“I’m going to a meeting, should be back around lunchtime, is that cool?”
“Should be fine!” I reply.
My boss gets up from his desk which is right next to mine and puts his jacket on.
As soon as he turns I click on my dropbox folder and open up one of the Story files. I was up at 6am preparing designs for Filippo but didn’t get them finished before having to leave for work. This happens a lot.
Part of me wants to quit, sign on to the dole and design for Story every day all day.
I get a rush of excitement as I make the Illustrator window small enough so people walking past won’t notice. I frantically design. These are my best hours. 10am to 1pm, I really get into it. I fantasise about sitting in my own office having this exact same feeling but without the guilt and hunched shoulders. The fantasy is my heaven, my faith. It’s-
“Bloody meeting got cancelled.”
Fuck. I look up as my sits back down at his desk. I freeze.
I don’t want to make any sudden movements on my screen. Sudden movements like quickly minimising the window or doing that thing where all the windows zoom off the screen. That’s what gets you caught. It draws their eye. At the same time, if he glances at my screen, I won’t really be able to explain this guy staring back:
Due to the panic I hadn’t realised my boss was asking me a question. Then he stopped talking because he’d asked it. So the question hung there and I didn’t know what it was and this guy is staring like this:
If this was a TV show it would cut to another scene. Like, cut to Paul going, “I’ve broken Story.” And Filippo going, “What do you mean you’ve broken it?”
(this was happening at the same time on emails)
“I dunno. I deleted the database like you said and now nothing’s working.”
“You deleted the database?”
“You said-”
Okay cut back to me; I’m sitting on my desk covering half the screen with my upper body and my left arm draped over the other half. My right hand is holding my chin and my eyes are looking in whichever direction that means I’m lying as I’m thinking of an answer to a question I don’t know.
“Yeah, should be fine!” I say.