Running just a little bit late today. weather has me stuffy and wanting to pull the covers over my head so I hit the snooze button one time too many. So let’s just jump in and get going. Timers at the ready? And we are off.
I wasn’t entirely certain where I was going with this. I like the recovery from trauma along with the spying on coworkers angle. It could be interesting but as usual I will need to think about it a bit more. Not quite what I was expecting when I looked at the sentence though.
Wednesday, January 18th: The flag snapped in the wind.
The flag snapped in the wind. It was a sharp retort that sounded, for a moment, like a gunshot. It startled me more than I wanted to let on. The others noticed my attention.
“Wind’s picking up,” I said. They didn’t need to know that after last month’s incident I was still a little gun shy. There were nods all around but I wasn’t sure anyone was fooled.
‘At least I didn’t instinctively duck this time,’ I thought. ‘That has to be progress.’
The week after the incident a car backfiring had me flat on the ground, eyes scanning for the shooter. This time I simply looked at the sound instead of assuming it was another attack. I shook it off and followed the others into the building.
The meeting was scheduled for nine in the morning. We took our seats at ten ‘til. The admin brought coffee and pointed out the open box of doughnuts in the center of the table. She then left us to wait. Through the open door I could clearly hear the sound of her keyboard clicking away.
None of us expected our meeting to start on time. Kyle Hanson was always late. The longer people were willing to wait for him, the more important he felt. I suspected we were in for at least half an hour or coffee and doughnut time. As we drove in and it took well over an hour to reach this place, he knew we wouldn’t be leaving before his arrival.
Knowing his proclivities all of us came prepared. Phones and files emerged. E-mails were answered and contracts were read. I am fairly certain that at least two of my colleagues were simply playing games and I knew one was texting with the woman he was currently cheating on his wife with. My suspicions were mostly due to the fact that the cell phone he pulled out was not his usual one and he was smirking broadly as he typed in his messages, occasionally chuckling under his breath.
I also knew his current wife, number three if I wasn’t mistaken, was meeting with a lawyer while we were here waiting for Mr. Hanson. The two weren’t related. The soon to be Ex-Mrs. Knew nothing of Hanson and his tendencies to make us wait. She was just looking to deal with the paperwork while her husband was out of town. To get things squared away before the ugliness began. As his last two divorces had been ugly battles, I couldn’t blame her.
Not for the first time I wished I knew nothing about it. It wasn’t a new feeling. I often wished I knew less about the people around me. It was however part of the job. I was the one who peered under rocks and saw the squirmy little bits of people’s lives. Not that they knew that of course. My boss didn’t want them to know.
Ten til Midnight 