The Office, Chapter 206

It shouldn't be terribly surprising at this point for me to share the fact that blogging is not my day job. If this is at all shocking, I invite you to please take a few moments to collect yourself before reading on.
I'll be starting a continuing, if disjointed, narrative series on my life at the office. It will skip in time, switch points-of-view, everything that should make an entirely confusing journey. This could become quite a compendium, albeit in 500 word bursts. And it also could really suck. But it's worth a shot.

We begin the series in medias res:

Chapter 206
Tires popped on the loose gravel beneath as the car slowly rolled to a stop. From a thin cloud of smoke, two gently curved figures by the doorway glanced towards the noise, squinting to see past the glare in the windshield. The one with her back towards the vehicle pivoted slightly, and when she was satisfied with her view, turned back around, not quite hiding her sneer from the driver. He caught the gesture, as he may have been intended to do, and the sentiments were duly echoed under the cover of the glass.
"Shit," he said out loud. It was half past noon, which meant another five hours before he would be able to sniff the familiar stale interior of the car again. The driver took a deep breath, exhaled and stepped out onto the concrete; the half hour of paid freedom was nearing a close. The sun mocked him from above, shining brilliantly and reminding him of its impending absence during the next three hundred minutes of his life. Bastard of a gaseous fireball, he thought to himself.
Dues had to be paid, he reminded himself. Machiavellian underpinnings in an office of daft morons. A cubicle farm of false hopes and defeated morales. He imagined the scenario in his head where he subtly passed the smokers by, him with is neck pointed down and them with their nicotine fix. It would be perfect, he thought, nobody pretends to like each other, everybody is happy ignoring the other’s respective existence. It would be a world of pure bliss, built on the principle of mutual unrecognition.

Why do it? he asked himself, Why play make believe? Why put on the mask? What’s that phrase? It takes so many muscles to smile, but only a few to extend a finger… something like that.

Approaching the entry, his gaze fixed on the back of her head, he initiated the engagement. “Hi, Sandra,” he said, continuing to walk quickly toward her.

“Hi there,” she smiled back, "how was your—" she started, before being interrupted by the sound of bone meeting flesh. The blow from his right fist had caught her directly under her jaw and taken her clean off her feet, sending her six feet back into the row of hedges lining the building. She lay there, stunned and giggling, until…

Giggling? Why was she giggling?

Dazed, he looked down at his feet, which were still planted on the ground outside the car, where he sat with the door flung open. He looked around, pausing at the two women, still smoking and giggling in the sunlight. Another deep breath, shook his head to rid the daydream, and he stood, closing the car door behind him. His afternoon was beginning.

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