Five different suits stepped through the rotating doors of the Pegasus building in downtown. They were chatting, reveling in their lunchtime jokes before they sat back down at their respective desks. Most of them had passed by the security desk when one of the guards stood up.

“Excuse me, gentlemen. Sir, I’ll need to see your badge.” The guard that stood up was tall, but not exceptionally big. The grey uniform fit tightly on him at points, and his heavy belt that was gathered with the tools of his job made him look pudgy. His coldly blue eyes had a stern quality that accompanied the short cut of his brown hair. The tag on his chest labeled him D. Price and this is what the man in the suit found himself staring at. “May I see your badge, sir?”

The group stopped and spread out to watch their friend set down his briefcase with a curse on his breath. He patted down his trousers and looked through the empty pockets in his suit jacket. “I-uh… I must have left it at the restaurant.”

“Sir, I can’t let you pass without that badge.”

The man pushed back his hair. “Come on, Price. I see you everyday,” the man stammered with embarrassment.

“What’s my first name?”

With a sigh, the man bent down and picked up his briefcase. “I’ll be back in a minute, guys.” And they went on to the elevators while the one, dejected, walked back out of the double rotating doors into the midday light. Price sat behind the desk again, the leather of the seat creaking. Beside him was his partner, a shorter, dark-haired, and slightly more handsome man with a tag that read G. Hartman.

“Awfully strict on the guy, Derek.”

“I just follow what my boss tells me in the morning,” he said, staring into the monitors that showed the man walking away from the building and down the street.

Knowing that the conversation would get nowhere, Gene Hartman went back to his book, reading with the occasional glance at the security monitors beside him. He rubbed his chin before muttering, “All work and no play….”

Derek didn’t turn. “What did you say?”

“A Shakespeare play….”

This time, D. Price turned to look. “What?”

Gene smiled, glad to talk. “See, I’m reading Two Gentlemen of Verona. The wife suggested some Shakespeare instead of the commercial junk I keep bringing to work. I just started it and already there’re these two guys arguing about how love works. What do you think about that?” he said, successfully sounding amused.

A woman holding the hand of a small girl walked in. Derek looked up, seeing a summer dress and her hair tied back in a studious brown ponytail that swayed behind her. The two looked like sisters, one older leading the younger, but the child’s unblinking eyes appearing more lively than the empty, dull eyes of the woman leading. The door behind the couple squeaked when it opened, straining to stretch wide for them. Behind the girls, Derek saw the dejected man holding his badge high in one hand, and wiping his red, sweaty brow on the sleeve of his arm that held his briefcase. The man only nodded as he went past and ducked into the elevator. The woman led her daughter to the information desk and away from Price’s sphere of duty, so he gave a sharp look at the man’s badge as it passed him. At the last moment, he turned and said loudly, “Have a good day, Wayne Hamilton.”

“How did you—,” came the reply before it was cut off by the elevator door.

Derek’s self-satisfied smile enjoyed the joke until Gene’s own smile broke into a laugh. “So you’re not entirely humorless,” Gene said. Derek turned away to face the front door, ignoring the girls. Gene continued. “Since I know you’re almost human, and I’m bored with watching the discussion, I’ll ask you—What do you think of love?”

Derek rubbed his temples, relaxing as he faced Gene’s question. “Here it is. Love is,” Derek paused to sound like he was thinking about it. “Love is precious.”

Gene set down his book of the play, facing the woman and daughter. “That’s not in question. Love must be precious,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “Wars are fought for love.”

“Not anymore.”

“That makes Helen of Troy more classic and tragic, not out-dated,” Hartman quipped. “But that’s not the point. Haven’t you ever been head-over-heels in love? Where you did things you wouldn’t normally do? Maybe even became someone else entirely?”

“No,” Price said, his stark blue eyes opening up to look at his partner. “Besides, that’s using love as an excuse to be stupid.”

“Well, that explains a lot.” Gene’s book-finger found the place he had marked and reopened it.

There was a moment of pause while the discussion’s impasse forced the two combatants into their own corners. Derek found himself staring at the summer dress on the older girl at the information desk. The yellow pattern was detailed with leaves and vines, looking at once bright and somehow familiar to Derek. The younger girl’s dress was modeled after the older girl’s version, as some sisters’ dresses are, although the vine and leaves were thicker and somehow held a deeper green, not any less brilliant than the sun yellow of the older girl’s summer dress. A sense of déjà vu passed through Derek, but his mind was distracted with the security monitor, which he glanced at. Looking back, his eyes connected with the younger girl’s eyes, and, as two strangers turn away from eye contact, Derek looked back at Gene. “Yes, I had someone once. But you choose how you fall in love. Just like choosing to go to war with it. You’re the person who is in control of yourself.”

“And what if that love chooses you?” Gene raised an eyebrow.

“It doesn’t happen.”

“Hasn’t happened.”

“Will not happen.” Derek’s jaw was set tight. “I’m not some idiot who will lose it over a girl. Maybe you are, but I’ve got more dignity than that. Love doesn’t have to act like that for everyone, and it certainly isn’t that way for me. Why don’t you go back to your fantasies, and leave me with reality?” The lobby echoed with over-silence, but Derek didn’t meet the eyes of anyone who stole a look at his momentarily raised voice.

Straightening out his nylon uniform jacket, Gene returned back to Shakespeare. Price turned to see the woman walking by with a guest pass on her lapel. The little girl, rushed by her mother’s hand, also had on a badge, oversized for her little dress. That was when he noticed the little girl’s big green eyes staring at him as she passed. He had a vague notion that she had been looking at him before, showing no expression, just staring, but he ignored it.

