Madison is No-Go (finally)

Diary

Lunch today with a representative--let's call him "X"--from a major food lab. Looks like I won't be living in their base town of Madison, Wisconsin.

This is a good story.

One Tuesday evening in June 2000: I shared a charming dinner with X and two of their senior people, this at the Old Warsaw in Dallas. One of the truly finest meals of my life, both for the dinner and the company, who were dressed impressively. They went on about how they loved Madison, its cultured life, and the company. Now it's true that their company is dynamite, and presumably a dynamite place to work. It was hard not to get the impression that they were recruiting me. There was no point in pursuing this unless I was sure I could live in Madison, and nothing settles that like a visit.

The next Friday: I flew to Chicago O'Hare and drove into Madison at sundown. After stifling Dallas and Orlando, the air seemed positively breathable. What a nice place. I wanted to know what kind of house I might afford there, so I found X's address on the internet and drove the rental car by. It was forested, and over the garage was a balcony, eminently livable. I rolled down the car window to see better, and as I was gazing to remember the house later, up from the balcony stood a barely clothed, sunbathing X with whom I had dined four days earlier, a thousand miles away. I obscured my face my eyes and drove off as fast as I could. This would have been very hard to explain.

September 2001: Messed up as all the flights were in mid-September, I managed to get to Madison for another look. It rained the entire trip, and since I lost time at both ends from hastily rescheduled flights, it was a bust. Had a nice dinner at the Orpheum, though, a sort of lobby restaurant, two tables wide and elbows bumped from the narrow aisle.

January 2002: January 20 is the coldest day of the year in Madison, so I flew up to see for myself. The weather charts didn't lie. The rental car plowed through six inches of snow, and I stopped for Mexican food of all things. I stopped in a mall for a pair of gloves--not much call for them in Orlando. Got nice leather ones. When I walked to the Orpheum for dinner, I was frozen, and when I got a table facing the door, I set my coat and gloves in the chair opposite me. Three sips into my wine, who walks in the door and scans the entire restaurant but X and his wife. Heart attack. They walk to a table behind me, his wife even bumps my elbow as they pass. My face disappeared into the wine glass and I tried to make myself very small. I ate fast, paid, rushed out onto windy, frigid State Street. My hands were cold--I had forgotten my new gloves! I deliberated, decided it was not worth it to go back in--how would I explain it? I never saw those gloves again.

February 2002: Lunch with X in Orlando and I handed him a resume. Over the next months I talked with their vice-president on the phone a few times, and they seemed interested, but slow.

Today: Lunch with X, at the same restaurant (they like to come down in winter). Lots of talk about their new facilities and what it can do for my present company, Minute Maid, but--in the end they don't have a position. This caps it.

I spent a lot of time imagining life in Madison, but it has all the look of something just not meant to be.