The Wooing of Winifred
A humorous romance short story
Todd was late for work.
He was late for work if you count as late being ten minutes behind his usual schedule which typically got him to work twenty minutes early.
He didn’t like being late for work and he always did his best to avoid it. But, as things sometimes happen, he was late that day, a beautiful summer day in early June.
Not only was he already late for work but as he drove down Washington Ave. he was about to be even later as the left lane was blocked by orange cones and traffic merged into the right and stopped.
Perfect. Brilliant. Just what he needed. Why did they always start construction when he was in a hurry?
He rolled the window down, smelled the air tinged with car exhaust, wrinkled his nose and rolled it back up.
He glanced in the mirror, noting the increasingly gray hair.
Todd’s face wasn’t one for the front cover of magazines but there was a certain good-natured rugged charm about it and he exuded an overall stolid air of calm and patience, though deep down there were waters of an unknown depth waiting to be stirred.
Todd worked at the Grellings Manufacturing Co., a small but profitable company in central California, as Vice President of Product and oversaw new product lines, quality control, and the day-to-day operations of the plant.
Product and quality control suited his personality well and as he idled in traffic his mind drifted away with thoughts of the advantages of aluminum over steel, the difficulty of machining titanium, the technical modifications needed for the new line of fittings, and what he would have for lunch.
Somewhere between stainless steel and bacon, lettuce, and tomato Todd’s mind rested, albeit uncomfortably as the seconds ticked by and the occasional honk came from in front or behind.
Far off ahead a figure stood holding a long pole with a stop sign on one side that, when twirled around, read ‘SLOW’ on the other side.
There stood the figure of Fate itself for traffic did not move unless he allowed.
‘SLOW’ appeared. They moved forward, perhaps five or six car lengths.
Fate was closer now, his sign reading ‘STOP.’
Todd drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and watched the lucky drivers from the other direction who had already made it through the bottleneck.
It was 7:42. Now he’d only be about ten minutes early.
He took a deep breath.
No problem. No problem at all.
Fate turned the sign.
‘SLOW.’
Todd’s sensible Toyota Camry leaped forward, coming within inches of the gray Jeep in front.
“Come on, come on.”
The iron hand of Fate slammed the door shut. The sign turned to ‘STOP’ and as Todd came to a sudden halt the man who held his fate in his power, to add insult to frustration, put out a hand in Todd’s direction.
Todd scoffed. As if he didn’t know what the word ‘stop’ meant.
He looked up with disapproval in his eye at the man with the sign standing on the side of the road.
He stopped cold. He gawked. He almost gibbered.
Fate was a woman.
She was wearing a sweatshirt, a reflective vest, standard issue construction worker jeans, and a hard hat. From a distance, indistinguishable from the male species of construction worker.
Todd hadn’t really even looked. He had been entirely focused on the sign she held in her hands.
But up close, it was as if he were seeing her for the first time.
Fate was not a dour god clothed in adamantine robes with an iron fist clenched around an iron spear with the insignia ‘STOP’ on one side and ‘NEVER’ on the other. She was a rough around the edges, slightly bored looking, middle-age, gloriously beautiful constructress.
Like Todd, she wouldn’t grace the cover of any magazines other than the annual Caterpillar catalog but to Todd she was shatteringly beautiful from her curly bronze hair barely held down by the hard hat to the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes to her generous mouth held firm in a line as she focused on her job.
Todd attempted to speak but no words came out as his heart was too busy racing around the inside of his chest cavity. His breath came short and fast.
In all his life, some fifty years, he had never felt like this before.
He wanted to linger, to swim in the feeling, to stay there basking in the neon green glow of her reflective vest until the end of time.
Then, the sign turned and the word ‘SLOW’ appeared. Before, he would have paid twenty dollars to turn the sign and see that word. Now, he would have paid every last cent in his bank account to make it turn back.
Then the unthinkable happened.
She looked at him, through him might be more accurate, and waved him on.
Todd didn’t move.
She waved again. The car behind him honked. The car behind that car honked. It sounded like there was an entire parking lot lined up behind him, all of them honking and waiting and honking and drumming their fingers on the steering wheel.
With his heart in his throat, Todd pressed the gas and she was gone.
