“Avid note taker?” he asks, attention falling on my handful of booklets and scooping a couple up. “I think I'll follow your example.”
We’re coming to the end of this interaction, I think. It doesn’t matter that we bumped into each other in less than stellar circumstances, or that we work at the same company. I’m going to sit at my end of this meeting room, and let the memories be so smoothed over by meaningless statistics and pie charts, it’ll be like none of it happened. By lunchtime it’ll all be gone.
“Can you grab me one of those,” he pauses, faltering for the word. After a moment he just opts for the word that seems a little more natural to the way his mouth moves, a mix of soft hisses against the audible grinding of teeth that makes a human in the last row of seats jump.
I don't speak it myself, but I recognize enough of it. Abyssal. Not an easy language on the enamels.
I pass him the cup of pens before he can confirm, taking one step away from the table as I do.
“Yes, pens,” he looks at me with a piqued interest, reigning me back in.
Oh no. Oh no, no, no.
“Bilingual problems?” I ask in a faux friendly tone because this conversation has no reverse gear.
He nods a little, but now the gargoyle is looking at me with curiosity. “You speak Abyssal?”
“Oh, ‘speak’ is generous. Believe me, my dentist has discouraged me from trying. I already grind my teeth at night. But I know enough to get by,” I ramble, the words pouring out without a thought.
He gives me that look most people do when I start oversharing, that hint of terror at being cornered with personal details in the most impersonal of settings.
I shrug, and add in the most emphatically casual tone, “I mean...I used to work in the Peak District.”
It would sound smooth and less practiced in the mirror, maybe, if it had been the thing I said the first time.
Work is a generous way to describe it, but I’ve learned that people don’t really want to know the details about how I interned and temped at a number of places, a lot of it unpaid. I didn't really do a whole lot there either, because most of the time my bosses forgot I existed. I spent more time getting people lunches than I did actually working.
His amber eyes light up, fully turning on me. “Small world.”
“Very small.”
Too small.
Another few moments pass, and I realize I've just been standing here even though I don't really need anything else.
I glance back to the front of the room, where Soven is clicking through some slides with graphs and struggling to use a laser pointer.
I give the gargoyle a little shrug and half-smile and flee back to my seat.
I hide my face in my laptop for a while, pretending to check my meetings calendar even though I have this week blocked off, and sending [email protected] a meeting invite for next week so we can further go over the whole Kathy vs. Ted thing. He still hasn't responded to my first email. I guess it's only been a couple hours. Not like he's going to need time to read over everything anyway, because he's not gonna read it at all, most likely.
When I’ve scraped back enough dignity to look up again, I find the gargoyle now has a spot in the front row, probably why I didn't notice him before. I wasn't exactly making the rounds with handshakes and clapping shoulders before the meeting started. I find myself watching the way he tucks his wings in close around the back of his chair, even though I keep purposefully looking away.
Man. My telehealth therapist is just going to love hearing about this.
4
This whole experience is one long social torture session, so, of course, there’s a company-sponsored happy hour in the hotel bar.
And, of course, it's loud; it's a bar. Nobody's making bars where the music is at a reasonable volume, and they strictly adhere to the fire code for how many people can be in a building, and maybe the lighting isn't completely migraine worthy.
I was supposed to be watching Kathy and Ted, but I don't have the strength to seek them out, currently. I don't actually know what Ted looks like, and I think Kathy is avoiding me.
Right now, the plan is to have one drink, laugh at some jokes, set it down when it's empty, slip away like I'm headed to the bathroom, but make a turn at the last second for the elevators.
At least, that's the plan until the gargoyle from every time before fills the spot against the bar next to me. He's making eye contact at a level that suggests he expects conversation.
“Those meetings really took a lot out of me,” I say, giving myself a little shake, and it's something. I can't keep remarking on the weather.
