Knitting in the City 01 Neanderthal Seeks Human (2 page)

Actually, it was more of a wince followed by a cringe. And, his name wasn’t Handsome McHotpants. I didn’t know his name, but I recognized him as one of the afternoon security guards for the building and the one which I’d been harmlessly admiring-slash-stalking for the past five weeks. I never learned his name because I had a boyfriend; not to mention McHotpants was about twenty thousand leagues out of my league
(at least in the looks department) and, according to my friend Elizabeth, likely gay. Elizabeth had once told me that men that look like McHotpants usually wanted to be with other men that look like McHotpants.

A
nd who could blame them?

More often than I was comfortable admitting, I reflected that, even if his tastes were resolutely fixed on womankind, he was one of those people who were just decidedly too good looking; he shouldn’t have been possible in nature. It wasn’t that he was a pretty guy, I was certain he would not look better dressed in drag than ninety-nine percent of female kind.

Rather, it was that everything about him, from his consistently, perfectly tousled light brown hair to his stunningly strong square jaw to his faultless full mouth, was overwhelmingly flawless. Looking at him made my chest hurt. Even his movements were gracefully effortless, like someone who was dexterously comfortable with the world and completely secure with his place in it. He reminded me of a falcon.

I, on the other hand, always hovered in the space between self-consciousness and sterile detachment; I believe my gracefulness was akin to an ostrich’s
; when my head wasn’t in the sand people were pointing at me and saying:
what a strange bird!

I’d never been comfortable with the truly gorgeous members of my species. Therefore, over the course of the last five weeks, I couldn’t bring myself to meet his gaze, always turning or lowering my head long before I was in any danger; the thought of it was like looking directly at something painfully bright. Therefore, I admired him from afar
, like a really amazing piece of art that you only see in photographs or behind glass in a museum. So we affectionately referred to him as Handsome McHotpants; more accurately, Elizabeth and I knighted him Sir Handsome McHotpants one night after drinking too many mojitos.

Now, looking up into the depths of endless blue through my black framed glasses, my own large eyes blinked and the cloak of numbness started to slip. A tugging, originating just under my left rib, quickly turned into a smoldering heat and radiated to my fingertips, up my throat, to my cheeks and behind my ears.

Why did it have to be Sir McHotpants? Why couldn’t they have sent Colonel Mustard le Mustache or Lady Jelly O’Belly?

He dropped his hand to his side as he cleared his throat, removed his gaze from mine and glanced around the room. I felt my face suddenly flush red
, an unusual experience for me, and dipped my chin to my chest as I silently mocked myself; I finally felt embarrassment.

I took stock of the day and my reaction to each event.

I knew I needed to work on being engaged in the present without becoming overwhelmed. It occurred to me that I was demonstrating more despair over a stall of empty of toilet paper and the presence of a gorgeous male security guard than discovering that my boyfriend cheated on me, leading to my present state of homelessness, not to mention my recent state of unemployment.

Meanwhile Sir McHotpants appeared to be as uncomfortable with my surroundings and the situation as I should have been. I
perceived his eyes narrow as they swept over the suspended crowd. He cleared his throat again, this time louder, and- suddenly- the room was alive with self-conscious movement and pointedly adverted attention.

After one more hawk-like examination of the room, as though satisfied with the effect, he turned his attention back to me
. The stunning blue eyes met mine and his expression seemed to soften, I guessed most likely with pity. This was, to my knowledge, the first time he had ever looked directly at me.

I
saw him, watched him every weekday for the last five weeks. He was why I started taking a late lunch as his shift started at one-thirty. He was why I now frequently ate my lunch in the lobby. He was why, at five-thirty on days when Elizabeth met me after work, I began loitering in the lobby by the arboretum and fountain; I would peek at him through squat tree trunks and tropical palm bushes, knowing my friend would not be able to meet me in the lobby any earlier than six.

McHotpants and I
stood for a moment, uneasily, watching each other. My cheeks were still pink from the earlier blush but I marveled that I was able to hold his gaze without looking away. Maybe it was because I already put most of my feelings in an invisible box in an invisible closet in my head or maybe it was because I realized this was likely the twilight of our time together, the last of my stalkerish moments due to the recent severing of gainful employment, but I didn’t want to look away.

Finally he placed his hands on his narrow hips and lifted his chin toward my desk; his deep voice gravelly, just above whisper quiet, “Need help?”

I shook my head, feeling like a natural disaster on mute. I knew he wasn’t there to actually help me. He was there to
help me out of the building
. I huffed, spurning his offer. I was determined to get my walk of shame over. I turned, pushing my black rimmed glasses up my lightly freckled nose, and closed the short distance to my desk; the loaned flip flops made a smacking sound against the bottom of my feet with each hurried step.
Smack, smack, smack.

All my belongings were packed in a brown and white file box. Members of the human resources department did it while I was told to wait in a conference room then excused to use the restroom facilities. I glanced at the empty desk. I noted where my pencil cup had once been; there was a clean patch of circle surrounded by a ring of dust. I wondered if they let me keep the pencils or if they removed them from the cup before packing it into the box.

Shaking my head to clear it of my ridiculous, pointless pondering, I picked up the box which- unbelievably- held the last two years of my professional aspirations and walked calmly past McHotpants, avoiding his gaze, to the reception desk and the elevators beyond. I knew he was following me even before he stopped next to me, close enough that his elbow slightly grazed mine as I tucked the box against my hip.

I held it
with one arm while I jabbed a finger at the call button. I thought I could feel his attention on my profile but I made no attempt to meet it. Instead, I watched the boxes with red numbers announcing the floor status of each elevator.

“Do you want me to carry that?” His gravelly almost whisper sounded from my right.

