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Wed | March 22, 2006

The Office Romance

At work I sometimes go to visit Sara, the administrative assistant at the front desk. Nothing is at stake to talk to her— she neither reports to me nor is above me. The front desk is my favorite place, where I can talk without consequence, as well as get interoffice envelopes. And I enjoy the walk— not much of a distance, but it is something. I go every hour or two. Being on the way to the bathroom, the mailroom, the elevator bank, and the other wing, there are any number of reasons to pass by. It's nice to talk to someone who has simple duties, whose only concern is the next fashion trend and how to get a good manicure.

Sara has dark hair, cut short, but piled high on the top of her head, as if a dark creature sat there. That doesn't make her sound pretty. She is pretty. With her glowing face, she looks like a kid in an animal costume, the jumpsuit kind where the kid’s face is the only thing showing out of the fur.

Everyone has their own cubicle, and some do more work than others. I want to be one of those who do no work, and sit, all day, and think about the gym. But I am not; I work all day and my only respite is an occasional walk to look out the window of the kitchen. I do not think of lunch until 1 pm, and I get the first thing that comes to mind. Bill thinks about lunch from the moment he sits down in the morning until noon when he gets it. Lunch is his perfect accomplishment of the day.

I have never gotten lunch with Sara, although I suggested it once. It has been in the air ever since- captured in her graceful figure, with a curve in the small of her back which is fashionable now. Even her body is fashionable.

She is always taken up by some task, such as organizing her pen jar or typing who knows what— IM'ing, sometimes. She always seems to be busy. The job fits her well-- her personality and her intelligence. I envy people who have something that actually makes sense.

On Monday I happened to be hanging about her desk. We were talking about her new fragrance, a vanilla musk custom blend that she got from a boutique. It smelled like cake. I was looking at her sweater-- she always wore new clothes- that day, a yellow sweater with a tinge of lime green. It had a flowered lining. I was wearing an old blue sweater with permanent wrinkles bent into the sleeves. The dirt never quite gets off the insides of the wrinkles. Her phone rang and I left and went to the bathroom. When I came back she had just gotten off.

"Who was that?" I asked.

She didn’t answer. Perhaps I didn’t wait long enough—I never wait for people to answer. I don’t want to push them. so I said, "How was the weekend?"

"It was good," she said. "How was yours?"

"Ok," I said.

"What did you do?"

"I laid in bed and slept and dozed." And I had-- I had looked at the wall for two days and then come back.

She laughed at me.

I returned to my desk, and started to pick at the dead skin on my lips with my teeth.

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