I sat back down (the chair was practically still rotating, that’s how brief that first encounter was) already nursing the seeds of an office crush.
That was a few days ago, and during that time the new guy wiped off the grin, ditched the tie, and otherwise blended into the maze of cubes with a skillfulness rarely seen at Cook, and which I found intriguing but ultimately disappointing. You hope for shirtless back-flips down the hallway, and what you get, if you’re lucky, is a glimpse of him around the bend of a corner once or twice a day. He seemed not to talk to anyone except when it directly involved work, he arrived very early (or so I heard, not exactly being an early riser myself), and, on the Friday of his first week, I learned that he took his lunch standing in the doorway of the break room. Just standing there, as though he were afraid to enter a space with only one exit.
I wondered what color his hand would be today. Each day the color changed. Sliding past him to get at the fridge, I stole a glance. Purple. And today it went all the way to his knuckles, leaving across the back of his hand a drip that seemed to illustrate a tendon. The sloppiness was so odd in contrast to his clothes, which looked Banana Republic all the way. They were sharp and new, the pants as crisp as the shirt—you could slice open your finger on the creases of his shirtsleeves. Even without the tie he looked too dressed up for Cook. And yet, this guy who somehow got through the morning without catching a wrinkle apparently couldn’t be bothered to wash his hands. It was like he was two different people.
I smirked. Yes, I wanted both of him. Preferably at the same time. It was good to have a crush at work—made the day pass quicker—but it was rare. The execs who did the hiring usually had lousy taste.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey.”
He was an inch or so shorter than me, slim but not skinny. His hair hung in loose waves against his collar and against his eyebrows, the kind of hair you have to restrain yourself from grabbing to twirl with your fingers. The kind you want to find strands of on your pillow.
I opened the freezer and took out a box of Eggos with my name on it (literally), dropped two frozen discs into the toaster and pushed them down. I imagined grabbing the sink hose and soaking his hair and that crisp shirt—he probably had the perfect amount of chest hair under there. Instead I looked up at the TV suspended from the ceiling in the corner. ESPN was on but the volume was muted.
“Like baseball?” I asked.
“More of a soccer guy.”
“Me too,” I said, though I didn’t add that it was because the guys in soccer are better looking.
When the TV faded to black right before a commercial I could see him in the reflection. He looked out of place in the harsh fluorescent light. In this light his face looked somehow naked, too vulnerable and exposed, his eyes not quite nervous, but alert. His eyebrows were thick and dark, the same color as his hair and his longish sideburns. It was the kind of face that needed a make-up of shadows to really come alive. To pop. New Guy was a night owl, I could tell.
The toaster popped-up my waffles and I squirted syrup across them and sat down at the little round table in the center of the room.
I thought I saw him glance at my brunch, but I wasn’t sure, but I said anyway, by way of explanation (and small talk), “I never get up early enough for breakfast.”
He nodded and took a bite of his sandwich, which looked like turkey or chicken. An open Tupperware sat on the counter by his elbow.
“Friday at last,” I said, trying again at conversation. “Any big plans for the weekend? Weather looks to be a total scorcher.”
He was still standing in the doorway and it was making me uncomfortable. His shoulder was against the wall, his legs were crossed casually at the ankles—the heel of his shiny wing-tips was on the hallway carpet, the toe on the lunch-room tile. He lifted his sandwich to his mouth and took another bite. Yes, purple today. Yesterday they’d been red, looking alarmingly like he’d been bleeding. Red yesterday, purple today—whatever New Guy did in the space between work hours, I guessed last night he did it with blue. Wednesday I hadn’t seen him at all, but Tuesday they’d been orange. And then, of course, the famous neon green of his first day. He was a walking art project.
“No? No plans?”
“Huh? Oh. Not really, nope.” He looked from the TV to me and back again. I decided he was either lying or playing coy. “Just, you know, being breezy.”
“Breezy.” I repeated it to see if there was meaning in the sound. “You mean like blowing on the breeze?”
“Sure,” he said, with an ambiguous curve of the mouth that you might call a smirk if you were feeling generous. He had an accent, too, slight and nearly lost amid the intrigue of his hand, but undeniable nonetheless. South American, maybe. Venezuela or one of those. It could even be some kind of Mediterranean. Sicily? I’d already perused a map for country names, but the zilch I could glean from an accent and a simple outline of national borders wasn’t the point. It wasn’t about geography, it was an imagination exercise. I was building his character. I had a lot of free time at work.
“Blowin’ on the breeeeze,” I warbled, as though it were a chorus to an indie rock song. I looked up at the TV for a minute. Chewed some waffle. Looked over at him and nodded at one of the empty chairs. “Sit down if you want.” I wished he would because frankly he was making me nervous standing there.
“S’OK,” he said, but it was, judging by the quick shrug of his shoulders, a no. He continued to lean in the doorway eating his sandwich, watching the muted TV. When he was done he clapped crumbs off his painty hands, wiped his mouth with a napkin, squeezed the cover back onto his Tupperware, and turned around. As he was leaving he said, “Enjoy your breakfast.” It sounded like brefess—like how kids say it.
As I watched him go I felt my face pop like a spring with pent-up curiosity.
Nothing had happened and yet when he left the lights seemed harsher, the air staler, as though his presence had charged the atmosphere, made it seem less like work and more like possibility. But any office crush of mine would have to do better than possibility. I wanted action....
The Cranberry Hush: A Novel Page 26