I shook my head, slid my eyes to the side without turning; there were about four other people waiting for the elevator besides us.

“No, thank you. It’s not heavy; they must’ve taken the pencils.” I was relieved by the flat, toneless sound of my voice.

Several silent moments ticked by giving my brain dangerous unleashed time to wander; my ability to focus was waning. This was a frequent problem for me. Time with my thoughts, especially when I’m anxious, doesn’t work to my advantage.

Most people in stressful situations, I’ve been told, have the tendency to obsess about their current circumstances, how they arrived at their present fate, what they could do to avoid it or situations like it in the future. However, the more stressful my situation the less I think about it or anything related to it.

At present, I thought about how the elevators were like mechanical horses and wondered if anyone loved them or named them. I thought about what steps I could take to remove the word ‘moisture’ or even ‘moist’ from the English language; I really hated the way it sounded and always went out of my way to avoid saying it out loud. I also really didn’t like the word ‘slacks’ but felt vindicated when recently Mensa came out against the word ‘slacks’ in an official statement, proposing that it be removed from the vernacular.

Sir McHotpants cleared his throat again interrupting my preoccupation with odious sounding words. One of the herd of elevators
was open, its red arrow pointing downward, and I continued to stand still, lost in my thoughts, completely unaware. No one else had yet entered the elevator and I could feel them watching me.

I shook myself a little, attempting to re-entrench in the present. I felt McHotpan
ts place his hand on my back to guide me forward with gentle pressure; the warmth of his palm was soothing yet it sent a disconcerting electric shock down my spine; he lifted his other hand to where the door slid into the wall, effectively holding the elevator for me.

I quickly broke contact and settled into one of the lift’s corners; Sir Handsome followed me in but loitered near the front of the elevator, blocking the entrance, and pressed the ‘close door’ button before anyone else could enter. The partitions slid together and we were alone. He pulled a key on a retractable cord at his belt and fit it into a slot at the top of the button pad; I watched as he pressed a circle labeled BB.

I lifted an eyebrow in question and asked, “Are we going to the basement?”

He made no sign of affirmation as he turned to me, regarding me openly; we were in opposite corners. I imagined for a moment that we were two prize fighters and the spacious elevator was our ring, the brass rails around the perimeter the ropes. My eyes moved over him in equally plain assessment; he would definitely win if it came to blows.

I was tall for a girl but he was easily six foot three or four. I also hadn’t worked out with any seriousness or intensity since my college soccer days. He, judging by the large expanse of his shoulders, looked like he never missed a day at the gym and could bench press me as well as the box I was holding, even if it had contained the confiscated pencils.

His eyes weren’t finished with their appraisal, lingering around my neck, and the tugging beneath my left rib was back; I felt myself starting to blush again.

I tried for conversation, “I didn’t mean to be imprecise, I imagine this building has more than one basement although I’ve never seen the blueprints. Are we going to one of the basements and, if so, why are we going to one of the basements?”

He met my gaze abruptly, his own unreadable.

“Standard procedure.” he murmured.

“Oh.” I sighed and started tearing again at my lip; of course there would be a standard procedure. This was likely fairly common for him
. I wondered if I were the only one he would be escorting out today.

“How many times have you done this?” I asked.

“This?”

“You know, escort people out of the building after they’ve been ‘downsized’
. Does this happen every day of the week? Layoffs typically happen on Fridays, the last day of the week, on Friday afternoons, in order to keep the crazies from coming back later in the same week. Today is Tuesday so you can imagine how surprised I was. Based on the international standard adopted in most western countries Tuesday is the second day of the week. In countries that use the Sunday-first convention Tuesday is defined as the third day of the week.”

Shutupshutupshutup!

I drew in a deep breath, clamped my mouth shut, and clenched my jaw to keep from talking. I watched him watch me, his eyes narrowing slightly, and my heart started to pound with loud sincerity against my chest in, what I recognized as, embarrassment.

I knew what I sounded like. My true friends softened the label by insisting I was merely well-read; everyone else called it coocoo for co-co-puffs. Although I’d been repeatedly urged to audition for Jeopardy and was an ideal and proven partner in games of Trivial Pursuit, my pursuit of trivial knowledge and the avalanche of verbal nonsense which spewed forth unchecked did little to endear me to men.

A quiet moment ticked by; for the first time in recent memory I didn’t have to try to focus my attention on the present. His blue eyes were piercing mine with an unnerving intensity, arresting the usual wanderlust of my brain. I thought I perceived one corner of his mouth lift although the movement was barely perceptible.

Finally he broke the silence, “International standard?”

“ISO 8601, data elements and interchange formats. It allows seamless intercourse between different bodies, governments, agencies... corporations.” I couldn’t help myself as the words tumbled out. It was a sickness.

Then, he smiled. It was a small, closed lipped, quickly suppressed smile. If I blinked I might have missed it; but, an expression of interest remained. He leaned his long form against the wall of the elevator behind him and crossed his arms over his chest. The wrist length, blue sleeves of his guard uniform pulled in taut lines over his shoulders.

“Tell me about this seamless intercourse.” His eyes traveled slowly downward, then, in the same leisured pace, up to mine again.

I opened my mouth to respond but then quickly snapped it shut. I suddenly felt hot.

His secretive and amused appearing surveillance of my features, the openness with which he stared was beginning to make me think he was just as strange as I was. He was making me extremely uncomfortable; his attention was a blinding spotlight from which I couldn’t escape.

I shifted the box to my other hip and looked away from his searching gaze. I knew now I’d been wise in avoiding direct eye contact. The customs and acceptability of eye contact vary greatly depending on the culture;
as an example, in Japan, school aged children
-