Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Kai and I were not friends, not even rivals.
His column was about health and lifestyle, my column was about trends and fashion, and although our desks were only separated by a low plexiglass divider, invariably strewn with neon-pink sticky notes and in-progress material, a sight that often resembled a mad scientist’s pinboard rather than anything else, we were as indifferent to each other as two people were allowed to be within the family of RAM.
Of course, there had been a few occasions that could lead someone to believe he and I were on friendlier terms than we actually were, but these were sparse and always initiated by him.
Like that time when a bunch of us were sitting around the smoke room, a round table between us littered with ashtrays and half-empty coffee cups, when suddenly Kai grabbed one of the paper napkins and handed it to me without looking up from the book he was reading.
“Coffee foam,” was all he said as I reflexively touched my fingers to my upper lip.
Or that other time when he got me an orange juice from the vending machine because he said I looked a bit under the weather, or even that one late afternoon when he dropped a pain relief patch on my desk after noticing the stiff way I was moving my neck.
Nothing unusual, really, just small everyday kindnesses.
Today was no different, although I could sense him in my periphery, staring at me with particular intensity while I went on pretending to work.
Maybe, I speculated, he was waiting for me to look up from the computer because he had something to say.
Or maybe he was just doing what he always did.
Noticed people. Noticed things the rest of us didn’t.
What could I say about Kai except that he was the kind of person you either wanted to be or wanted to be with?
Twenty-nine, handsome, and good-humored, he could start up a conversation with anyone and at any time.
Colleagues, delivery guys, the postman, the girls at the reception who always perked up and fixed their hair whenever he entered the lobby.
I couldn’t escape the image of their enamored smiles when he asked about their day or what they did over the weekend, even if I tried.
Yes, how unfairly magnetic was the casual intimacy of his personality, the ease with which he navigated the world, that pivotal quality that made me feel invisible in comparison to him.
Everyone at the office loved him, and although he did seem to reciprocate the sentiment, he still managed to maintain a span of privacy that was as subtle as uncrossable.
An air of mystery, Betty from marketing called it.
He knew everything about everyone, but no one knew a single significant thing about him.
Which, in a way, was why I distrusted him so much.
Now he leaned over the divider, resting his elbows atop the thin plexiglass in his usual, effortless grace, and like all those other girls, I felt myself crumble under the influence of his presence.
My fingers paused on the keyboard. My back straightened.
My legs uncrossed. In my sudden self-awareness, noises I could previously ignore seemed to multiply.
The clacking of heels, the humming of the operating computers, the commercial-type jingle of the elevator, the skirls of the fax machine, and the fragmented grunting of the photocopier all boomed in my ears.
Then Kai’s deep, sensuous voice: “Are you feeling alright?”
I glanced up at him, pushing back from the desk and blinking against the overhead lights, their brilliance magnified by the large windows rounding the space.
“What?” I mumbled. “Why?”
His brows met in concern over the narrow slope of his nose.
Not a day went by that I didn’t catch myself admiring the beauty of his face.
His eyes were dark and intelligent, the bow of his mouth full and unexpected.
And there was something so charming about the way a few strands of black hair tumbled over his forehead and the way his cheeks dimpled when he smiled.
He had a nice smile too, confident and irrepressible.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You look a bit unwell.”
“Unwell?”
“Flushed.”
Touching self-conscious fingers to my cheek, I lied, “I probably overdid it with my makeup.”
Doubtingly, he went on examining me. “It isn’t makeup,” he decided.
Scrambling for escape, I affected busyness, taking a quick sip from my coffee and rearranging the heap of papers before me. “It’s nothing,” I clipped. “I just didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Oh, really?” he asked in a gorgeously intrigued manner. “Did you have a date or something?”
I chanced another glance at him.
Pleased with himself for having finally snagged my attention, he offered me one of those charming little half-smiles of his.
But there was tension in his eyes not even he could hide.
