"Would you be willing to give me the match's name?"

"Of course not. It wouldn't help you anyway because she never met him. I couldn't reach her to give her his contact information, which is why I sent the card. When she finally did call back, it was to cancel the service."

"Cancel the service?"

"Yes. She said something had come up. She didn't want her money back, but she knew it was not going to work out for her. She resigned her membership before she ever met one man. I was astounded because she had been so… so…" I waited, but she became transfixed by a spot on the desk, and it seemed as if her batteries had just run down.

"Excited?"

"No. I think determined is possibly more accurate."

"How much money did she forfeit?"

"Eighteen hundred dollars."

"Eighteen hundred? What do you get for that?"

Julia lifted her chin just enough so that she could look down her nose at me. "We are a very exclusive service, Ms. Shanahan. The fee is for an annual membership, and it includes one match each month."

I wanted to ask about guarantees and warranties and liquidated damages, but that would have been pushing it, especially since I wasn't here to plop down eighteen hundred clams. "Okay. So if you sign up and pay the fee, you're probably serious about meeting someone."

"We only accept candidates who are serious and"- she fixed me with a meaningful, clear-eyed, all-seeing look-"emotionally available."

I felt exposed again. Worse than exposed. X-rayed. The radiator in the corner, painted off white to match the walls, had kicked in and the office was filling with that dry radiator heat that I always found so uncomfortable. Finally she continued.

"I told Ellen I would keep her account active for a few months in case she changed her mind. She thanked me and told me to close the account."

"She was that sure?"

"Yes. She said she knew she would never be back…"

Her voice died and I watched Julia's face transform as Ellen's statement came back to her with new meaning. The lines grew deeper and she was now looking all of her sixty years.

"If you're agreeable, Julia, it would help me to get copies of Ellen's materials." I pulled out Aunt Jo's power of attorney and handed it to her. "As I said, I have authorization from the family."

She put on a pair of glasses, perused the document, and then looked at me over the tops of the lenses. "May I make a copy of this? I'd like to check with my attorney before I release anything, if that's all right." Julia was not a spur-of-the-moment kind of person.

"Would it be possible for me to wait while you did that? Maybe I could use the time to watch Ellen's video."

She took off her glasses, turned and watched the steady rain outside, and I thought she was considering my request. "You meet all kinds of people doing this work," she said, still staring, "and they all come in saying they're ready to change their lives. But it takes courage and so many of them don't have it. I thought Ellen did, which is why I was so surprised when she quit. I thought it had been a long, hard struggle for her, but that she was ready, and though I didn't know her well, I believed that good things were about to happen for her." She set her glasses softly on the desk and looked at me, her face still strong, but her eyes glistening like the wet windowpane. "I find this all very sad, Miss Shanahan, very sad, indeed."

I didn't know what to say and my voice was stuck in my throat anyway, so I just nodded.

A still photograph is perfectly suited to the memory of the dead. An image frozen forever, it captures the very essence of death to the living, the infinite stillness, the end of aging. I'd seen the pictures of Ellen, but when her video image came up on the bright blue screen and when I heard her voice for the first time, she came alive, alive in a way that made me feel the void where she used to be.

The first thing I noticed was her hair. I'd known it had been red, but the color was richer and deeper than I'd imagined, and under the lights it shone like polished mahogany. She wore it in a chin-length blunt cut that softened her square jaw. Her hazel eyes were riveted to a point just off camera, and she wore the same expression that we all do when we're at the wrong end of a camera lens-horrified. But even as uncomfortable as she appeared, I felt her presence. It was strength or determination or perhaps the sheer force of will it took for her to sit there and subject herself to something I knew I couldn't do. I was impressed.

"We'll start with an easy one, Ellen." It was Julia from off-camera, her blue-blooded Beacon Hill voice easily recognizable. "Why don't you tell us about yourself?"

"I'm originally from Fort Lauderdale. I went to college at the University of Florida, then graduate school at Wharton in Pennsylvania." I was surprised at Ellen's voice. It was almost husky with a tinge of a Southern accent.

"What did you study?"

"Finance."

"Your graduate degree is an MBA?"

"Yes."

The pause was long enough to be awkward, and I imagined Julia hadn't expected such spare, to-the-point answers. But she was a pro and she recovered. "I must say, I'm not very good with numbers, and I always admire people who are. I think you have such an interesting job, Ellen. Will you tell us about it?"

"I work at the airport. I'm the general manager for Majestic Airlines here in Boston."

"That sounds like a big job, and a tough one, especially for a woman." Julia was definitely not of our generation. "What exactly does a general manager do?"

"That's the first thing I had to learn when I arrived. I came to the field straight from a staff job, which means I didn't have the experience to do this work, and it's been challenging."

She gave an articulate, detailed description of her job-our job. As she talked about her work, her face relaxed and grew more animated. Her voice grew stronger, and she spoke with such pride about her position, I felt bad for ever having questioned her right to be in it.

"I have the ultimate responsibility for getting our passengers where they want to go on time with all their belongings. But it's my employees who determine how well we do that. My most important job is giving them a reason to want to make it work."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

"Do you get to fly for free?" Julia asked the question with the sense of awe and wonder that always made me smile. For people not in the business, flight benefits are absolutely irresistible.

"Yes," Ellen said, smiling as well, "that's a great benefit. I don't travel as much as I'd like, but I'm hoping for some changes."

Julia jumped on the opening. "Can you elaborate on that? It sounds as if you're making lots of changes in your life."

The quick shift seemed to catch Ellen off guard. She tried another smile, but it was tight and tentative, and it came out more like a grimace. We weren't talking about work anymore.

She began slowly, reaching for every word. "I started working when I was in high school. I worked through college, worked through business school, and started my job with Majestic two weeks after I graduated. I would have started sooner, but I needed two weeks to move. I've been working ever since."

I sat in my curtained cubbyhole at Boston-in-Common with my earphones listening to Ellen talk and nodding my head. Except for the fact that I went to graduate school at night after I'd started working, she could have been describing my life.

"I love my work," she added hastily, "and I have no regrets. I love the airline. But there are long hours and you move every couple of years. It's hard to… there are sacrifices… you can get fooled into thinking that you're happy and sometimes you make choices that aren't right for you."