He drove straight, his chest tight, his legs like lead.
The blossom of love that had bloomed in his heart wilted and sagged.
He looked at the clock. If he drove to work now, he would still be on time.
For the first time in his life, work held no appeal to Todd. He suddenly dreaded the office, the product lines of fittings and screws and fasteners and other industrial accoutrements. He lost his appetite and even the thought of bacon, lettuce, and tomato on lightly toasted freshly baked bread turned to ash in his mouth.
For the first time in his life he had seen a vision of something else.
Then an idea popped fully formed into his head. Like the wayward bubble escaped from the bottle of dish soap that floats around the room until it lands and is no more, it wafted its way around the inside of Todd’s brain, his eyes shifting back and forth, until the idea was released into his prefrontal cortex.
At the next intersection he took a left, drove a minute down the road past houses and empty fields, then took the next left, then another, until he was back in line.
There, far ahead at the front of the line stood Fate in all her glory.
Yet she was Fate no longer. She was some as yet unnamed construction goddess and the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
He had to see her again.
Sitting and waiting in line, he wondered if she had seen him, really seen him when she had looked or if he had been just another face in the line of cars, a face that belonged to the idiot who didn’t know what the word ‘SLOW’ indicated.
Todd waited what felt like ten minutes but was really only five minutes.
Then he was there again and she was waving him on and an entire fleet of cars behind him were honking as he rolled down the window and came to a stop.
She looked at him. Her hand stopped waving. She seemed to be bewildered for a moment as to why this random guy was stopped with his window down.
Then she cleared her throat and spoke the words that were like a symphony to his ears: “Hey, keep it moving.”
He knew then that it was true love. He had never before heard a sound so beautiful; not the sad cooing of the mourning dove, nor the resounding crash of the ocean, nor the rushing whisper of a honeybee’s wings, nor even the high pitched whine of a seized ball bearing in the left front wheel of a 1995 Toyota Tercel.
Todd drove in a daze to work, torn between, on the one hand, staying, getting in line again, and asking her for her name and number and, on the other hand, getting on with his day, his usual routine. He was late and getting later and the increasing distance from the figure of personified Fate was making it easier by degrees to get back on track with his day.
But try as he might sitting at his desk attempting to work all morning he could not put her out of his mind.
He sorted the papers on his desk, then re-sorted them. He opened and closed and opened his email. He arranged his stapler, staple-remover, pens, pencils, eraser, tape dispenser and other desk tchotchkes in various designs until lunchtime.
At lunchtime Simon stuck his head in as always and they went down to the canteen together.
Simon was bald, slightly overweight, married, and reliable as an employee and worked under Todd as a division manager.
They ate their sandwiches together in silence.
“Alright, what’s going on?”
“What?” Todd said.
“No talk of efficiency or product or anything? Come on, Todd, we’re friends, more or less. What’s up?”
“I met someone.”
“I knew it,” Simon said triumphantly.
“It’s not like that. Never mind, you’ll think it’s silly.”
“No, come on.”
Todd related his morning to Simon .
“It’s ridiculous, I know,” Todd said.
“No, it’s really not. Todd, my wife and I are high school sweethearts. You know what that means? It means we fell in love at an age when love was crazy and wonderful and romantic and completely unburdened with any life responsibilities. It was just her and me and the whole world in front of us. But you know what else? We didn’t need the whole world. Just each other. We work, we’ve got annoying kids, but we always have each other. You’d have to ask her, but I can say that I definitely fell in love at first sight. It happens, even at fifty.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m too old for this kind of thing. I’ve got my work. I’ve got everything just the way I like it.”
Simon shook his head. “You’re making a mistake.”
Todd finished his sandwich in a bite. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s get back to work.”
The next day Todd took a different route to work, avoiding Washington and taking Ashland instead, to make sure he’d be on time. His heart performed only a small somersault as he passed the intersection that would have taken him to his usual route and his mystery beloved.
Ridiculous, he thought. I’m really too old for this sort of thing. A younger me, maybe. But that time has passed for me. Besides, everything would change. Look what love has already done to my routine; made me late for work yesterday.
Two more days passed and Todd found himself driving to work with the sun shining and the birds chirping and without thinking he took his usual route to work down Washington Ave.
