(Untitled) Part 5 of a short story I began writing... read the first 4 parts first!!!

I froze for a moment, as any normal overly excited individual might have, before I double clicked on the message, just to make sure what I had seen was authentic. Before I had a chance to gather my thoughts and elicit a response a smiling face appeared in the message box on my screen. I knew at that point in time, I had no choice but to respond, as it appeared this was my best chance for an opening line. I had replayed the scenario several times in my head before, which looked sort of like something from the movie “You Got Mail”. I envisioned Cynthia hunched over her computer at her work station, using her already elf sized body to block the screen as she pattered away at the keys. She would maybe even make a glance or two to the side to verify no one was watching, before adding her reply to my response, which I was yet to compose. However, my mind went blank for those few seconds, and all I could think to send in return was…

“ :)“

I knew at this point in time, any chance of making a good first impression was lost, so I had to immediately follow up my response with a typical question.

“how’s it hangin?”

I instantly caught myself and remembered that she spoke very little English, so maybe slang wasn’t the best mode of communication. My thoughts were right, because she didn’t seem to make any sort of reply the few minutes I was waiting. What could have easily been interpreted as a short period of time, would seem that much longer to a person who is already over analyzing a situation involving a union between two people, especially when one party is definitely interested in the other. I corrected myself and then typed

“are you having a busy day?” to which she instantly replied

“yes it is very buzy :) ”

“really! Why is it so busy?”

I felt it wise to throw a quick question in, just to keep the conversation going. It gives ‘them’ a reason to have to reply.

“lots of bookings. What are you doing?” was how she wrote back. Clever girl, it seems she may have caught on to my technique. I began sputtering away almost a full paragraph on the reports I had written in the morning and how I was working on a list to send to purchasing. With all my efforts she replied with a simple
“ok :)”

At this point in time I was feeling a little uneasy, coupled with a small sense of satisfaction. I had already overcome the first step of establishing contact with this girl, and was now working my way into what I had hoped would be an interest jerking conversation. However, her very short answers had me wondering if she was interested at all. I began to run through a multitude of situations in my head, from the lackadaisical office girl, who was indulged in some 3 day old report, flipping back and forth to our conversation when she felt the need to give her eyes a break from the page. Or maybe even the very interested girl who had hoped that she would have been pages away into a mind blowing conversation by now, only to realize she encountered an average Joe who only saw it fit to send her useless facial expression and rhetorical questions. It also didn’t help that I was now lost in a train of thought and hadn’t written anything in the last few minutes, which may have her believing that maybe I had run out of things to say, or had nothing to say to begin with.

“I am sorry my inglish is very bad”, was her next response, which immediately killed all prior thought and put me back in the drivers seat. I began to pour out compliments of how I thought she spoke really good English, “a lot better than mine, that’s for sure”, to which she continued to respond with electronic smiles and gestures of written approval. When my kindergarten English began getting the best of me, I resorted to throwing a few one liner Spanish words that I may have remembered from the subtitles on movies I had seen months before. I could tell she wasn’t impressed, but gave me credit for making the effort.

As we grew more comfortable with each other, I started to do as any man would have done, and I ran ahead of myself. Replaying images in my mind of me and her walking up and down a beach, reciting lines from the numerous titles I had come to know, maybe even taking her up to my room and introducing her to my cat. That would make her feel sorry enough for me, or maybe even relate to the difficult situation I now found myself, being nose deep in this remote part of the world, with no easy way of finding escape. I could play for her some of my favorite Latin tracks, to which we could break out into one of those passionate, in sync, Antonio Banderes/ Jennifer Lopez type dance routines, where our bodies would move like a liquid substrate in a chemistry beaker being twirled round and round. Or maybe I could just invite her to go watch Dirty Dancing!

“do you like movies?” was my next question to her, which I thought she could answer easily in the same breath. But to my surprise her next response was…

“I am sorry, but I have to leave now… bye”.

And there was no smiling face, or written gesture of good will. Before I could even reply she had signed off from her computer, which meant any attempt to contact her at this point in time would have been useless. I would have been forced to stop her in the hallway and ask her for her phone number if there was any hope of us continuing my ballroom fantasy, because the hour of the day suggested that she would no longer be returning to her computer.

Still motivated by my phantasmal urges, I made an attempt to rush out of my office hoping that I would catch her evacuating the hall. No longer did I see the urgency to be candid about my expressions of interest. At this point in time all I could think about was rekindling the connection we had made for those few minutes on the computer, with the hope of jump starting something that would take me away from this social genocide that I now called home. Little did I realize that the state that I previously mistook for patience, would so quickly be transformed into desperation as my one hope of a comfortable existence had just left me out to dry with my eyes still glued to my computer screen.

I heard the echoes of a door shut in the hallway, and I couldn’t help but leap from my seat towards my window to catch a glimpse of what might be Cynthia making her way to the office exit door. My office was the last door perpendicular to the exit at the bottom of a very long and medieval like tunnel of business rooms and potted plants. Her office was located closer to the top of the hallway, which would give me just enough time to witness her make her departure, or stop her dead in the tracks. I hadn’t even gotten my door fully open when our eyes made four… but for only the slightest second, as she tucked her chin back into her collar and walked straight towards the exit as she always did. I barely had enough time to analyze the lines on her face to know if she flashed me a look of disdain, pity, apathy or contentment. All I knew was that my short lived consolation had transformed into agitation and I could not help but question myself.

Could she have been the one I was talking to only moments earlier? What could have driven her to scurry away so quickly? And would I ever get the chance to talk to her again?