The Erotic Secrets Of A French Maid

'Sorry, man. Hey, if you make it past date three and she's still talking to you after she sees that tiny mushroom you call a dick, maybe the wife and I can have you two over to dinner. Tina would love that. She's always asking why you aren't seeing anyone.'

'I don't think this is going to be that type of relationship. She's made it clear that she's not looking for anything permanent.'

Greg stared at him. 'You are so lucky. So fucking lucky, I can't believe it. Where's the justice?'

'The justice is that you can grow a beer gut and Tina won't leave you.'

'That's right,' Greg said, patting his gut. 'I'm losing my hair, too. And she's noticed the hair growing out of my dad's ears and nose, and swears she's going to trim mine when it gets that way. Yep, she's good and stuck with me.'

'It will be a long time before Emma is stuck with anyone, and that's the way she wants it.'

Greg belched. 'Her loss.'

Russ arched a brow and refrained from comment. He didn't know what was going on in Emma's head, but he was sure that the last thing on her 'I Want' list was trimming a man's nose hairs for the next sixty years.

Emma sidestepped a transient sitting on the sidewalk and continued along Second Avenue. Belltown was host to a fair share of homeless folk and day laborers waiting to be picked up in drive-by hirings. None of them had ever paid the least attention to her, though, so she was beginning to get used to their presence and no longer steeled her nerves to walk by them.

It was Wednesday afternoon, and she had nothing to do but think about her design for the train station. She'd spent all yesterday preparing for tonight with Russ, including buying the latex gloves she'd need for one rather surprising sexual technique she'd read about, and she knew her preparations were an excuse to avoid her drafting table, computer, and sheets of paper covered with lousy concepts.

This morning she'd cleaned the bathroom and washed every bit of laundry she could think of. She'd vacuumed and polished her grandmother's silver. She'd watched the noon news and tried to engross herself in an episode of Emeril on the Food Network. Eventually, though, she'd forced herself to sit down in front of her sketch pad.

And there she'd sat, staring, until twenty minutes had passed and she'd pushed away in disgust. A walk seemed like a good idea, and maybe taking another look at King Street Station would inspire her.

She'd been walking about twenty minutes when her cell phone rang. 'Hello?'

'Emma?'

'Yes?'

'Hi! This is Kevin. Remember, Kevin from Russ's house?'

'Oh, hi. Yes, I remember.'

'I was just calling to see how you've been, and if you got moved in all right.'

'Yes, everything's fine. The new place is great.'

'Good! Where is it, anyway?'

'Downtown.'

'What part?'

'Belltown.'

'Nice area. Russ used to have a place there.'

'Mmm.'

'I hear traffic. Are you on the road?'

'No, I'm walking. I'm at Pioneer Square.'

'Really? I'm about six blocks from there! Have you had lunch?'

'A snack,' Emma mumbled, unable to lie.

'Do you have some free time? I know a great little Vietnamese place in the International District.'

'Actually, I wanted to finish my walk. I want to go look at the train station.'

'The station? Why?'

She explained about the design contest.

'How about I meet you there, then? It's just a few blocks from the station to the restaurant. We could go there when you're done looking around.'

'Kevin, I think you need to know that I'm seeing someone.'

He was silent for a long moment. 'Someone serious?'

'Not really. We've been going out for only a week. But I'm not the type of person who can date more than one guy at a time.'

'Ah. Okay.' Another long moment of silence passed.

'Well, would you still consider having lunch with me, just as a friend?'

'You don't have to do that.'

'I'd like to. It's good to have friends of the opposite sex, don't you think?'

Emma felt her stomach rumble. 'I've only had Vietnamese food once, but I did like it.'

'Great! I'll meet you at the station in about twenty minutes? Will that give you enough time?'

'Sure. That'd be great.' Emma said good-bye and closed the phone, regretting already that she'd agreed to lunch. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but she was going to have to be careful not to let something slip about Russ. She'd have to keep the conversation focused on Kevin, and hope he was like most guys and loved to talk about himself.

She picked up her pace to cover the last couple of blocks to the station quickly. She didn't want Kevin with her, distracting her, as she looked around and tried to call down divine inspiration from the gods of Amtrak and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad.

When she got there, she stood for a while across the street, mentally matching the maps and site diagrams from the contest website to what she was seeing before her. The station had been built in 1906 by the same architects who'd done Grand Central Station in New York City.

Now it was just a mess. Except for the clock tower, you couldn't tell that the place was a station, and couldn't see how to get to it by car or even how to enter it by foot, since the entrance across the elevated street was barricaded with chain-link gates. You wouldn't guess that you had to find a stairwell beside a building half a block away to get to the station one story lower, or drive a block and a half west and circle around a block of unrelated buildings.

So. Necessity number one: improve access.

Two: make it obvious that this is the station.

Three:

Three. Hmm.

The place needed to be clean and attractive; welcoming, comfortable, and convenient. Efficient to move through. Interesting to wait in, and calming to soothe the nerves of irritated travelers.

What aesthetic would achieve that? She didn't know if she should try to revive the old Edwardian Era station- the historic photos she'd seen on the web were beautiful-or go for something purely modern Northwest. She didn't know what the people of Seattle would prefer. She didn't know what she would prefer, and didn't know what else she should be thinking about but wasn't.

Well, she'd watched The Apprentice and had learned the value of market research.

Twenty minutes later, she'd talked to three passengers sitting in the waiting area and to two Amtrak employees. The brief conversations had been revealing. They wanted natural light instead of the boarded-up windows. They wanted a shop with magazines and snacks. They wanted time schedules posted where you could see them. And those who lived in Seattle wanted their station to impress visitors and give them a taste of the region.

She was standing in the middle of the crowded, dirty waiting area, staring up at the stained acoustical tiles and fluorescent lights overhead, when Kevin found her.

'Emma! Hi! I hope I didn't keep you waiting!' He trotted up to her with an eager puppy dog look.

'Hi, Kevin.'

'Are you done here?'