The office suite was dimly lit. Louise didn't see anyone working as she navigated the corridor to the restroom. Once she arrived at her desk, Louise checked her email to see if anyone had requested changes to the presentation. Luckily, they hadn't.
The team would need about fifteen copies for the morning meeting, but Louise always printed extras in case someone joined unexpectedly. She opened the print dialog, verified that the collate and staple options were enabled, and sent the job to the large printer on the other side of the floor.
Louise left her purse on the desk. No one was around, and she'd have to come back anyway to lock the printouts in her file drawer.
She walked past a row of glass offices on her left and a sea of cubicles to the right. "Corporate heaven!" she thought as a sly grin stretched across her face.
Four of the presentations were ready by the time that she reached the copy room. She removed them from the hopper and flipped through one deck to make sure it had printed correctly. In the back of her mind she could hear Sharon complaining about the cost of printing multiple copies on single-sided pages, but tough luck. Presentations don't print well double-sided, and it's difficult to negotiate the pages when they're stapled.
"What are YOU doing here?"
Louise turned to see Antonio standing in the doorway.
"Jesus! You scared me!"
"I'm sorry. I didn't think that anyone was here."
"You shaved your beard."
"Yeah, something new," he acknowledge. "Do you like it?"
"I... I have no idea," Louise responded, searching for words. "I'm just making copies..."
"Oh, for tomorrow. Good idea!" Antonio noticed a look of mild shock on Louise's face. "I'm sorry. I just stopped to use the bathroom. A bunch of us went to Fitzgerald's."
"They don't have a bathroom there?"
"They do, but after I left, I felt like I needed... Never mind. - You should have come with us."
"I had a thing."
"Bueno. La proxima vez."
"You know I don't like Fitzgerald's," she argued.
"Another place, perhaps..."
"Are you going dancing with Beth?" Louise had no idea why she asked this or why she asked it now. It wasn't planned. In fact, she felt instantly mortified as she heard the words falling out of her mouth. But there they were. There was no taking them back.
"I... no!" Antonio responded emphatically.
"Because she said that you asked her."
"I'm not going with HER," he clarified. "A bunch of us are going. On Friday."
"OK!"
"I would have asked you, but ... you're busy."
"I'm busy," Louise confirmed dispassionately.
"Don't worry," Antonio assured her. "I'm not going dancing with Beth."
"It's none of my business."
"You're right, it's not." Antonio's voice now sounded irritated. "And besides. I think I learned my lesson the last time."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I really have to go to the bathroom." Antonio walked away as quickly as he had appeared.
Louise's mind searched for answers. "Did that conversation really just happen? Why did I say that thing about Beth? What did he mean when he said that I was busy?"
She realized that she still had a copy of the presentation in her hand. She looked over at the printer. She hadn't noticed that it had stopped, but all twenty copies were ready. She gathered them and took them to her desk.
Louise picked up her purse, pushed in her chair, and walked around the corner to the area where Antonio's desk was located. He was seated there, his face and long black hair illuminated by the blue light cast by his terminal.
"I'm sorry," Louise said. "I shouldn't have asked about Beth. You're right. It's none of my business."
"It's OK," he said without looking up at her.
"What did you mean? About the last time?"
"I don't want to talk about it," he said.
"You don't want to talk about it," Louise repeated. "Which is strange, because you did everything possible to get me on your latest project. So, I guess maybe you wanted to talk to me about something."
Antonio lifted his head as though he were looking past his computer toward some distant object; he then turned quickly to face Louise.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded.
"Tell you what?"
"Why didn't you tell me that you were seeing someone? Last year, when I was here."
"I..." Louise realized that she had never told Antonio about Walter.
"I mean, we were together. Really together, or so I thought. And then three days before I left, when I told someone in the office that I had dinner with you and thought that you were really special, they said, 'Oh, but she has a boyfriend'."
Louise's eyes were downcast now. She struggled to find her words.
"I mean, what if the guy had come after me..." Antonio continued. "...with a knife, or something?"
"Antonio..."
"Go home, Louisa!"
"I..."
"Go home to your boyfriend."
'The Horse Farm'
Copyright © 2015 Daniel R. South
All Rights Reserved
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