Dating the man you work for is taboo, especially if you are engaged to another man. Double taboo. But what, exactly, constitutes a date? Is it just a peck on the cheek, or is it time shared with Martin, the two of us alone, that I will not admit to anyone else? Or is it all the hours in between, thinking what it would be like with him? Contemplating his touch, his breath on my neck, as he walks by my cubicle? Or is it the plane ride to Maui with the whole company on board, and I am seated next to Martin. Is it the fear I see in him, the only thing that can scare someone with that kind of money: death. We both clutch the arms of the seat as the plane descends rapidly. And I am scared too, but I glance over at him and see his pale hands gripping, his eyes shut tight, his mouth clenched, waiting for impact. And then the relief, as the plane touches down, and doesn't tumble and explode down the runway. Safe.

I begin to wonder if, when he arrives after everyone else at work, not speaking to anyone until after lunchtime, he had another sleepless night. He appears frail, but is six feet tall, and has maintained the waist of his youth. He controls himself.

What must it be like to have the intellect to invent something and make fifty million dollars from it? To work eighty hours a week, and still find time to read eight to ten books? What must it be that stops someone from dating for twenty years? Someone who is avowedly not homosexual, although not anti-homosexual. Someone who talks about women with men and women, and reminds all that, yes, he too had a fiancé once.

It is Thursday, group lunch day. The President, Alexander, doesn't insist everyone attend, but non-attendance divides the camp. This week he has requested that everyone bring in their snaps of yesteryear, mainly of embarassing hairstyles or unfortunate seventies gear. My photo of me attending a Bon Jovi concert, hair spiked and bleached Marilyn Monroe blonde, accompanied by a skin-tight zebra print, zippered mini-dress, is admired. I mention to everyone that the tall, biker-dressed woman standing next to me in the picture now has breast implants.

Alexander is wearing jeans and topsiders sans socks. He revels in this, nothing embarrasses him. He loves to tell stories, but even more, he loves to hear them. He is fifty-five years old and has travelled the world, and possibly even had to kill people in the line of covert duty. His eyes demonstrate an odd mix of cold-hearted sorrow, and infinite curiousity. And passion. No one is ever able to top the stories of an ex-Israeli commando who grew up on the shores of the Galilee in a village that owned one camera, in a time when the UN came in and asked everyone what nationality they wanted to be. A Jewish man who became a professor of electrical engineering at Brigham Young, and then moved west to start his own company with Martin.

Martin, who is not as charismatic as Alexander. An intuitive and a genius, but passive. The perfect business partner.

Alexander has brought in a picture of himself smoking opium with tribes in Northern Thailand. This shot impresses everyone, wow, gosh, the pres smoking dope! What a sight, and he doesn't bat an eyelash.

But when Martin passes around the shot of the tight blonde shiksa, everyone is even more amazed by the simple fact that he once had a woman.

A woman who hasn't thought of Martin in almost twenty years.

And then the photo gets to me. I stare because I, too, am amazed that Martin has proof of an actual living woman who touched him. But mostly I stare because I am a dead ringer for this woman. I inspect it, paying closer attention than I do to the other photos. I pass the photo back to the man on my right, Martin. He looks at it, and puts it back into his envelope. A few minutes pass by. He gets up to leave.

I ask the head of procurement, Mimi, where has he gone? We've just started eating. She says he's left, he always does this. It's his stomach.

The Christmas Party. Alexander's house. I somehow manage to slip in the word fellatio whilst playing a board game. Everyone is amused, especially Martin. I always get the feeling that I impress Martin, even when I'm not using the word fellatio. He loves me for my mind, the Einstein-in-Madonna's-body combination as an old friend used to say. We leave in separate cars, to separate addresses.

President's Day weekend. We all fly to Maui. I am in the open-air lobby of the Embassy Suites up the road from Lahaina, waiting to go to dinner. I sit down on the stone bench, next to Martin. I am relaxed from a full body massage. A clean white bandage is wrapped around my very tanned left knee, an injury I incurred earlier in the week behind Twin Falls at the base of Haleakala, hiking with Martin and Alexander, the head of software design, and a few others. Combined IQ points of the eight of us must have well exceeded one thousand, but no one remembered to bring a first aid kit. Alexander took off his white Calvin Klein t-shirt, and I wrapped it around my knee. Julie told me that he looks great without his shirt on.

I decide this is the moment.

"How do you feel about employees dating?" I ask. No one else is around yet.

"It's probably not a good idea," Martin replies.

I look away, embarrassed, until it dawns on me: he thinks I am asking permission to date someone in the company. Someone never includes Martin he must think.

"Uhm, I don't think you understand. I meant you and me. How do you feel about that?"

He smiles gently. "Oh, I see. I didn't think you meant... That's different."

I notice some of the others walking down the stairs. "We can talk about this, later, if you want?"

"Yes, that would be nice."

We are no longer alone, and walk to concierge to wait for our cars to be retrieved. Don asks Martin to join him and his fiance, Diane, in his car. Julie and I get into ours. I realise I cannot bend my leg, and Julie drives us to the restaurant.

At dinner, we sit discretely away from one another, except he has stuck his chair a foot away from the long table, so he can steal indiscrete glances at me. I ignore him the whole evening.

We fly home, and resume our working life. We have dinner one night; dinner and a movie some time later.

One Thursday I invite him to drive up the coast between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay. I'll pack lunch, I say.

He arrives on Saturday morning. Calm. I show him the photo album, documenting my life, that was given to me on my birthday, and we leave for the coast. It is a perfect California spring day, cloudless and eighty degrees. I take him to Greyhound Rock, a place I remember from my hallucinogenic youth. We climb down the treacherous path to the beach, and then back up onto the rock itself. It is perfect. The water is crystalline, otters frolic in the waves. We eat, and then decide to lie back for a nap. I lay my head on his chest, his arm wrapped around my shoulders. We don't kiss. In his arms, on Greyhound Rock, I find complete peace. And I know I can never see him like this again.

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