(Untitled) Part 3 of a short story I began writing... read the first 2 parts first!!!

So I gave her the common courtesy of not making much contact for the next couple of months, though my job never really called for us to encounter that much on a regular basis.

It was only when I was going through my ‘interaction drought’ that I had even given her existence a second thought. You see even though I had entered the new situation at work completely devoid of making any new relations, every person who is put in a new environment is forced to assess their new surroundings. In other words, we tend to look for places we feel safe and people we feel comfortable being around. Your average person, regardless of being in a relationship or not, may even look for what I call ‘possibilities’. The single soul may feel they need to look for someone to bond with, while the committed soul may simply be looking for a back up! I had given the place a quick scouring when I arrived and had tagged this hidden treasure as a possibility, if ever the urge to open up again resurfaced.

The work place was an unsound meeting ground, home to gossipers and scribers of false news, in fact, it’s hard to imagine a modern business place without this similar structure. One mans private affairs is another mans, coffee break entertainment. The situation was so horrible that one would have to “play their cards close to their chest” if they were on the phone with a friend, or simply relaying the contents of a soap opera they may have watched the night before. You never know when a fictional Brooke Logan could become an at work Brooke Sherley, and for the rest of the week, the entire office would wonder if there was something going on worth blackmailing you for, just so they could get an extra spot in the lunch line. Before my third month had ended, I had learnt that I already slept with the boss to get the new office by the beach (him being a man meant nothing in this situation), taken four girls from the office for a drink, and apparently ended the night with two of them, and I was pursuing one of the only girls in the office, I didn’t feel bad calling a prostitute to her face! Which I’m sure she wouldn’t mind owning up to if the name had ever met her ears.

It was only then that I realized if I ever were to approach Cynthia and avoid the army net of rumors, it would have to be in the privacy of a secluded meeting spot; one free from tape record ears and satellite eyes. Even using the internet was threatening given the over occurrence of identity falsification that took place in this new electronic savvy generation. It didn’t take an experienced chick flick and day time drama lover to know that women would do anything to create a more interesting situation when it involves a man. Not that the whole introduction, pursuit and constant interjection of new material to keep a woman interested wasn’t enough stress on the male specie, oh no, women also had to add a slight twist when it came to meeting someone in an unorthodox setting. So one couldn’t depend on the words that would appear on a computer screen or even the voice on a telephone as evidence enough that they were interacting with the person they had envisioned.

And since we’re on the subject of female behavior, another of my observations have taught me that women tend to take comfort in numbers. In high school I used to stare in bewilderment as a drove of lanky limbs, bouncing hair and flashing skirts would make their way to the rest room, as if they were required to build the toilet before they could actually use it! Or in a club, a score of women would cluster on the dance floor whilst making the most provocative of gestures at male onlookers. You would even see a group of them packed so tightly into a large SUV at a stop light, adjusting their bra’s and touching up their make up, eleven o clock at night… or see them piled at a table in the lunch room giggling to themselves and flashing dirty looks at uninformed males seeking to approach them, under the pretense that they could disband this tightly knit fellowship of overcharged estrogen. The more seasoned male ‘rejectee’ would watch in amusement as one after one guys would make failed attempt after failed attempt to ‘tumble the pins’, with the hope that they would ‘score’ with the final one standing.

Well girls would continue this behavior into adulthood and women found it necessary to make constant checks and balances with the female she would consider her closest friend, who ironically was the same female she wouldn’t trust with her 12 year old nephew. So while I would see a picture of Cynthia Ortega appear on my computer screen above the words “Cynthia ‘Flor’ Ortega”, I couldn’t help wonder if the recurrent ‘LOL’s’ and smiling emoticons was the curvaceous poppy eyed girl I had come to see in the halls and in meetings. Also, I felt uneasy about the conversation I was having with her on my computer screen, given the nature of how I had arrived at her personal information.