“Don’t move. Wait for me.” he ordered.
I watched him leave and their subsequent exchange with interest: he approached the woman, she stiffened and stood. He leaned over the desk and pointed to something on her computer screen. She nodded, looked at me again, her brow rising in what I read as confusion, then sat down and started typing.
He turned and I made the mistake of looking directly at him. For a moment he paused, the same disquieting steadiness in his gaze causing the same heat to rise to my cheeks. I felt like pressing my hands to my face to cover the blush. He began to cross the distance toward me but was intercepted by another, older, man in a well-tailored suit holding a clip board. I watched their exchange with interest as well.
It was the woman who finally approached me after pulling a series of papers off the printer. She gave me a closed mouth smile which reached her eyes as she crossed the room.
She extended her hand as I stood, “I’m Joy. You must be Ms. Morris.”
I nodded once, tucking a restive curl behind my ear, “Yes, call me Janie. Nice to meet you.”
“I guess you’ve had a hard day?” Joy took the empty seat next to mine as I also sat; she didn’t wait for me to answer. “Don’t worry about it, hun. It happens to the best of us. I just have these papers for you to sign. I’ll need your badge and your key then we’ll pull the car around for you.”
“Uh... car?”
“Yes, it has been arranged and will take you wherever you need to go.”
“Oh, ok.” I was surprised by the arrangement of a car but didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.
I took the pen she was offering and skimmed over the papers. They looked benign enough. I hazarded a glance toward Sir Handsome, found him peering at me while he seemed to be listening to the man in the suit. Without really reading the text I signed and initialed in the places she indicated, pulled my badge from around my neck along with my key and handed it to her. She took the documents from me and initialed next to my name in several places.
She paused in once place. “Is this your current address and home phone number?”
I saw Jon’s address and I grimaced, “No, no- it isn’t. Why?”
“They need a place to send your last paycheck. Also, we need a current address in case they need to send you anything that might have been left behind. I’ll need you to write out your current address next to it.”
I hesitated. I didn’t know what to write. “I’m sorry, I-” I swallowed with effort and studied the page. “I just, uh, I am actually between apartments. Is there any way I could call back with the information?”
“What about a cell phone number?”
I gritted my teeth, “I don’t have a cell phone; I don’t believe in them.”
Joy raised her eyebrows, “You don’t believe in them?”
I wanted to tell her how I truly loathed cell phones. I hated feeling like I was reachable twenty four hours a day; it was akin to having a chip implanted in your brain which tracked your location, told you what to think and do until, finally, you would become completely obsessed with the tiny touch screen as the sole interface between your existence and the real world. Did the real world actually exist if everyone only interacted via cell phones? Would Angry Birds one day become my reality? Was I the unsuspecting pig or the exploding bird? These Descartes-based musings rarely made me popular at parties. Maybe I read too much science fiction and too many comic books but cell phones reminded me of the brain implants in the novel Neuromancer. As further evidence I wanted to tell her about the recent article published in the journal of Accident Analysis & Prevention about risky driving behaviors.
Instead, I just said: “I don’t believe in them.”
“Oooo-k. No problem.” Joy reached into her breast pocket, standing, and withdrew a white paper rectangle, “Here is my card; just give me a call when you’re settled and I’ll enter you into the system.”
I stood with her, taking the card, letting the crisp points dig into the pads of my thumbs and forefingers. “Thank you. I’ll do that.”
Joy reached around me and picked up my box, motioning with her shoulder that I should follow, “Come on, I’ll take you to the car.”
I started to follow her but then, like a self-indulgent child, allowed a lingering glance over my shoulder at Sir Handsome McHotpants. He was turned in profile, no longer peering at me with that discombobulating gaze; his attention was wholly fixed on the man in the suit. I was dually relieved and disappointed. Likely, this was the last time I would see him. I was pleased to be able to admire him one last time without the blinding intensity of his blue eyes. But part of me missed the heated twisting in my chest and the saturating tangible awareness when his eyes met mine.