The horrendous work day was finally over. Emmy packed up her things to leave and caught a glimpse of the box she'd shoved to the side on her desk. She quickly shot out her arm, snatched the box up, and shoved it in her purse. She had no idea why she wasn't just throwing the thing away, but she felt this curiosity that couldn't be ignored.
On her way down in the lift, her crush joined her from the fifth floor. She was so busy staring at her own hands, she nearly missed it when he smiled at her. She looked up to see what floor they were coming to and caught him smiling at her in the reflection off the elevator doors. Suddenly she wanted to rail at him. Wanted to shout "It was you! Wasn't it? Why? What's the joke? 'Cause I don't get it!" But she kept her mouth shut. What if it wasn't him? Why would it be him? She may have been harboring a crush for him ever since he started working in this building a year and a half ago, but he had never even glanced her way, favorably or not. Until now. If it wasn't him playing a nasty joke on her, though, it was someone else, and then she would be mortified over the prank, embarrassed for yelling at him, and horrified that he would then know she'd been made a fool.
All this over a little box filled with nothing. Correction: Filled with a seed. Well there was only one thing to do. Emmy was going to go home and plant this seed and see what grew from it. Maybe in a few months it would grow into a beautiful flower, then not all would be lost and she could then bring it back into work and rub it in the prankster's face that the joke had backfired!
Emmy's gaze had drifted to her purse as she thought of the seed inside of it, and when she looked up again the doors were open and the man with the green eyes was nowhere to be seen. She stepped out of the elevator and made her way out of her building and down the street to her bus stop. As she walked along the road she couldn't help thinking about how shiny her seed was. Even when she had thought it was sand it was abnormally brilliant. She'd seen sunlight glint off a sandy beach before, but this was the most lustrous piece of sand she'd ever seen. It had blazed and glittered in her hand. Now that she realized this was a seed it was even more fascinating. Emmy was no master gardener, but she was fairly certain seeds were not supposed to glitter. The more she thought about it, the more excited she became over the prospect of what sort of plant it was. She couldn't wait to get home and put it straight into a flower pot!
When she first stepped on the bus it had been packed with people. Fairly typical for this time in the evening. A couple blocks away from her stop Emmy started to feel like she was being watched. She tried to surreptitiously look around, but there were only four other people left on the bus and they all seemed preoccupied with something. One was sleeping, greasy head lolling against the grimy window. Another was immersed in what seemed to be a good book, if the smile on his face and occasional chuckle that escaped his lips were anything to go by. An old lady was in the middle of knitting something warm. The fourth, a child, was lost in daydreams staring out of the window into the early night. That left only the bus driver, and obviously she was keeping her attention on the road. So, Emmy dismissed her uneasiness as a symptom of an odd, if not disappointing, day.
The bus reached Emmy's stop. She got off, walked the rest of the way home, climbed the steps to her third floor apartment, and, setting her purse with the seed in it aside, put the kettle on for some tea while she cooked dinner. A cat started winding his way around her ankles asking for his food, while she stood at the stove. "Hey Othello. You want dinner?" She fed the cat and then fed herself before finally turning her attention back to the box with her shining seed. Emmy took the box from her purse and went out to the roof garden to collect an empty pot and some soil. Again, when she opened the box and removed the seed, she heard the ethereal music that seemed to haunt her all day today. She knew it must be her imagination, but she still found it strange that her mind had chosen to associate this music with a seed in a box. Shrugging it off as having a song stuck in her head, though not quite able to tune it out, she brought the pot in and set it in the south facing garden window in the kitchen, headed for the bath, and finally off to bed where Othello curled up next to her as she fell asleep...
No comments:
Post a Comment