Derek Price didn’t think much about the conversation until the evening when he saw a woman sitting at a table in his regular Starbucks when his shift had ended. The book she had in her hand was titled Two Gentlemen of Verona. The woman looked up when he walked in. Deep green eyes glanced at him, through him, and then nonchalantly went back to reading. When he went up to order, Derek was reluctantly thinking about careless lovers who would swoon with love and do anything. “Could I get the white chocolate? A medium one?”

“Grande-white-mocha,” the aproned guy translated to his partner. Making some small talk, the Starbucks guy said, “You’re getting the last one of those for the night. We’re out of white mocha.”

“Oh, that was what I was going to get,” the green-eyed girl said, appearing suddenly behind Derek.

Turning, he said, “You can have it then.” His sense of chivalry had taken over his sense of routine, but he already started to miss the taste of his regular drink that always managed to unwind his nerves for the night.

The woman just blinked her eyes for a moment, flashing her greens in a shotgun spray, but then smiled and said, “Thank you, good gentleman.”

“My pleasure,” he said, regretting it. He turned to the green apron behind the counter and said, “I’ll need a second to come up with something else,” then stepped back. He browsed over the menu, reading the different, unfamiliar names. Derek didn’t pay attention as money changed hands in front of him, and a minute went on before he felt a nudge. It was the green-eyed woman. Long black hair was tied behind her in a ponytail, and she had a studious air when she connected with his eyes.

“I wanted to say thanks, again. After a long day, this drink always manages to unwind my nerves for the night. To show some appreciation, why don’t we share?”

Price knew that on any other day, perhaps even yesterday, he would have said something polite to brush her away, particularly at this part of his day since he was just going to go home and sleep for the next morning. But his mind didn’t follow that. It may have been her eyes, a shade of green he hadn’t discovered before. It may have been her persuasive smile, harmless but impossible to ignore. Instead, he found himself thinking, ‘What does it matter? I’m just going to sleep anyway.’ “Why not?” he said aloud.

“Good. I got their largest, and I don’t think I can finish it.” When she smiled playfully, her green eyes were narrowed into sharp slits.

And they sat down together, chatting in small talk. Her name was Julia Meadows, and she worked in the children’s hospital. She was new in town, transferred from Oregon. What was his name? Had he ever been to Oregon? Twice, on business, but what kind of business? What did he do?

“I’m a security guard at the Pegasus building downtown.”

Julia pushed her book to the side. “Is that difficult?”

“Not really,” he said. “Not as long as I keep everything separated.”

“What do you mean?”

Derek rubbed his chin, finding the right way to start. “It’s hard to deal with people that you know. If everything and everyone is kept separated from me, then I don’t know them as well. Then, it’s easy enough to be hard on someone, since I don’t know who they really are.”

Julia took a sip from the cup, looking thoughtfully at him. “You must really care for your friends then.”

He took a moment before responding, trying to follow the jump she made. “Why?” Derek said as he watched her hand go up and then come down. He was waiting to take a sip when he noticed a clear shift in the table, and for a moment, he thought he had spilled the drink as she passed it to him. He could hear Julia talking, but he was caught as if he had stepped on his own shoelace, thinking about the spilled drink. But it wasn’t spilt; it was in his hand. The table was dry. Yet, it was moving. As he stared, he realized that the wood grain was becoming alive, liquid, and flowing like a river to the round end of the tables. The flow was uninterrupted by those things on the table, like his elbows, her elbows, the book, but it did bend to small knots that were in the wood, now looking like rocks in a river. The grain of the wood traveled along in its own world, animated but separated.

“What is it?”

He looked up at Julia’s questioning look and glanced back down at the table. It was still. The wood grain was frozen again, unmoving. “Nothing. What did you say?”

“You were staring at something. What was it?” she asked intently. He noticed a small trace of good humor in her eyes, and he thought of telling her for an instant. Instead, he glanced at her copy of Two Gentlemen of Verona on the table.

“Oh, I was just spacing out. Thinking about Shakespeare.”

“Yeah?” she said as her eyes turned into an excited glint. She started to turn to a certain page. “Have you read much of him?”

Price shook his head. “I don’t really like Shakespeare.”

“Oh,” she said, setting the book back down. Julia pushed a loose strand of black hair back over her ear. “Then who do you like?”

“Hemingway,” Derek said. He took another sip.

Julia laughed at the secret joke. And that was how it was for the rest of the night. Nothing strange happened again, no more liquid wood. Just the sharing of lives by two strangers who, in the course of words and looks, became less like strangers. Her eyes became clouded by a real hurt when she was talking about a young boy she was caring for at the hospital. The boy had essentially lost touch with reality and had been slipping away for a while from their care. But, she said, the boy had been slowly coming back. Indeed, there was always hope. And she needed to leave to go and check him at the hospital before getting sleep to return to him in the morning. Derek smiled and said he had to get some sleep as well, so they exchanged phone numbers and said they would call each other the next day.

Derek’s drive seemed a little shorter and when he arrived at his apartment, the wave of fatigue that hit him was not unpleasant or unwelcome. Though he was tired, he tried to stay awake, cleaning, watching television, and finally selecting a volume from a dusty bookshelf. It was not long after Derek had wiped off and carried the book to bed that his day ended against his will. His eyelids slipped and his view of the clothes he had set out for yesterday dimmed, and he slept.

Whether intentional or not, Derek had a dream. He was drowning in a brown river of wood, impossible to swim through because of the splinters, but was freed when he saw a pair of green eyes, which lead him to shore.

***
Youssef Sleiman, falling in line with everyone’s expectations of his occasionally Type A personality, works as an English Tutor in the Writing Clinic of the University of North Texas. He does this for two reasons: it’s a paid chance to correct everyone’s grammar, and he can work in a place that he can refer to as ‘The Lab.’