Chapter 2-3
358 Words
Daniel couldn’t help noticing the quirk of a smile across Dr. Thompson’s lips. With the unruly mop of hair, it was hard to tell, but she appeared to be staring at his hands.
He looked down.
The Advent calendar still lay in his lap. His hand half an inch from grabbing the little number “1” ribbon. Still.
Her smile bloomed, but she’d shaken down a few more of those soft-flowing curls and her eyes were almost invisible, except as a bright glint. Damn, it was about the cutest thing he’d ever seen.
He slapped the calendar closed and dropped it atop the nearest stack of papers. It over-balanced the stack, which slid to the right. In his sleep deprived state, he was nowhere near fast enough to stop the falling dominos as Chinese manufacturing cascaded into Arctic ecology and on into the Baja oil spill. Daniel rescued the calendar, but the oil spill took out the most recent fisheries and timbers trade reports. The budget was almost big enough to stop the whole thing, would have been if it weren’t sitting on top of the east Africa political report he’d been trying to review for the last three days.
The budget slammed to the floor with a crash loud enough that they all jumped a bit. A minor blizzard of paper followed it to the oriental carpet.
Kenneth stuck his head back in the door, but the President waved him off. All Daniel could do was watch the out-of-control disaster as file folders spilled open one after another to release a fresh splash of white and blue sheets of paper. Spreading like some cubist piece of floor performance art.
The President glanced at the pile of reports fluttering to a landing beside his chair.
“Janet is gonna be so pissed at you,” his boss practically crowed at him.
“Janet?”
Daniel heard Alice’s voice, tentative for a moment.
“His secretary. She’s lethal about Daniel’s methods of organization.”
Alice stretched up to peer at the disaster beyond the President’s chair.
Then she aimed that impossibly cute smile at Daniel. This time those twin, hazel-colored laser beams were exposed with an easy head shake that flopped her hair back.
“How soon does she get in? Can we watch? Where do we get popcorn?”
- Writer
