The call came as we were stuck in traffic. A request for lunch from a man I'd been interested in for six months.

My co-worker, who was driving the car, quickly picked up on who was on the other end of my phone, and what he wanted. I looked at her. She nodded yes. I shook my head no.

"Can I call you back in about three minutes and let you know?"

He sounded a bit taken aback, but agreed.

She and I were on our way back into Denver from a morning's work at a medical clinic far north of the city. The two of us carpooled regularly to our jaunts at the five clinics. We were done for the day, and she was driving me back to my car.

When two women spend hours in a car together, it's almost inevitable that they open up to one another. My co-worker and I know one another's sordid and happy histories, current family and friendship issues, moods and wardrobes.

She knew me so well that before I hung up the phone, she knew who had called and what he had asked.

"He wants me to meet him downtown for lunch," I said. "Look at me!"

I pulled down the visor on the passenger's side and looked in the mirror. "I can't go! I didn't sleep well last night. I have circles under my eyes. My hair sucks!"

Joann is a no-nonesense Missouri native who instinctively knows how to handle men, and most other things. She tries, usually in vain, to direct and advise me on the romantic prospects that came my way.

But the time for advice was over. Now, she was giving orders.

"Oh you're going, girl. I've got makeup and hair spray. Look in my purse. It's that pink bag."

I opened the pink bag and pulled out powder, blush and lip gloss. I pawed at the bottom of it for more and came up empty.

"I need mascara! Eye shadow! Concealer!"

"No you don't," she said. "Let me look at you."

I turned my face toward hers and she studied me as well as any driver could in moving traffic.

"Well, maybe just a little concealer," she admitted.

"That's it," I said. "I'm telling him no."

The phone rang, a dramatic trumpeting that made every call - particularly this one - sound supremely important.

"You tell him you're going," she said.

I withered at her commanding tone.

"There's a Big K right around the corner here," she said. We'll get you all fixed up. Tell him you need 20 minutes."

I heard the reluctance in his tone when he agreed to 20 minutes. My car was at least 10 minutes from the downtown restaurant in which we had agreed to meet, and we hadn't even reached it yet. Twenty minutes, I knew, was inconceivable.

Joann knew no such word. We exited the highway, blasted through a light more red than yellow and careened into the Big K parking lot.

"This is ridiculous," I said. "I don't have the money to buy all new cosmetics."

"Who said anything about buying?" She tossed the words over her shoulder as she marched toward the door.

I followed, childlike.

In the cosmetics aisle, she grabbed an unboxed bottle of concealer and spun the top off.

"Now, slow movements so you're not obvious," she said softly. "Find yourself a mirror and do what you gotta do."

A few feet away, in jewelry, I spied a slender mirror designed to let women assess their potential jeweled purchases.

I dabbed makeup under my eyes and, for good measure, on my cheeks and chin, rubbing it in quickly.

"Turn around," Joann said. She studied my face, and rubbed here and there with her fingertip, blending in the foundation.

Similarly, I found a case of eye shadow that had been dropped. Its powdery contents were broken into crumbs. It would never sell. Joann opened it quickly and placed it into my hands.

"Here," she said, directing me to the Maybelline section. "This is 40 percent off."

This time, we purchased. For $5, I bought mascara and eyeliner and while Joann signed my debit card receipt, I applied them in yet another slender trinkets mirror.

"She has a date," Joann explained to the jewelry department clerk who tallied my purchases.

The woman grinned. "Oh! Good luck!"

I blushed, not out of embarrassment but guilt for having ransacked her cosmetics aisles.

Joann hurried me back into the parking lot.

"Now," she said, "stand here."

I stood next to her car while she removed a can of hairspray from her glove box. As I watched in the reflection of the passenger side window, she grabbed and sprayed bits and pieces of hair, carefully assessing it as she went. My hair was flat and uninspired no longer.

"There!" she said, pleased with her handiwork. "Now it looks funky, and fun."

We hurried back into the car. Eight minutes had passed.

"Now, take off your sunglasses," she said. "Look at me."

I turned my face to hers and she grinned. "You look beautiful!"

Ninety seconds later, I was unlocking my car door, 10 minutes later pulling into a parking spot a block away from the restaurant. The meter flashed red. I had nary a penny on me. I turned my back on the nagging meter and ran half a block, then slowed to a ladylike stroll. The long, cocoa brown, light skirt I'd chosen for work swirled sweetly around my calves. No one would guess I'd spent the last half hour in a state of almost utter panic.

My eyes sought the sign that marked the restaurant. I spied it on the second floor of a building still some considerable distance away. Even from here, I could see him standing on the deck, watching me walk.

For a couple minutes, I pretended not to have seen him.

Within days, I would discover my latest casual love interest was not the man for me. I would see him at his worst, neglecting his children while he entertained other adults and drank excessive amounts of alcohol. I would see other qualities, too, that quickly told me he was perhaps right for someone else, but not for me.

But for those few moments on that downtown Denver street, I knew none of that. I felt beautiful, excited and admired. In part by the fact that he had asked me, and in part by the dramatic process involved in getting me there.

I looked up, long enough so that he knew I had seen him. I waved, and then sent a smile that traveled down the sidewalk and up two stories, directly to the man who waited for me.