Then, without noticing anything amiss, he drove right through where the construction site had been. Only when he realized where he was did he pull over and get out.
He stood on the shoulder staring up the road at nothing, at the absence of something. He had been looking for her and hadn’t even realized it.
And now, she was gone forever.
The sun dimmed and a cloud passed in front of it permanently. The birds dropped from the sky, dead with mourning.
Todd drove to work in a stupor. He stared out the window during the morning meeting. His sandwich turned to ash in his mouth. When he got home that night, he stared at the TV without even turning it on.
He realized that he was most assuredly, definitely, hopelessly in love.
And that his love had disappeared from his life.
One might call it unromantic but Todd was reminded of the time that he had seen a beautiful mahogany fountain pen and bought it on the spot only to lose it a day later after he left it in his coat pocket when he dropped his suit off at the cleaners. He never saw it again.
You might frown at comparing women to fountain pens but for Todd the loss of the pen had, up until that point, been the great tragedy of his life.
Now as he sat on the couch at home he realized that this was far worse than any fountain pen.
Although he had considered himself too old for love, he now realized that fate had not only walked up behind him and pierced his heart with an arrow clutched in a velvet-gloved hand to make him fall in love, she had subsequently donned a gauntlet of iron mail and smacked the back of his head, knocking him senseless, by removing his love from his life.
Todd wallowed at home over the weekend and by Monday, although the world looked grim and gray, he vowed to do his best to move on while nursing the wound in his heart.
He couldn’t bear to take Washington Avenue to work anymore as it reminded him too much of his lost love so he took Ashland instead.
At the sight of a large orange diamond sign that read ‘ROAD WORK AHEAD’ Todd’s tongue rubbed his teeth thoughtfully.
When he saw the next sign, ‘RIGHT LANE CLOSED AHEAD,’ his heart skipped a beat.
When traffic stopped his breath came quick and fast.
Traffic moved and he got to the front of the line before the one lane road.
There, holding, the glorious sign that read ‘STOP’ was Fate herself, his Fate, just as he knew her in her sweatshirt, jeans, reflective vest, and
He stopped, put the car in park, and stepped out.
She was looking away at the traffic approaching from the other direction.
Now that the moment was here he was unsure of what to do or say, whether to play it cool or come out and confess his love.
To say he moved slowly would not quite be accurate. A crippled tortoise would have covered the ground faster.
Then she began to turn the sign to ‘SLOW.’
Todd was looking her right in the eye. “Hi, I—”
“Oh my God, it’s you!” Her eyes went wide. “It’s really you.”
“What?”
“It’s you. I saw you last week. You stopped over on Washington but then I didn’t see you again. I kept hoping to see you but you didn’t show up.”
Todd felt even weaker in the knees than he did before. “Wh—what—huh?”
“I thought you were the handsomest man I’d ever seen. What’s your name? Tell me everything about you.”
The cars lined up behind Todd’s car started honking.
“Shut it!” she yelled.
Todd felt his heart swell to bursting. His weak knees became firm. His back straightened, his chest stuck out.
“My name’s Todd. What’s yours?”
“I’m Winifred. Winnie, my friends call me.” Her eyes crinkled into a smile framed by her curly hair under the hard hat.
“Winifred. That’s a beautiful name. I—I think I love you.”
She smiled. “I think I love you too.”
“Do you want to get coffee sometime?”
“Sure.”
“How about now?”
“I think they,” she pointed to the cars, “and my boss,” she jerked a thumb over her shoulder, “might have a problem with me leaving.”
“I’ll get the coffee. I haven’t taken a vacation day yet this year.” Todd dialed his phone. “Janet, tell them I’m not coming in today. No, I’m taking the day off. Yes. No. Bye.” He smiled at Winifred. “What kind of coffee do you like?”
“Regular. Two creams. No sugar.”
“Alright. I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t,” she said with a smile.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, strictly a product of the author’s imagination. Any perceived resemblance or similarity to any other fictional works, to actual events or persons, living or dead, and any perceived slights of people, places, or organizations are products of the reader’s imagination. This fiction is the result of a partnership between a human writer and the character(s) he accessed with his creative subconscious as he raced through the story with them. No generative AI was used in any way to write or produce ideas for this story.