There was no mistaking the twinkle in Karen's eye when she invited him out for a meal. In these liberated times, he was quite willing to go with the flow in this respect and to see where the current took him.
Ric carefully knotted his tie and looked at himself in the mirror. He had to admit that he did not look like the younger male model who he remembered looking back at him. It was Karen's turning up in his world that caused him to be in an unusually nostalgic mood. Normally, he was totally immersed in the daily grind of a busy hospital and the incessant demands on his time and his brain. He permitted himself this brief luxury as he went on to contemplate the younger fresh-faced Karen Betts. In his minds eye she was more real than the mature version who spoke with the younger woman's tone of voice. As he looked at himself closer in the mirror, the Ric Griffin of the present came into sharper focus. He was a little more lined, with a few grey flecks in his hair but he could swear that he was hardly wearier of life than he had ever been. The only decisive changes in his situation were his children and ex wives, and that he no longer had a car to drive thanks to the damages of his past financial recklessness. Otherwise, he should hardly be a stranger to Karen where it really mattered.
The crisp sounds of a sports car sounding down the street predicted that Karen's perfumed presence would be there to spirit Ric away in her green convertible sports car. This was the first tiny intimation that Karen had changed. She was no longer the penniless nurse, who slogged it to work on the number nine bus after dropping Ross off at the crèche. He could tell that what she once had dreamed of both in terms of spare time and money was now hers for the taking.
"I know a nice discreet restaurant where we can talk over dinner if that is fine with you unless you have any different plans." Karen announced with that casual assurance that was new to him.
"You choose. You've obviously got plans for this evening so why should I stand in your way?"
Presently, he opened the door of a discreet yet smart restaurant, that looked every bit as good as Karen had indicated. You could tell that from first glance and first feel. It seemed that a thousand subdued low lights blinked at him and the world suddenly felt good to him. This was more real yet more sedate than that more fevered certainty of winning that had once perched him right on top of the world. He felt suddenly refreshed especially as he wasn't on one of those cursed Saturday late night shifts. It was notorious for all the aggressive psychopaths, who piled into the pubs and indulged in what they laughably thought was a 'good night out.' Sure enough, their slashed and battered remnants were wheeled in on a stretcher for the likes of him to patch up. Alternatively, it was some innocent victim who was unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The sheer pointlessness of it all got him both righteously angry from time to time, and pitied the human race for its follies.
"What are you thinking, Ric?" Karen's mellow voice asked him from underneath her blond fringe.
"Just that my pager's switched off and though I'm dedicated to my job, I'm not married to it"
Karen laughed gently at Ric's broad, relieved grin as he passed her the wine list to scrutinize.
"No wedding ring I see, Ric"
"Make that plural, Karen. I'm not sure if I ever told you that I've been married four times, twice to the same woman and nearly a fifth"
"I've got to hand it to you, you're a trier. I soon gave up on the idea of walking down the aisle waiting to be 'given away', whatever that means"
"Since when did you become a cynic, Karen"
"Realist, Ric." She corrected him. "If you want to know, I think that I gave up on hearts and roses when my marriage to Dennis went on the rocks."
"You've changed in some ways, Karen"
"So what do you see before your eyes"
"I can see that same calm composure in your eyes just as when you were twenty"
"People change, Ric. Life changes them…….." Karen started to say until her roving eye alighted on her favourite dry wine and she indicated it as she passed the wine list back to Ric for his approval. The waiter softly padded away to fetch a bottle for both of them to sample.
"I'd sooner talk about you. Your life is bound to have been more interesting and probably scandal ridden than mine if I remember right"
Ric laughed freely. He only had sketchy fragments of Karen to make comparisons but it was true that he looked out for trouble as often as it stalked him. He let Karen adroitly shift the focus of the conversation back onto him. She found it safer, less perilous.
"Well, I know the safest corners of St Mary's where I can sneak off for a quiet smoke"
"Nicotine or cannabis?" threw back Karen as she took a sip of the wine offered to her.
"Oh, I'm always sober on duty. I am a surgeon and not some reckless young registrar"
"So you smoke dope in the safety of your own home these days." Threw back Karen with that spring-heeled logic. The wide smile in her eyes took her fondly back to the good old days. Ric threw up his hands, confessing his guilt.
"Well, apart from the time I got into an argument with a pushy policeman and was arrested for possession."
"Nothing changes in your life." Came Karen's half scolding, half playful mellow tones as the waiter came back at a pause in the conversation.
The two of them, successful in their professions, had that time to leisurely survey the menu at their leisure and opted for Ardennes pate as a starter. They sipped their wind as they sampled the starters and let the evening drift on leisurely. They were free from the manic fast paced life that they both knew too well that it could amount to.
"So how did you come to marry the same woman twice, Ric"
"We are both strong minded people. It took time for us to realize that we couldn't live together and couldn't live apart from each other either."
"And nine children?" Karen bantered.
"Well, these things happen. I come from a long line of large families."Ric countered.
The main meal of steak was served with just the right quantity of potatoes and vegetables and French mustard. It was plain food and wholesome.
"Well done, Ric?" Karen enquired with eyebrows raised.
"Well, I see enough blood in my daily routine without wishing any more on me." Ric countered to Karen's faint automatic smile.
That magical connection between the two of them was not lost as the evening progressed and the background chatter of the other diners at the restaurant faded into a background murmur. Nothing mattered but the attractions of the mature, attractive woman in front of his eyes. The evening progressed to its inevitable conclusion as Karen paid the bill
"Do you want to come back for coffee, Ric?" Karen asked with just that hint of measured seductiveness.
"I thought that you would never ask." Ric responded, lying through his teeth with a debonair flair that John would admire as words spoken from the master book of seduction.