LJ Idol - Week 18, "Disinformation"
“Good morning!”
“Happy Monday!”
“Morning Ellie! How was your weekend?”
“Hey Ellie, Starbucks in twenty?”
“Morning! Check your email, I sent that file you asked for.”
The office is a chorus of sound and light and color, a welcome contrast to the dull haze of the sky with its looming threat of snow. She moves through the maze of cubicles in a semi-trance, greeting coworkers she likes with a nod or a smile, expertly dodging the ones she doesn’t, until she arrives at her cubicle and gratefully slings her purse onto her desk. Her phone buzzes in her pocket and she hauls it out to glance briefly at the screen before pinching her lips and tossing the small device onto the worksurface beside her keyboard.
“Sounds like a familiar cacophony over here.” Marcus, her cube-neighbor, leans over the small dividing wall between their workstations and smiles warmly. “How was your weekend?”
“Alright,” she tells him, shrugging out of her jacket. “Yours?”
“The usual. Kids. In-laws. Food.” He shrugs the same noncommittal shrug she’s seen him use since college. “We missed you on Beer Friday. Again.”
“I wasn’t feeling all that great.” Her phone buzzes again and she taps her phone absently to silence it, ignoring the text.
“You know, most people have their sudden onset illnesses on Mondays, not Fridays. Just sayin’.” He smirks at her as she drops into her chair and logs into her computer. “If you don’t want to hang out with us you could just say so, you know.”
“It’s not that,” she says absently, clicking through her emails in a search for anything requiring her immediate attention. One email from a department head is flagged urgent and she scans it, twisting the diamond ring on her finger. She’s not entirely aware of Marcus’ thoughtful stare, and when he speaks she only hears him distantly, as if muffled through a wall. Turning, she looks up at him. “Sorry, what?”
The screen of her phone lights up with a picture of her fiancé to herald an incoming call, and the small device buzzes against her desk. She picks it up and swipes the screen to end the call, and places the phone face down on her daytimer.
“I said, is everything alright?” Marcus asks her. He looks as if he wants to say more - after ten years of friendship, she would know that look anywhere.
“Everything’s fine,” she says, and gives him a convincing smile. “I’m just tired. Still not feeling all that great.” Her phone starts to buzz again and she keeps her eyes on Marcus, silently willing him to turn back to his work, to look away, to do anything other than stare at her. “I think I have the same thing Janet got, you know, that stomach thing?”
He continues to stare at her, and the phone continues to buzz, and she keeps spinning, spinning, spinning the thin gold band.
“Yeah, that’s really going around,” he finally says, and backs away from the wall, returning to his chair. “Let me know if you end up going home, yeah?”
“No, no, I’m not that bad.” She snatches her purse and fumbles with the zipper, trying to open it with shaking fingers so she can throw the offending cell phone inside. “Just kind of groggy, you know?” Her eyes are stinging, her throat is clenched. She thumbs the main button by accident and there are a dozen unread messages on her screen alongside two missed calls. “Let me get my bearings. I’ll be okay.”