So the girl at the desk next to me in this newsroom of an office, is on the phone. She's always on the phone. She's rarely at her desk but when she is she's on the phone. She checks her messages with the self-important speakerphone, and messages from friends that start off with "Hey you slut," she quickly picks up the handset realizing that perhaps she's not as cool as she thinks is. She wears huge hats and short skirts with hair that never looks entirely clean and her voice is a low and droning monotone smokers voice.
She's talking to her boyfriend, whom I have never met but know everything about because she talks to him all the time and makes it a point to tell everyone who comes to her desk about her personal life without any care to who is around her.
Like right now, how she's yelling to him because he thinks that the guy who was taking "racy" pictures of her last night is a guy she's cheating with. She says the guy is gay, "GAY!" she stresses loudly. She insists that the pictures are hot and are for him, Greg, her loving boyfriend. "I made a great face, a really great face, you're going to love it, you really are."
I hear the sound of his voice, booming on the other end but it has about as much clarity to it as the teacher on Charlie Brown. "It's not, it's not, it's not," she says, I guess trying to defend herself. Not such a great defense if you ask me, especially if this guy was taking half naked pictures of her while she was drunk and her only defense is, "They are for you." Right.
One of the managers walks by and shoots me a wide-eyed look because this girl is loud, as though she's in her own room with the door closed but she's not. I feel like I'm trapped in an episode of The Office, the awkwardness is so intense I'm fighting the urge to run away. However, there aren't any cameras here to capture my look of total confusion, embarrassment and horror at her outburst, and what's happening is actually real, no matter how much I keep asking myself if it really is.
I feel like I go through this every day and when she tries to make small-talk with me about how fabulous she is (cough) I try to avoid her, showing that I actually have work to do. When she's not on the phone or looking up people on Friendster she's talking exasperatedly about how overwhelming her work is and is asking everyone in the office to help her. Let me remind you that her job title is higher up than mine and presumably so is her pay.
The conversation calms down, which I assume means he (Greg) believes her (fool) or has given up or senses (smartly) in her voice (as do I) that she's about to cry (please). But not really cry, cry in that fake way annoying girls do when they want a guy to feel bad for them or believe them or concede. It works, because she's suddenly smiling slyly and saying, "Do you want me to wear those shorts tonight?" Right.
When she hangs up the phone she lets out a deep sigh and says, perhaps to me or perhaps just to the void of the office that has most likely heard her entire conversation, "Shit."
I don't know about you, but this looks like to me the beginning of a long-lasting and beautiful relationship.
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