Faker - Sarah Smith Page 0,2
snide comments and dismissive quips, with a sprinkle of work-related topics every once in a while. Nothing personal.
Despite this mutual disinterest in each other’s lives, I feel like I know him well after eleven months. He reminds me of an android in a sci-fi movie. Cool and polite, but with a machinelike quality. Almost like he’s feigning human reactions for courtesy’s sake, and you can’t tell what’s really behind the wall of artificial feelings.
A robot would be a more pleasant coworker.
I once taped a photo of an android on his computer with the words I’m flattered you work so hard to model your personality after mine scrawled on the bottom after a particularly infuriating day of snapping at each other. I would have loved to watch him rip it apart in anger, but I was giggling so hard I had to leave the room.
The soft tick of the minute hand on my desk clock pulls me back to the present. Only one more hour until I can go home and shed my work armor. I glance at the lone framed photo on my desk of my younger sister, my mom, and me. Addy is a toddler; I’m just out of kindergarten. We’re soaked from running back and forth into the waves at Hapuna Beach in Hawaii. Our mom kneels behind us, hugging us in her arms. All three of us display impossibly wide grins.
My mouth waters for Spam musubi, my favorite childhood snack. I curl my toes inside my sneakers, wishing they were sand. Nostalgia is hitting hard today. I send Mom and Addy quick “I love you” texts, then punch in a reminder on my phone to email Mom this weekend.
Next to the frame is a hollowed-out coconut half, my favorite keepsake from the Big Island that doubles as a quirky paperweight. I run my fingers over the fuzzy fibers on the shell. Inside rests a message scrawled in my mother’s trademark cursive handwriting.
For my beautiful anak, who’s as sweet and strong as this coconut.
My eyes prick, but I blink away the split second of emotion. Remembering how and why she gave this to me will forever leave me choking back tears.
“Missing Hawaii again?” Tate asks.
Curse this heat. I want to shut my door so bad. “You could say that,” I concede.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Nope.” I gaze at my computer screen and click indiscriminately on random links.
“Come on. I’m a good listener.” He looks at me expectantly, like he thinks I’m actually going to chat with him about my childhood. Fat chance.
“Nope.”
The heavy sigh he releases sounds a lot like disappointment, but I have no idea why. Like I’m going to divulge personal details to the guy who spends every workday staring daggers at me in between bicker sessions. He’ll just make fun of me. Like how he smirks when I call flip-flops “slippers,” or how he frowns when I say “auntie” instead of “aunt.”
Five o’clock hits, and Tate’s gone before I even log off my computer. I glance at his empty chair, my chest tight with the desire to have a normal work relationship with the coworker sitting closest to me. But I remind myself why it’s not possible. He’s weirdly hostile, and I’m a big fat phony. As much as I want to be normal with Tate, I don’t need it. What I do need is to be hard, focused. Even if I have to fake it.
* * *
• • •
NO TAPPING TODAY. Instead Tate is loudly guzzling coffee from his thermos. I want to yell after every earsplitting slurp. Every time he brings that silver thermos to his lips, I imagine ripping it out of his grip and chucking it against the wall. But I can’t. Because this is a place of business, not a street fight.
Why is he even drinking hot coffee? It’s ninety-nine degrees out for the twelfth straight day, one of the hottest Augusts that Omaha has seen on record.
Another slurp. My eyes bulge. There’s no way he doesn’t know how grating this is. He should think about outsourcing his slurping skills to Guantanamo Bay as a new form of enhanced interrogation. He could get anyone to submit in record time.
Shoving in my earbuds, I crank the volume on the episode of Eat Bulaga! I’m streaming, my favorite variety show from the Philippines. The hosts’ off-key karaoke rendition of Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold” is soothing compared to Tate’s animal noises.
Our boss, Will, glides into my doorway. He occupies a cracker box office