn’t resist it, and I was patient only because I had no choice.

One day, however, I found a single, perfect rose lying on my desk when I closed up the library for the night. It’s amazing how something so simple can completely change one’s outlook on life, but I was transported immediately from the downtrodden to the hopeful. I’d taken it home and placed it in a bud vase where I could admire it and left it there until every single petal had fallen off.

No one knew where it had come from. I’d asked all of my coworkers. I’d mentioned it to everyone who frequented the library in the hope/fear that someone would admit to having left it. Finally, I was forced to the frightening/thrilling conclusion that I had a secret admirer.