19 041. Teamwork

‘I’m sorry, I wont disturb you much. Right now I just really need sit next to someone concentrating as hard as your are.’  

She looked up from her computer half stuck in the text still. If she spoke now, words from the screen will float out like bubbles and burst into little pixel drops, rain down on the table, wet up the napkin and dilute the coffee. And she had just ordered a piece of lemon pie. Didn’t want that to get spoiled. So she kept her mouth clammed shut. But she smiled. ‘Its something about his voice’ she thought. It sounded familiar. 

‘Emmm wow ok’, she said after a little while once she connected to the outside world. She signalled towards a chair next to her, obviously feeling uncomfortable if they had to sit facing each other. ‘Wow, yea ok, a pitch like that how can I say no, ey?’ She was in a playful mood and obviously didn’t feel threatened. There was still a disengagement in her tone, showing that she wasn’t about to drop her project for some random idle chit-chat. She jugged down the sorry remains of her cold coffe and started to rearrange cup and glass and plate. ‘You know I usually spread out a lot worse, I must have had a feeling someone might wanna join me. Or I’m just lonely heh…’’ yea so… anyway go ahead.’

‘What ya working on there?’

‘It’s eh.. well.. it’s a book actually’

‘Wow a book? You’re a writer?’

‘Woa ok, slow down now haha. Well I guess that’s fair to assume when I say I’m working on a book. Its eh… Well.. There’s this thing called NaNoWriMo, you write a novel in a month’

‘A month?!’

‘Hah, yea crazy, I know. Supposedly once you hit 50 k it can be labelled as a novel. But its a novel written in a month, it’s a fast paced project right. I’m kinda messy in general with my writing, and eh… jolting it all down in a month, you can imagine. So what I’m doing is I’m trying to sort it out. Adding things, alooot of cutting out random bullshit you know.’

‘So you got 50 000 words there? How many pages is that?’

‘Well eh, I reached about double that, 105k em 174 pages and a third down on 175.

I guess I had a lot of stories to tell. And time to write it all down, you know. But like I said, I have to cut a lot of it out.’

‘Tonight is a good night for cutting.’

‘Ah, true so true. So you want a coffee?’

‘I’m gonna let an poor starving writer buy me coffee? Hell no, I’m buying. What are you having?’

‘Just black. Black and strong like’

‘the devil’

‘Yea… like the devil. Thanks’

The cogs in her head was turning down to the core of her inner works. Her brainwaves pulsated so violently that the people on the table at the other side of the room paused in their midnight snack and beer and looked over at her. She pretended she didn’t notice them staring, or didn’t actually notice. She just turned back to her screen rubbed her chin bone like she had a beard and thinned her eyes. Picking, dissecting, adding subtracting. When he came back with the coffee to the table, she barely looked up. Gave a nod when he set down a coffee and that was all the communication that they had for the next two hours or so. When she finished her coffee he got up and refilled it. Making sure she had water as well. She dropped a piece of the lemon pie in her lap. He handed her a napkin and she took it without so much as looking at him. Her eyes fixated the screen and she tapped away with one hand, trying to fish up the little bit of pie in her lap. Sometimes she broke off the writing on the computer and wrote something down in the notepad next to the computer. Her writing was absolutely unreadable. But she could obviously decipher it since she would lean over it every now and then when she had returned to the writing on the computer, smile and nod as she picked up threads and knitted it into the pages on the screen.

After the two hours of intense work she paused and leaned back in her chair. She looked at the screen and read a couple of lines over, did the nodding and smiling again and stretched her arms in the air.

‘I take it its going well’ he asked looking up from his book.

‘Yea man, it is. Surprisingly well. I don’t know, there is something about having someone sitting with you, you know. I mean, I don’t mind being alone, sometimes I prefer it. But with someone beside me I don’t have to worry about people thinking I’m a weirdo you know. Not that I worry that much about it, I don’t really care, but it’s just an annoyance I’d rather be without some days, you know. And I don’t have to worry about being approached. Its just a relief some days. Like now, it was perfect; I got so much work done. Its great.’

‘Well, I’m glad I could help’ He said and laughed ‘Make sure you mention me in the special thanks’

‘Hah, sure will do, would be my pleasure. What’s your name by the way?’

‘Jamal’

‘Hi, I’m Josie, nice to meet you’

‘Yea, nice to meet you too’ ‘A pleasure indeed’ she added and smiled towards the screen, arms crossed and a slow nod.