Sight
I am just another person walking down the corridor. The floor tiles are wide. It takes me three strides to make it from one tile to the next. The people next to me are a blur. They walk quickly on their way to their designated office space. No one wants to be standing around when the boss comes by. He’ll ask for the daily report when he arrives. He always does.
Coworkers brush past me on both sides. A woman walks towards me and her right arm is moving. The arm stops. Then the woman stops. It’s my turn to brush by someone else for a change. I walk by and our arms touch.
“Sir, I was waving to you.”
I stop and turn to look at her. She is a cloud of red and black. I can recognize her voice. She’s the assistant secretary. “Sorry, I broke my glasses this morning. My vision is terrible.”
I can’t tell if she smiles or frowns. I can only see about thirty centimetres in front of me clearly. She stands about one hundred and twenty centimetres away.
“Oh. The boss told me he is looking forward to your report. Well, see you at lunch,” she says.
I walk into the main room of the office. It is filled with evenly spaced cubicles. I count the rows and sit in the sixth seat in the third row. The boss arrives at eleven o’clock and asks for the daily report. I stand up and count the rows backwards to make sure that I place my report on the right desk. There are two boxes on the boss’s desk. One is marked ‘in’ and one is marked ‘out.’ The outbox has far less items than the inbox as usual.
At lunch, I sit at my desk and eat a sandwich. I don’t see the black and red blur. People don’t always take “see you” seriously.
At five o’clock, work is over. The black and red blur comes to the door and picks up the papers from the boss’s outbox. I wave to her from my desk but she doesn’t wave back. I don’t know if our eyes meet.
I put on an old pair of glasses when I get home. The prescription is out of date but it works well enough. The next day I walk to work at nine o’clock and begin the cycle again. I wave to the woman in the hallway and she waves back. She reminds me of what I have to do that day and says, “I’ll see you at lunch.”
I eat my sandwich at my desk during lunch break and look around the office. Everything is clear and crisp. I still can’t see the secretary and I wonder where she is.
I take off my glasses and let the world defocus.