Today her man swung by her office.
A new experience. Her man + her office. Equals?
But he had never before needed to enter -- swing by, yeah, swing on by -- that hallow domain, not in all of their months together, and so it was that that notion had never been considered, dissected, forbidden, despaired. But why dissect? Why despair? Because her office categorically was not a place that entertained romance of any kind. Her office: staid, traditional, religious, mute.
Her office: it was the whirring of dot-matrix printers, it was the grime behind ears. Her office: famed in far corners of the state for crushing Intimacy under its pitiless marble boot; binary-cold with grey walls, white light and robot colleagues wearing ironed shirts, tucked-in shirts, pinstripe shirts, with spit-polished buttons; the Death of Newspaper Offices; suffering no raised voices, no strewn balls of press release, no pealing laughter, no unwarranted sarcasm; in it, them journalists, the hard-bitten ones, the young idealists, the flippant fashionistas, they all turned to clay and alabaster and steel.
They functioned. They whispered, tapped at keyboards, side-stepped and made do. No fuss, no friction.
Her office, oh it was no place for hand-holding and soft words, no, and in an odd way perhaps she preferred it that way. It seemed to make her outside world more potent. When she stepped into the street after 6, she felt like she'd been released from the long embrace of an old, old vampire. She felt like dropping to her knees and groaning. Every evening, a renewal of flesh and blood and guts.
But today, her man came by with a flowerpot that she'd bought from the nursery the day before, what she'd left behind at his house. Don't ask what she was doing at his house. Her office forbade such questions, so she preferred not to think about it... IT'S SEX, MAAAN! WILD MAD CRAZY SSSEX! UPSIDEDOWN INSIDEOUT SSSEX! SSSSSE... ohhh, shussshhhhh, won't you! Hush shush hushy wush! No, no, nonono, no nono-nonny-no, her office was no place for such questions, no. A place of propriety, this office. A tower of morality.
He came dressed in sweatpants and an FCUK t-shirt. Hair uncombed, beard untrimmed, manner unmade. A finger cracked through the eggshell walls of her daytime universe, cracked in and wiggled around. And so it was that the people of her universe turned and stared, its machinery squealed to a brief, annoyed halt. A portal opened up in the room, a new impossibility unleashed. A new universe of dishevelment, bringing with it a flowerpot.
Was such a thing ever thought probable in this office? No! Not at all? NO! Such a thing exceeded expectation and ruffled purpose. This new universe, its left thumb sticking in the flowerpot's wet soil, walking up to her with a big grin. It placed the flowerpot on her desk, bent down and kissed her full on the lips. It tugged at the hair falling on the nape of her neck. Playful, evil. Those old eggshell walls, oh how easily they shattered, how quick they became dust.
New ideas, when released into the world, resonate in some people, thrill their visions and ease them of their histories. Others brush them off their coat lapels and sweep them under the rug, as they offend their ethics and rust their heavy load-bearing structures. There were some in her office who grinned when they saw that kiss. Inwardly, they cheered. They looked forward to an open future, to more of the same. Others looked away, scrunched up their eyebrows and lashed out at their keyboards. This just wouldn't do, they muttered and mumbled and squeaked.
She existed in both mindsets at once. She was simultaneously excited and apprehensive. She didn't know what to think. Her eyes spun around the room like gyros, scrambling to find a centre.
And they fell, randomly, upon Mr. D'Souza from the Business desk, off to the left of field. Mr. D'Souza, staring at her, digging into her, large-happy-smiling into her. Mr. D'Souza, clutching a coffee cup in one hand. In his other hand, holding his crotch. Not merely holding it, but holding it. Oh, Mr. D'Souza, that old daredevil! That old dirty bastard! For heaven's sake, Mr. D'Souza!
She turned away. The world ceased to spin. “Thanks for bringing the plant,” she said. “I'll see you later.” She turned back to her cold computer, her robot work.
Her man, bringer of chaos, he frowned, he wiped his grimy hands on his sweatpants. He shuffled from foot to foot. He stood around a while. And he walked away, angered away, muddled away, whispered away. It wouldn't do, no. No, it wouldn't do, no?
And as her man walked away, she turned around and stared back at Mr. D'Souza, stared long and hard, stared till he nervously dropped his coffee cup onto his lap. A sharp, offended, offensive howl, ripping the room in twain, bile and acid pouring in through the tear, sloshing at the feet, eating toes. A new chaos, with everyone turning to look. LOOK!
She sighed. Huhhhh. Sometimes it just wasn't worth the effort. No, sir.
