Losing It. Emma Rathbone

just be getting back to my office,” Elliot said loudly.

      “Elliot Grouse?” I said. “Here.” I shoved the folder at him and we quickly walked in opposite directions.

      Back down at the front desk, I kept thinking about the interaction. I ate some mints from the mint bowl. I swiveled around. I ripped off a bunch of pages from the flora-and-fauna calendar. Elliot. Elliot Grouse. He had big eyebrows and sleepy eyes and features that sat low on his face. I answered the phone. I searched through the drawers and sharpened all the pencils. It was something about the way he’d looked at me. There was an ingredient there that I needed to isolate.

      I finally put my finger on it—it was appreciation. He’d so appreciatively appraised me and shaken my hand and smiled. It was a smile that was approving and receptive and open to all possibilities.

      I felt jittery. I ate another mint. I turned the floppy, plushy dog over and over in my hands. There was something there, definitely, I thought. Maybe this was going to be easy. Maybe it wouldn’t be hard to pour myself into the opening that smile had given because there was a touch of desperation there, too, on his part, I could tell. I thought of his ponytail and his wet appreciation, and the way he looked at me as if I were smeared across the universe and he was dazzled but also wistful.

      He reminded me of this couple I’d seen on a tour of the Air and Space Museum in D.C. They both had really long hair and the guy was wearing a cape and holding a stuffed animal, and the woman was wearing a bustier like a medieval wench would wear and they were just drinking each other in the whole time. A sense of hostility and suspicion rose against them from the rest of the group, but I was fascinated. The woman wore dark red lipstick and was overweight but walked as if she had gold coins jingling in her limbs. You could tell they were just really happy to have found each other and they didn’t care what anyone thought and there was nothing either of them could do that would be embarrassing in front of the other person.