CHAPTER 6

OLIVIA.

I stood behind the wall of the Personnel Department.

It was Saturday and very early. The other employees had not arrived.

I carried out the tasks that my boss asked me to do: choose the flowers for his girlfriend, buy them, put in the office, over her desk, and wait to receive the delivery that would bring a very exclusive breakfast.

I was very sure that my great boss would not be in the building that morning and I thought that this gallantry was a distant congratulation, an apology for not being here, but how wrong I was. The exclusivity of this breakfast was a lingerie kit as a present, attached to the famous meal.

And at detail made him not stand idly by, he couldn't bear to send it to her without him being there.

So, he arrived after a while, closed the door of his beloved's office, and I, hidden like crazy behind a wall, could hear them and even imagine the exact spot where they were... doing it.

Because they were "doing it", yes. They were making love in that office.

Strangely enough, I didn't feel out of place, I wasn't there for long either. I was curious to know what led them to succumb to desire right there. And why breakfast instead lunch or dinner. I usually confronted the night. I’d let go of myself in the same way, but during dinners, two dinners... with a man who was a stranger.

Jezz… That was my life, yes: I slept with a stranger. Then I asked myself, was always will be necessary to have something more with someone to share such things or moments like this? Something more? What would happen if I were to prepare an awakening for my lover? I tossed those questions to the inner drawer of my mind, Carl might run away if I planned something like that. And it was okay for him to do. However, as I considered it, I realized that I was not ready to walk away from that idyll yet, one of the reasons why I left the Personnel Department, headed down through same hallway to the employee dining room, and after having a good coffee, I went back that way to the reception, my workplace. But on my way back, I couldn't walk any further, not right away. What I heard coming out of the mouth of one of those lovebirds made my skin crawl, paralyzed me.

By any kind of sound blocking that could camouflage of ardent declamation, through the closed door, above my grief and any disinhibition, my boss and his girlfriend, under an intense voice, were boasting about the emotion they felt for each other.

Yes, you could hear everything they were doing, but what he said was the most... it was the most... I don't know how to explain it, putting in doubt even my crazy interpretation, but it would have been good if someone had warned me that gasps would be able to make me feel so... My psyche changed a little bit.

From inside that office, I heard the phrase:

I love you so much, damn it.

I love you so much... I love you so much, damn it! Thrown, thrown there, crashing against me.

That phrase was spoken from him towards her, very close to the wood, almost in front of me without them knowing, and provoking in the lady —my co-worker— a transparent choked cry, too passionate for anyone's taste.

I looked ahead immediately because the bustle of some employees arriving. So, I stood sentry trying to guard the area, in case anyone got too close and might find out what was going on in there.

I’d to stay and listen to everything else, I even noticed when the couple walked away from the door. I was a mute witness to that surrender, but I swear I wasn't thinking so much about the pure and literal context. There was a moment when their panting made me forget who they were or the fact they were fucking in the middle of the office. That took me out of my planet for a brief moment and when I was sure they were done, I stepped ashore, withdrew, and in a flutter, made it to my destination.

At my workstation, I answered calls and greeted my colleagues without being able to forget that incantation so forceful and precise. Because that ‘I love you’ was precisely a beautiful witchcraft, a display of beauty, the representation of preciousness. A cry of love, no war. A good sentence without evil, with wings, free, flying over the real world without obstacles or precipices. As if I had discovered the cure for all ills, thus, was how I embraced that sudden apprenticeship, the injection of self-love I needed. I discovered my cure after that foreign declaration and I remembered clearly what that man named Carl, my night lover and almost unknown, made me feel in our second encounter. And what specifically did I remember? Not precisely the phrase I ‘love you’, because between us —by logic— it didn't exist, but my whole new experience with him. My boss's words made me think of that one, because... Good Lord, God! I could finally explain his ways of possessing me, the insistence of a new encounter, his glances while took possession of such important parts of me, his dedication to my body, and mind, and of course, the lovely shot he poured one night before on my soul.

When it was time for lunch, I looked at the wall clock and smiled politely at my replacement, who was arriving at a good hour.

The phone rang with an incoming call.

"No, I'll take it," Betty, the other receptionist, told me. "Go to lunch, I'll see you later." She always caught her lunch an hour before me.

I thanked her and went to the employee cafeteria. The path I took to get there was not the same as every day, of course not. That hallway had a shortcut that I used earlier. I confess to wishing I knew the status of the couple: I don't know why I thought they might still be meeting there, but the truth is that all day I did not see my boss again, and so she did either. Thinking perhaps they had decided to take the afternoon off and had left by the back door, I approached the fortunate place. The door was ajar, I pushed it slightly... and I smiled.

The flowers had been arranged next to the desk and on the floor. The things on the table were exaggeratedly tidy. It smelled like a man's perfume and a soapy scent as if they had spread some cleaning product. I smiled even more and felt happy for them.

I went to eat quietly and cheerfully then, planning in my head what I would buy next week, something or garment intended for my next Friday, some outfit or combination of clothes I would wear to go to dinner again with a certain gentleman.