Читать книгу Kawanga - Jack Halliday - Страница 9

CHAPTER FIVE

C.J. strode down the hall, enjoying the smell of the newly laid carpet and the feel of it under his loafers. Sunlight flooded the hallway from the window directly in front of him. He stopped, just outside of the copy room, half-sat on the marble ledge. Twenty stories below, twenty thousand or more office workers scampered to their destinations: ants in a corporate maze. He felt deliciously separated from them; today he was a god surveying trapped humanity from a twenty-story heaven. The feeling was...exhilaration. The door opened, jerking his eyes and attention from the view outside to the one inside. His “escape” from monotony was less than a dozen feet away; today she was wearing black, all black except for the white pearl necklace gently hugging her throat.

“I swear I can never get this thing to work!”

She slammed the copier lid down, cocked one hip and rolled her eyes for an invisible audience.

She wasn’t really his “type.” She was tall, almost as tall as he. And then her wide-set eyes, dished face and dark hair made her appear almost oriental. If she possessed an hour glass figure, time was passing quickly. She was definitely not the large-breasted woman he had thought of “falling for.” That was it, wasn’t it? He had fallen for her; just like one of those “made-for-TV” movies. He was living a short story.

“Rita,” he laughed.

“Are you still dueling with that poor unarmed metal soldier?”

“C.J.!” she yelled. “Pleeez get this thing working. I swear it does this to me on purpose!” She stood there, papers folded in her right hand, her knuckles braced on that cocked right hip.

“Definitely man’s work,” C.J. laughed. He stood over the machine, watching the copies come out one-by-one, wishing there were a thousand more waiting.

She was separated; he was married. Something “new” should be invented for the feeling that passed between them. It was the copy machine, then coffee breaks in the employees’ lunchroom, most recently a dinner...to sort out that G.E. mix-up. He looked up from the machine into her clear, green eyes. He really was feeling his own pulse throbbing against his collar. She smiled, folding her arms in front of her. She looked at him with...understanding, almost like an older sister, innocent but aware.

“This is going to be trouble,” he sighed.

She nodded, “I know.”