The Idea-smithy

Her fingers paused on the edge of the key-stroke. The ceasing of the rapidfire tap-clackety-clack-tap of her keyboard sounded very loud and she glanced up guiltily to see who had noticed. No one had, apparantly, so she breathed in a slow rush of air, settling that odd fear to rest and got up.

Her heels made a clack-tappetty-clack sound on the wood-panelled floor. It made her grimace. Once again that feeling, first with sudden silence after sound and now with sudden sound after silence. One more deep breath and another thread of nervousness laid to rest. Nobody was staring at her.

(more…)

Jack’s eyes lazily scanned the room, taking in all, accommodating none.

Gillian paused mid-speech, in spite of herself and her breath stuck in her throat. Then she caught herself and smoothly moved on, ramming her words into each other to create an artful slip of tongue. The ripple of amusement that passed through her listeners washed away the traces of anyone noticing her real mistake.

From her peripheral vision, Gillian knew that he had moved into focus and was weaving his way slowly but definitely towards her group. She never did the ‘corner of the eye’ thing…it was too obvious and blatant, a real pathetic ‘I can’t help looking but I don’t want to be seen looking’ gesture. No sirree, she was never pathetic. No sidelong glances, no downcast gazes, no secret looks, she didn’t do those.

What Gillian did do was yoga. It kept her eyesight as flexible as her fingers, her mind as nimble as her feet while dancing. Yoga allowed conversations to become like dances. Where you could move, navigate and control without actually thinking or making an effort to. Doing without trying. And what Gillian was doing without trying was turning herself and her little knot of people into a Jack-magnet…by sheer non-magnetism.

The man on her right turned slightly to accommodate the newcomer. Jack was smiling as he looked at the guilelessness in the eyes that seemed to be focusing and finally noticing him. Interesting, he thought.

And then, inspite of herself, Gillian smiled. Graceleness was her art and artlessness was where she was most graceful.

* Yes, the title is an unabashed rip-off of “I am Jack’s cold sweat” from the movie Fight Club.

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She was the kind that stopped to pet stray puppies. But food was only ever surreptitiously slipped to bit-bound horses ferrying kids on beaches and abandoned cows. Dogs and cats had their fans world-over but who thought of these forgotten ones? She did. Impartial with love but she tried to distribute equally what she could and ended up caring for the underdogs (or horses). Fair share for everyone.

Saturday afternoon found her clutching an envelope, mixed excitement and resignation. She didn’t even really like shopping. But one did what one must. She thought of last week’s phone call, begging, pleading with her to do her part to make one life easier. She sighed and thought, no human being should have to beg that way. So she squared her shoulders and walked in. A new credit card gleamed in the darkness of her wallet. It wouldn’t be lonely for long. Not as long as she was around to see it got its fair share.

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For Ammani’s 24-hour challenge-4