Four: Swapsies

"What do you have today, Jean?" Eleanor saved me by changing the topic, taking her lunch out from the other microwave at the same time.

"Lasagne," I said, peeling open the steaming lid. "What do you have?"

"Curried sausages and peas with mashed potatoes," Eleanor replied. "Want to go halves?"

"Sure," I agreed and Eleanor scooped half her lunch into a bowl for me, while I placed half my lasagne on a plate for her.

"Ooh," said Boss, peering at us over a container of white fried rice. "That smells good. What have you ladies got for lunch there?"

We showed him.

"I feel tempted to request swapsies myself," he confessed. "Not that my wife's fried rice is bad, it's just that she's gone on this Asian food rage lately and I'm craving something more normal. You know what I mean?"

"I thought you said you'd never get tired of Asian food?" Eleanor teased.

"Yeah… but having it for breakfast, lunch, and tea while she's trying to perfect her recipe - I'm coming to the end of my rope," Boss protested.

We laughed.

"I'll take pity on you and share, Boss," Eleanor took her seat beside him.

I returned to my seat by Maurie's side. The discussion had turned to surfing by this time and I quietly ate my lunch while I listened to the surfers discuss catching the next king tide. That was until Priscilla's random, awkward comment of the day killed the conversation. I wasn't paying attention and so only heard her voice and the ensuing silence but not what she had said.

Poor girl. She tried so hard to fit in that it made everyone feel uncomfortable. That coupled with her blunt blurting of whatever was in her head when she made an observation really made it difficult to make friends. Her observations weren't wrong but they could have been saved for another, more appropriate time - or made in private. From the floating office rumours I had heard, there were some people who said they hated the awkward high school dropout, saying she was too fake.

Except that I didn't believe she was a school dropout or even who she said she was. She was likely older than she looked too. Her eyes flickered and she always rubbed her nose when she lied. I doubted I was the only one who noticed that she was lying to us a lot of the time when it came to discussions about private matters.

Priscilla wasn't the only one who observed things in that way. I often had similar thoughts, but I just didn't blurt them out loud on impulse like she did. I had once seen her enter the big nameless government building on the corner of Arrow and Kirk Roads after she had spent the morning trying to get people to take selfies with her. That building was officially a part of the Taxation Office but was unofficially used by Foreign Affairs and government agents. In other words, the government's spies dealing with foreign espionage worked there.

I guessed Priscilla was a new recruit and was still on her first assignment. From my digging on the internet, I discovered she was on the case of Bosky infiltrators. Nothing interesting to me. There was no one from our neighbouring country in our company. Not surprising. The mountain dwelling Boskies tended to keep to themselves and their own communities. Their culture was very different, after all. Most Boskies only ever visited the city for a holiday or for business since we were the closest big city to the border. Nevertheless, there was a Bosky run business upstairs that specialised in leather goods.

Maybe Priscilla had been sent here to keep a distant eye on them. In any case, as long as I kept my nose clean and limited my activities, nobody would notice me. Having a government agent working in the same team as me was just a coincidence. Hopefully a happy one where her presence would give me mild immunity from being further scrutinised. I noticed someone had been in our company's system to do a cursory background check on us but I had made sure to only let them see what they should.

Our team had given Priscilla the job of reading out the daily quiz when she ate lunch with us in the lunchroom - largely to keep her from killing conversations and the atmosphere. Or saying weird, random stuff. Basically to shut her up. Since she had been given the job, she had stopped eating lunch with us as often. I wondered whether she had done that on purpose. Was she herself such an awkward, nervous person or was that just the character she was playing?

After work, Katja dragged me to the gym downstairs with the usual gym crowd from work. Today, Boss joined us. We set up our usual circuit and ribbed each other on. The others bet on whether Katja or I would be able to lift heavier weights or do more reps within the given time at each station. There was some give and take. You win some. You lose some. Life is just like that.

"Great workout today," Katja and I slapped each other on the back after our showers and parted ways.

"Don't get caught in the storm," people called to each other over the sharp bursts of gusting wind and drumming rain we could hear through the closed windows.

"You too."

I maintained my smile until I was out of sight from all my colleagues. Maintaining appearances was tiring. Sometimes I wished I could just do my own thing and not have to concern myself with social norms. Did anyone else find these intense social interactions tiring too? Did anyone else feel they were all fake and superficial too?

I, for one, was looking forward to locking myself in my room and soloing a wild field boss in the massive multiplayer online role playing game that I had recently started playing after getting tired of the old game I had played before. Killing mobs of monsters, solving puzzles and chopping up players who tried to steal-kill from me sounded awesome right now. With the tweaks I had made to the game code, maybe the game wouldn't lag so much on my old PC.

On the walk to the train station to meet up with my brother, I looked up at the ominous dark clouds looming over our heads and the arcing lightning. It was a good thing that there were overhanging shop fronts most of the way that provided me some shelter. The same cold wind from this morning was still blowing - it was just stronger than before. This morning, an unholy boom of thunder had shaken the house and made me fall out of bed in fright. The already huge storm and torrential rains were expected to continue and get worse tonight. Flash flooding was being reported up in the hills where the storm was passing through.