Sunday, November 23, 2008

(Untitled) Part 6 of a short story I began writing... read the first 5 parts first!!!

The following morning Steve was wearing one of his unusual smirks which only left me wondering why he could still find something that amusing at eight thirty in the morning. He seemed to shoot me continuous glances as he would pass my office door, and I even caught him making a gesture with his fingers which I could only interpret to mean “you’re the man!” When my nerves could take it no more I had no choice but to pull him inside the office and badger away until I received a full explanation as to why he found it fit to waltz gleefully through the halls, when everyone else was wishing the clock didn’t alarm that morning.

His almost dead on recollection of the conversation which had taken place between Cynthia and I the evening before, had left me with only one conclusion. Maybe the sweet and innocent girl who I had seen fiddling her way through the hallways was just like the other low life’s I had come to know in this work place. Maybe while I believed that she and I were sharing a moment, she and a band of fifteen or twenty other females were really conjuring up ways to make me look like an idiot on the other side of the screen. After a while it appeared that Steve sensed my discomfort and quickly found a reason to be excused from my presence.

With a huge sigh, I dropped my weight back into the office chair so hard that it rolled a little under the quick transfer of momentum. I allowed my work bag to just collapse to the floor, forcing the lid open, and a few of the stationary that had previously been at the bottom of the bag made its way onto the hardwood. I starred at the ceiling for a few minutes with a look on my face which would only suggest that I was feeling defeated or indifferent, which ever it was my frustration was almost on par with my lack of wanting to be up at that hour of the morning.

When I finally managed to gather myself, I collected what items had been scattered on the floor and dumped them in the half ajar desk drawer, before clicking the power button on my computer. These prehistoric machines had been around from the era when computers were first made, so I knew I had enough time to grab a coffee, hunt for the paper and use the bathroom before it would completely boot up. I managed to complete my task in just under 7 minutes, and it was somewhere between the thought of the meeting I had to attend at eleven o clock and what I would be eating for lunch that day, that I saw a weird flash on the screen of my computer.

At first I thought it was an error message, or some notice telling me about updates I would need to install. But slowly I concentrated my gaze towards the name at the top of the message box, and much to my horror and excitement, I saw the words, ‘new message from Cynthia ‘Flor’ Ortega’. There was a moment of hesitation, either to convince myself that I was not as mad as I thought I was at her for relaying the contents of our private conversation the day before, or to control the excitement I was now feeling at the thought of what the message could be. I finally worked up the courage to click “open” and the words “sorry about yesterday” appeared on the screen. To my luck the date and time at which the message came in was at the bottom corner of the box, and I realized that only 2 minutes has lapsed from when it was sent.

As much as I wanted to just leave the occurrences of yesterday in the past, a small part of me felt the urge to get some answers. After all this was still the initial stages of getting to know an almost complete stranger who you’re interested in, and the worse thing you can do at this point in time is come across desperate or pushy. I figured the best way to play the whole thing off was to sound as ‘matter of fact as possible’ and my response was something like…

“Had to get out of here fast yesterday, eh?”

I wasn’t completely sure she would understand the sarcasm in the question, so I hesitated for a brief moment at what her response would be, and after a minute she responded again by saying

“yes, and I am sorry. Are you mad?”
“Of course not, I wanted to leave the office en seguida”. I thought it would help my lie if I threw some over used Spanish in.
“What do you do for lunch today?” was her next response.

Now normally I would have assumed this to be a subtle invitation at an informal date, but I couldn’t help panic at the fact that her English was just that bad, and the simple rules of engagement (or assumption) should not be applied in this situation.

“The same thing I do everyday”…. Was my initial thought, but then I realized a lot more than I expected was riding on this answer.

“I don’t know, what do we want to do”, was the cheekiest, most flirtatious, response I could come up with, without sounding too imposing. Part of me felt satisfied, while another part hesitated at the thought of what could possibly be going on in her head at this very moment.

Its not strange for visitors to a strange country to be over-cautious when dealing with native people. After all the first set of words we teach foreign exchange students are the bad ones, the first set of explanations we offer for things are the wrong ones and the first set of things we try to do to foreigners are sleep with them! So it was quite possible making a pass at someone who I have maybe exchanged a total of a paragraph of words with with was not so smooth at all. I was actually halfway to the keys to ‘correct’ my response when she immediately blurted out…

“Garden Grill… 12:30”

Before I had a chance to reply she had once again signed off of her computer. With my eyes still concentrating on the screen, I slowly eased back into my poor excuse for an office chair and began to retrace my thoughts. I was having a hard time trying to decide if I was frustrated or excited. This was the second of only two times that Cynthia had made such an abrupt exit, but only this time she had given me something to look forward to. It was then that I realized that I should stop feeling sorry for myself and be happy with the fact that…..… she had actually asked me out!

It was at this point in time, being at work so early in the morning was not such a bad idea, however lunch time could not come soon enough.