Tension I wasn’t sure how to interpret. Or maybe I was sure but didn’t really want to.
After all, it was one thing to find something desirable and quite another to think this desire was a good idea.
Curtly, I replied, “That is private.”
“Ah,” he sighed. “So you did have a date.”
“And what if I did?”
“Good for you, I guess. If you had fun.”
“That—”
“Is private, I know. But did you?”
“Okay, enough with the interrogation,” I grumbled, tipping my chin towards his desk. “And give me back my post-its. How many times do I have to tell you not to take things from my desk? The supply closet is literally right there.”
Leaning further over the partition, he asked in a low, private tone of voice, just between us, “Are you this possessive in general or just with your stationery?”
“Kai,” I warned, my face heating.
“Okay, okay,” he laughed. Amused. Indulgent. Grander than life itself. “Here.” Gently, he placed the stack of pink sticky notes next to my coffee cup and withdrew his hand before I could admire its beauty.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asked a bit more seriously this time.
Releasing a breath between my lips, I admitted, “I don’t know. Maybe I’m coming down with something.”
“Do you have an assessment coming up?”
“Next Monday.”
Contentedly, he rapped his knuckles at the top of the divider. “Well, that will do it.”
He sat back down on his chair, and through that one clear spot, I watched him lean back, close his eyes, and stretch up his arms, his white shirt untucking a little from the waistband of his trousers.
Usually, he wore one of his elegant merino sweaters or a vest and a tie over his shirts, but not today.
Today, he’d overslept and had left the apartment in a hurry, I’d heard him say to James from accounting earlier, so his shirt was left open at the collar, and the sleeves were rolled carelessly around his elbows.
The image of him like that, all tousled and exposed, I found oddly sensual. Strange thing to think about. And yet I kept thinking it, kept staring at his bare forearms and open neck and sleepy-eyed expression until his eyes darted toward the divider again and he looked back.
For a heart-dropping moment, we both froze, holding each other’s gaze.
His lips parted; his throat bobbed. There was a question in his eyes I didn’t know how to answer.
I felt caught, defenseless, having silently admitted something to him that I had yet to admit to myself.
That he was not the only one who noticed.
That I noticed too. Perhaps a little too much. Perhaps him alone.
The tips of my ears started to burn, the outline of my body evanescing until I was nothing but pulse and heat and breath.
But then, as if to spare me from the embarrassment of being the first one to look away, he made a show of checking the time on his wristwatch. “I’m going for a smoke. Wanna come?”
I shook my head, although I was dying for a cigarette.
Without offering any more of his quiet searching looks, he turned off his computer, shrugged on his jacket, and walked away.
I watched his tall, solid silhouette shrink until it disappeared within the steely cage of the elevator, then, finally, I let myself exhale.
No, Kai and I were not friends, not even rivals.
But we were whatever this was. This half-conscious interplay of our personalities.
My instinctual detachment and cool indifference, his resplendent desirability and unveiled attentiveness, my carefully structured life, and his slow but formidable effort to infiltrate it.
Complicated little game. One I didn’t know how to play anyway.
As everyone started scattering for lunch, I remained glued to my seat, entranced by the bluish glow of the computer, the cursor silently blinking at me.
Betty and the newest member of RAM, Sophie, came over and asked if we should go out for lunch now that the rain had let up.
And indeed, all the windows around the office were glowing dimly yellow, but I claimed I was too busy finishing up my piece and didn’t get up to eat or smoke or even to refill my water bottle.
I just sat there, fatigued, feeling cut off not only from myself but from everything and everyone around me, as though I was suddenly forced to observe the world from a great distance.
Even my reflection on the computer screen as it blackened seemed odd, my features pulling away, cutting off ties from each other until I no longer recognized myself.
Nostalgia, the word kept reverberating in my ears like the lyrics of a song I used to love but hadn’t heard in years.
As noon progressed the entire floor emptied. In the abrupt silence, a bizarre melancholy permeated me, which I hesitated to call sorrow, for what right did I have to feel sorrow?
