Clarissa took all this in with a growing sense of horror as twelve pairs of eyes blinked nervously back at her. The hideous silence now stretching out toward the realm of the unbearable ended only when one girl finally blurted out, "Surprise!" A burst of chatter exploded through the room and everyone jumped up for a hug, the bustle of it all managing to camouflage Clarissa's gobsmacked emotional state.

She took a deep breath, put on her happy face, and started hugging. "Oh, you guys, you shouldn't have!" Really.

The incredibly slow girl from customer service frowned in confusion. "So, you're not..."

"Nope," Clarissa chirped. "Not yet." She punched the air playfully in that 'giving it the old college try' sort of way and added, "Almost, though!"

A thirty-something woman with too much jangling gold jewelry Clarissa knew obliquely from accounts flipped her Jacqueline Smith hair and said in a world-weary tone, "What an ass. Just as well, though, if you ask me."

"Oh, no. It's not like that. Kieran's wonderful. We've already agreed we're going to get married. We just haven't...or rather, he hasn't...um, well, he hasn't quite come around to a proposal, is the thing." She forced a laugh. "But getting married was originally his idea."

There was another difficult pause. "Let's eat cake!" the college intern shouted out and started passing out forks.

"If you ask me, you need to be more aggressive." Human Resources Lonnie tucked her salt-and-pepper pageboy hairdo behind her ears. Clarissa had had a bit of an uncomfortable run-in with her just that morning when she'd panicked unexpectedly and tried to rescind her resignation. She'd already had quite enough of Lonnie's go-get 'em style for one day. In her enthusiasm to get her to sign the severance package and avoid another layoff statistic, the woman had practically shoved the pen up Clarissa's nose. That aside, frankly, Clarissa wasn't about to take advice from a woman whose wardrobe consisted solely of sensible skirts that hit just at the spot guaranteed to make one's legs look as fat as humanly possible.

"I agree. Today's men have too many choices," another woman said. "You've got to reel them in these days. There's always someone younger, prettier, and more fertile just around the corner. Waiting around passively doesn't get you anywhere."

Clarissa shifted uneasily, inwardly praying for a quick end to a rather depressing conversation that seemed to be hitting hot buttons she didn't even realize she had.

"I'll agree with you there," Jacqueline Smith said, as she went over to the table, grabbed the meat cleaver and hacked out a large piece of cake. "What's the quickest way to a man's heart?" She turned around suddenly and made a stabbing motion with the cleaver. "Through his chest with a sharp knife." And then she burst into hysterical laughter.

"Well, you know what they say," said one of the girls from the finance department with a sympathetic smile. "The minute you get married your sex life goes down the drain."

The college intern nodded as sagely as it was possible for an eighteen-year-old to nod. "You've got to keep it fresh and sexy."