Chapter 40: Hiring season.

Wake up itching. Escape before the tremors would appear. Work until the sunset. Go to the park. Think. Return to Eve's house in the night. Awkwardness abound. Repeat.

Ocassionally, I would start wondering how great it would have been if I had started a romantic relationship with Eve. Maybe I should have given it a try? It was too late. Transcending the thought experiment, the increasing distance between us made it much easier for me to formulate her faults as a human, with whatever degree of exaggeration I wished. Thus to remove any possible feeling of a loss opportunity.

Many weeks went by. Routine started to have an anesthetic effect. And it was perfect: after all, desperately searching for meaning doesn't lead anywhere but to bad decisions. If billions of people could bask in the still happiness that passivity brings, I could too rest in stagnation. Nihilism for all.

In our team, everybody followed a behavior limited by the work environment itself. I always considered interesting how there's a set of unspoken rules about what is NSFW. The allegorical masks that everyone wears at a workplace have some fascinating, unexpected ornaments in common. Those sets of rules were often mistaken for professionalism.

I still hung out with Carl, and sometimes Chuck, outside of Dangerous Crush. Nonetheless, those relationships had been finally fixed under the ‘coworkers’ ruleset. Thus, they were confined by it: they weren't meant to grow anywhere outside that box. After hours, they were still coworkers.

As months passed by, I started actively getting to know other deparments. They were somewhat sealed to outer social interaction, and I wasn't skillful at circumventing those barriers. Time made things easier. Also, the company had a couple dozen new hires in the nine months I had been working for them. New blood made things easier.

Once —I swear— I saw Roberto in the corridor. The company was interviewing more people. Like in the desert, he was just in for a quick appearance —but wouldn't become an apparition this time. This time, he felt very real. It was like he was projecting his image back in time, and the Roberto I had met in the desert was a hologram caused by a time machine that spawned Roberto's incarnations past and future. A bidirectional echo for a distraught mind.

A mind too distrait too, so much that was frozen —stupidly lacking the capability to react, as it had happened in the public library of Borrego Springs. This time it seemed more urgent, more real. As a real opportunity was being missed. I stared into his eyes. He smiled and asked a one work question, muffled in my memory by whatever stupefying spell I was under. Infatuation. Annoying. I smiled as he was conducted into another room by “some human resources ‘chick’” —as others called her— that they hired to perform interviews.

I never saw him again. Not in the office. The temptation to investigate who he was stroke me once in a while, e.g. to find and contact him through LinkedIn. I always repressed it, thinking that if I had let it drive me, I would be exposing both my desperation and insanity. Normal people don't stalk people they have seen for less than a minute in a corridor. Sane people don't consider that the other person would be as heart-stricken as they were, out of nowhere.

I did, but would not act on that.