Tom put his pen down and stood up from his desk. He yawned, stretched his arms out, bent over and touched his toes. He adjusted his glasses and looked around. The 54th floor office was alive with activity. Conversations rose from groups of people that collected in open spaces around the floor. The raised voices of their conversations danced with one another, creating a violent and harmonic cadence, entirely without beat, but not entirely without rhythm. It was music to Tom’s ears. He sniffed loudly.
Individual employees, some vaguely familiar, others entirely alien, were weaving through the narrow corridors between desks with papers or empty coffee cups in their hands. Tom could feel a breeze each time one of them hurried by him. He noticed a particularly large group of employees was formed around the coffee machine off to his right. Mr. Beasly seemed to be the center of attention as he waved his hands and laughed loudly with some of the other managers. Ahh, thought Tom, just another ordinary afternoon at Galla Corp. Marketing™.
At that moment, Alice passed by him from behind. Her breeze wrapped perfume around him and Tom felt like he had huffed from a whip-cream canister. He levitated a couple feet in his mind.
Alice, though, was oblivious to him as she continued on a frenetic mission across the floor while juggling two huge stacks of papers in her arms. “Alice!” called Tom in a shrill pitch. She paused and he rushed to catch up with her. “Here, let me take one of those for you.” He relieved her of one of the stacks. “It’d be a tragedy if you dropped all of these.”
“Thanks,” said Alice, giving Tom a brief glance before putting her eyes back on the path. “I’m bringing these over to Nathan. I was supposed to have them done by this morning.” An employee rushed by between them. Alice sighed, “I don’t know how we’re expected to keep up with everything here. It’s so hectic.”
Tom gave her his best smile. The smile that used to get him in trouble with the other kids back in high school. Faggot! His smile quickly vanished and his cheeks reddened at the troubled memories. “What are you working on?” He forced the words out. Tom was madly in love with Alice and very much aware of the insipid conversations he always managed to initiate in her presence.
“We’re creating street ads for one of Imagicore Clothing™’s new lines. The strategy has something to do with bringing the honey back to the hive . . . or something. I’m convinced it won’t sell a single shirt.” (Actually, the new slogan was “A Hive Without Honey, Ain’t No Hive At All”) Alice sighed again, taking long strides as she dodged the oncoming human traffic. Tom struggled to keep pace with her.
“I’m sure it can’t be that bad,” said Tom, “I mean honey’s good. People like honey.”
“But who the hell can relate to bees?” asked Alice in a frustrated groan. She was still staring straight ahead while Tom intently kept eye contact with the sublime profile of her face.
“I don’t know, I mean, I kinda feel like a bee right now. I mean, I think it’d make sense if everyone on this floor was wearing yellow and black stripes.” Tom became a little excited as he realized he might be giving a very insightful, and possibly witty, commentary. His voice rose a couple octaves, “I mean, sometimes I wish I had a stinger coming out of my-” He was cut short by a violent collision with another employee. Tom, being much smaller than the other man, went sprawling backwards as the papers he was holding flew into the air.
The other man, looking down at Tom, screwed a quite pleasant face into an awkward, embarrassed expression. “I’m sorry,” said the man, breathing in deeply. “I should have been paying more attention.” Tom’s face went red again as he scurried onto his feet and started trying to collect the hundreds of papers that had erupted all over the place. The man, deciding against the paper recovery operation, curtly continued on his way after another “Sorry.”
“Shit,” said Alice in frustration, “Nathan’s gonna kill me.” Employees kept rushing by. “Arhh.”
“I’m . . . I’m so s-sorry,” stuttered Tom, “I didn’t see him coming at all. I’m such a . . . a klutz sometimes, I mean . . .” he let his sentence linger off as he got on his knees to reach under a desk for one of the papers.
“Just give me what you have now,” demanded Alice, looking down at Tom. Tom quickly turned on his knees and handed her the papers he had. He looked up at her pleadingly, but she just grabbed the papers and hurried onward, leaving Tom to watch her fade into the office activity from his reverential pose. He stayed on his knees for a few moments, and straightened his glasses as he stared off into the direction she had disappeared into.
He nearly jumped as a strong hand slapped him on the shoulder. “Tom, what in the heavens are you doing?” asked Mr. Beasly’s familiar, paternal voice.
“Mr. Beasly,” Tom’s voice held a tinge of nervousness, “I was just . . . uhh . . .”
“No matter,” laughed Mr. Beasly, “Come over to my office. I want to show you the new project I’m setting you up with. I think you’ll like it.”
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