Finally he paused to catch a breath, and I seized the opening. “So,” I said, “what did you think about the article?”
“Oh, it was . . .” he said, and then he paused, and I heard him speak to someone else for a few seconds before he came back on the line. “Listen, that was my boss, so I’m going to have to go. But before I do, I wanted to ask if you could have lunch with me on Wednesday? We can talk some more about it then.”
“Um, sure, I guess,” I said, trying not to sound eager.
“Great!” he enthused, and gave me the name of a little place on 8th Avenue not too far from my office. “See you on Wednesday at noon,” he said, and then he was gone.
As I hung up the phone, I wished we had had longer to talk about the article, but it didn’t sound like he was displeased with it. Anyway, I thought, at least he wants to see me again. As I turned back to my computer screen, I saw a little smile in the reflection.
I got to the restaurant a few minutes early on Wednesday, but when I looked inside Alex was already there and he was wearing his Superman suit. I hadn’t expected that. He was chatting animatedly with a man when I walked in, but when he spotted me he shook the man’s hand like they were old friends and then came rushing over to me. He bent over and gave me a kiss on the cheek before leading me back to the table.
“Who was that man?” I asked curiously.
“Oh, that was the restaurant owner. When he saw me come in wearing my suit, he came over and wanted to talk with me,” Alex explained nonchalantly as though such things happened every day to him.
Then his face took on a look of great animation. “You won’t believe everything that’s been happening to me,” he said, with the excitement of a little boy. “I told you about my friends at work and how surprised they were to read about me. Well, they absolutely demanded that I wear the suit to work on Tuesday. I’d never even thought about doing that because I really want to be taken seriously in my job and I was afraid of what the reaction would be. But they kept insisting, and finally I decided ‘what the heck.'”
He paused as the waitress delivered our food, then quickly resumed his story in between bites. “Anyway, when I went in Tuesday morning, my friends started going wild, and then my boss walked in. I was terrified, but she just looked at me for a minute. Then she sniffed and said, ‘Alright, I guess you can wear that thing, but if it detracts from the work environment, you’ll have to change.'”
“I was blown away – I thought sure she’d have a fit about it. But the fact that she didn’t freak out made me feel just that much more confident. So after lunch I took another big gamble: I did something I’d wanted to do for a while but hadn’t dared before I wore the suit.”
He leaned toward me across the table, and his enthusiasm was palpable. “Every week, publishing houses get dozens of unsolicited manuscripts from wannabe writers. They just get tossed in the ‘slushpile,’ and most get ignored or sent an automatic ‘thanks-but-no-thanks’ letter,” he explained. “But I started looking through some of them just to see what they were like, and I found one that I thought was really good.”