I wondered if Betty ever felt like this, if behind her merry smiles and girlish sense of humor hid a person as conflicted and confused as I was.
I wondered if Kai, for whom the world seemed to part and bend in ways that would never do for me, was ever troubled by his own existence.
Was he as happy with himself and his life as he appeared to be?
And what was happiness anyway? Was it just the absence of unhappiness, an unsophisticated sense of comfort and security that had nothing to do with you as an individual and everything to do with the environment that birthed you, or was it something tangible?
A precious thing you could hold in your hand.
The person who slept next to you at night.
I had no answer, only the same feeling of strangeness, enveloping me like a veil and separating me from the rest of the world.
Nostalgia: the sentimental longing for something of the past. Something you’re missing. Something you can never get back.
Perhaps the thing I was missing was the feeling itself. Perhaps the reason for all my sudden disquiet was my lack of something worth missing in the first place.
◆◆◆
Half an hour later, Kai pranced over to my desk and dropped a little carton of orange juice and a clear, single-use lunchbox before me.
Frowning, I glanced up at him. “What is this?”
“Hm,” he hummed in mock thoughtfulness, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning with his hip against the far edge of my desk, the distracting physicality of his body hovering at an appropriate enough distance.
“Let me see,” he continued, picking up the box to examine its contents.
“Various raw greens combined with an assortment of nutrient-dense vegetables, topped with a little bit of protein and some citrusy goodness. Oh, yes. I believe that is a salad.”
“Very clever,” I deadpanned.
“Well, I tried being mind-numbingly dull, but it wasn’t getting your attention,” he retorted.
I let out a frustrated exhalation. “Why did you bring me this, Kai?”
“Because, Anya, it isn’t healthy for young women to skip meals. Don’t you ever read my column?”
It’d be a lie to say that I didn’t, although I had absolutely no interest in leading a healthy lifestyle.
It would also be a lie to say that I didn’t find pleasure in knowing I was the subject of his attention even when we were apart.
That I had this power over him while he had this power over everyone else.
Cautiously, I accepted the salad. “Thank you.”
He cocked his head to the side, eyes lowered, all languid and forgiving. “Now, see, you could have opened with that.”
“Yes, but then I wouldn’t be me,” I argued.
“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” he agreed.
For a moment longer we went on staring at each other, barely noticing the people streaming back into the office. Then Kai straightened to his full height, smoothed down his shirt, and strode around the partition to his desk. “Now eat,” he urged. “Before you pass out on your keyboard.”
With exaggerated gestures, I opened the lunchbox, removed the plastic fork from the underside of the lid, and took a huge bite from the salad, which was surprisingly fresh and flavorful. “Happy?” I asked him.
“Elated,” was his wry reply. And yet as I made myself comfortable so I could properly enjoy the meal, readjusting the tortoiseshell clasp in my hair and lifting my heels from the confinement of my ballerina flats, I sensed him observing me through the partition as if I were the most fascinating person in the world.
And when I picked up the juice box, he commented in a deliciously low voice, “Good girl.”
Ah, yes. With such effortless skill he did that, I wondered if I was the only one he was doing it to.
“You do realize how unprofessional this is, right?” I muttered, biting at the little plastic straw.
“You should get me fired,” he mused.
“I should get you ostracized,” I countered.
“For making sure you eat?”
“For distracting me from my work.”
He leaned back on his chair, making himself fully visible. His eyes were bright with mischief as he asked, “Is that what I’m doing?”
Unamused, I arched a brow, and he relented with a gruff shake of his head. “You know,” he said, his long, elegant fingers moving fast over his keyboard, “you’re wasted as a fashion writer. You should have gotten into a more aggressive field.”
“Well, it’s never too late. Maybe tomorrow morning I’ll wake up and decide to change my whole life.”
Satisfied, at last, with today’s back and forth, he smiled luxuriously at his computer screen. “Maybe you will.”