Henry came over to the side of the double desk where E@L sat silently, concentrating on his laptop. When E@L saw him, he swung his Herman Miller Aeron chair around to face Henry before he came too far into the custom designed semi-open format cubicle (E@L had actually met part of the design team by chance at one of Bruce’s parties - a fuzzy haired scatterbrain called Ruby who claimed to have given her boyfriend a blow job in the plane over from England), and, as if by accident, nudged his laptop screen as he did this, which kept the screen hidden form Henry. Online chess game.
“Next weekend’s lecture? You on it?” He couldn’t help but flash a glance at the slightly irregular quadrilateral perspective of the back of E@L’s laptop. “So, I gather some people you know from Australia will be lecturing as well.”
“Ah, yeah,” E@L replied. “It’s merely a precut product presentation from Boston, so I’m just jazzing it up a bit. No issue, it’s down, I mean done. Did you say people I know? ”
Henry drummed his fingers once on the edge of the panel on E@L’s cubicle. “It was in the email. I included a copy of the programme.”
“Oh, yeah” - one of Henry’s multi-color, multi-font emails, cc-ed to everybody in the company, often loaded with files of several megabytes. Henry had once sent out an email from the Big Boss in Frankfurt, which had been only sent to section heads, the brunt of which was not to reply all, or send on, emails to everybody especially any which included large attachments. Just the relevant people. Henry’s email was cc-ed to everyone who had received the original email, everyone in the Hong Kong office, even in the other divisions, and of course back to the Big Boss as well. Nothing was ever heard of it again. No doubt the Big Boss just put his Big Head in his Big Hands and groaned. E@L was of the suspicion the original , a kindly worded reprimand was aimed at Henry in the first place.
“I didn’t open the attachment yet, I mean the computer started upgrading Adobe Reader as soon as I clicked on the file, I mean why do they do that? I haven’t got back to it yet. I’ll check. My time hasn’t changed has it?”
Henry shrugged. “I thought you’d be on top of that.” He looked at E@L for a long second, smiled - finally - and said, “Queen to E2,” and walked back into his office and closed the glass door.
E@L whispered in a deadpan voice, HAL’s voice, “Thank you for an enjoyable game, Frank.”
He spun the chair back into its usual position and Carole, who shared his cubicle, sat directly behind him, knew what he was up to all the time, stifled a laugh. “I’d castle if I were you. For safety’s sake.”
~~~~~~~
Lotus Notes was a bear of an email system, monstrous, a monstrous bear, but it did had a useful instant chat feature which could not be monitored (or so every presumed) by the powers in IT. The chat screen was open when he moved the chess game out of the way and check Notes for the email which contained that programme of the upcoming meeting. He hadn’t heard its cheery tingle while he in that, um, meeting with Henry. Maybe Henry had heard, maybe that’s why he looked at the laptop. E@L was going deaf. It was Led Zeppelin concert it went to when he was fifteen. He like to blame it for his hearing loss as it gave hime a chance to remind everyone of what a cool guy he was back then. After the tenth time, it merely reminded them of his age.
Bruce had messaged him, Peter, Hesham and Carole on the chat. *Feathers.* That was all. It meant to meet at the small cafe - called Angel Wings - on the seventh floor as soon as.
E@L was about to ask Carole if she was coming but already the chat box tingled her excuse. You’re only sitting three feet from me, you could have just said, thought E@L. The modern age, computers, communication skills. He took the pass-key from the top of his in-tray at the open side of the desk where he stored it for safe-keeping. No, just so that he would see it as he stood up to leave the office, either to go *Feathering*, or to go to the loo. He only remembered to pick it up every, let’s estimate, fourth, maybe third time and had to come back and get it…
~~~~~~~~
E@L checked the PDF of the meeting for the weekend. His time was marked as what they told him, but he had experience at running conferences himself and expected the unexpected, which usually came through, as expected.
He recognized the name of an friend from Australia alright. The person who had taken his old job down in Colac, not his Sydney research position. Erica.
Erica. My god, the atheist exclaimed.
He remembered her well, a ginger-haired little thing back in those days. Of course he remembered her. They had gotten on very well at the conference he had organized in 1988, he had asked her to give as a full paper something based she had presented as a case -study in the monthly clinical session which included his hospital and the medical centre where she was working. She was only a second year student then, maybe 21. He got on well with bubbly people. They challenged him, he teased them, they teased back, it was fun. She asked to come over and seek his opinion about this and that part of her presentation. She kept asking him if it was ready, it he thought there were ways she could improve it. He didn’t want to tell it was just some shitty back-water regional meeting and that a dog scratching its balls on stage would get a polite round of applause.
He never thought deeply of the way she kept coming to see him at the time. He was still only in that part of the slow decline of the marriage empire of which he knew nothing. Sally’s affair with Ange was just starting. So he was married, and she wasn’t.
Then there was the national meeting in Brisbane. He was confused by that one.
The talk she had given at E@L’s regional meeting had nearly killed her with nerves, yet here her name was on the list for the meeting in Kong Kong. She was in MRI now, brought up by a different vendor to talk about some clinical cases - she seemed to have a thing for talking about patients, not machines.
In Brisbane she was married and he was not. But again they had hit it off. Colleagues spoke amongst themselves on how their personalities fitted together so well.
On the programme, her surname, previously hyphenated to Wilson-Smith - how dull is that? he had teased her at the Brisbane meeting - was now merely Wilson. Of course she was no longer married. Of course, he had heard something about her from someone, somewhere, at some time or other since the Brisbane meeting.
It would be great to catch up.
....
Wordcount: 1234
Total: 4599
* Previous sections are way too autobiographical (not that this one isn't) and characters are much too recognisable. This will be sorted later.
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