Joni felt her heartbeat quicken as she approached the laboratory door. She gently pushed it open and cleared her throat.
Nadirah, who was at her computer, turned towards her but remained seated. “Have a seat,” she said, nodding toward a nearby chair.
“And do what?” asked Joni as she sat down.
“Just sit,” Nadirah said, turning her attention back to her monitor.
And so Joni sat, arms folded in front of her. She slowly gazed around the room, trying not to look at Nadirah. But she wasn’t able to get her eyes to obey her mental commands for long, and soon they focused on her attractive profile. The forensics investigator now wore a dark brown leather jacket. Depending on how she moved, she caught an occasional glimpse of the gun that was now holstered by her right hip.
Joni admired her overall appearance – strong and capable, but not ugly or scary. She was neither feminine nor masculine, but the perfect balance of the two. She wore no makeup which suited her well. She simply didn’t have the kind of face that needed makeup. Joni liked the way her hair brushed against her shoulders as she moved, the way she chewed her gum, and the way her eyes, especially her eyes, moved about the screen in an alert and intelligent manner. Despite the fact that Nadirah wasn’t much bigger than herself, Joni found her to be a bit on the tough side and found it somewhat intimidating. She wasn’t sure why traits like these sometimes appealed to her, but they did, and she began to feel a stirring within her that she hadn’t felt since the loss of Rachel. She just wished the woman were a little more likable.
Then again, did it matter? Did it really matter? Two more weeks and they’d never see each other again.
Nadirah suddenly became agitated and started clicking her mouse rapidly. Sighing in frustration, she slumped back in her chair.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Nadirah said, annoyance thick in her voice as she struggled some more with whatever problem she’d apparently encountered.
Joni couldn’t read the message box that had popped up on the screen from where she sat. She rose from her chair - slowly, cautiously - afraid to do anything that might upset her, but wanting to help in any way she could.
Nadirah quickly glanced to her right as Joni crept up beside her.
“It’s not the program, I hope,” said Joni.
“No, it’s the email I’m trying to send to the boss. Now, do you mind? It won’t go through.”
Joni continued to tread with caution, sensing that Nadirah didn’t want her to see whatever it was that was on the screen. “Well, if you’d like, I could maybe read the error message and help figure it out.”
When Nadirah didn’t say anything, Joni took it to mean it was okay for her to read the message. “Invalid email address?”
“That’s what it says,” Nadirah said, still frustrated and leaning her head wearily in the hand that wasn’t guiding the mouse.
A few inches closer and Joni could read the brief five-word sentence she’d been trying to send.
Cutie is with me now.
Joni acted as if she hadn’t seen it, though she was dancing with delight inside at the thought of the attractive forensics expert referring to her as a cutie.
Joni studied the email address Nadirah had typed in. “Is that really supposed to be a comma right there or a period?”
Nadirah gazed intently at the address. “Oh, damn,” she said. “What a stupid mistake.”
“It happens to the best of us,” said Joni, sitting back down in her chair.
“Yeah, and if someone weren’t so distracting it might not have happened to me,” Nadirah said, glancing over her shoulder at Joni and deflating her bubble over the cutie comment.
“There you go. Just blame your shitty typing on me,” Joni shot back.
Nadirah rose from her chair.
Joni’s heartbeat also rose.
“Get up,” Nadirah demanded.
Joni stood up on shaky legs and Nadirah stepped towards her. Joni thought she was going to hit her.
“Turn around.”
“What, am I under arrest or something? Or are you just going to spank me?”
Ignoring her, Nadirah more or less walked her across the room, noisily jerked a chair out from under a table, and motioned for her to take a seat.
That was it? She wasn’t going to kick her out altogether?
Joni sat as still as she could, not daring to say a word or even look at Nadirah, even if she’d never know it since her back was towards her.
Gifford came into the room sometime later. He glanced at Joni, then at Nadirah, then back again at Joni. “What’s this?” he asked. “Meditation time?”
“Actually, I’m being punished because she didn’t appreciate that I didn’t appreciate her blaming her lousy typing on me.”
As Joni figured would be the case, Gifford laughed. But what she didn’t expect was the slight smile she caught on Nadirah’s face as she turned toward Gifford. She could only see part of the side of her face, but she saw enough to be sure that she was smiling.
“Shame on you, Miss Haddad. You know that ain’t no way to treat a lady.”
“Yeah, yeah. So what’s up?” Nadirah asked with a half-laugh.
“Mr. Jacobson requested you for the job.”
“Oh yeah?”
“As I told him, you’re the best in your field.”
Nadirah laughed again and said, “Oh, thank you, Giffy.”
Joni watched as Gifford walked over to his own computer, grabbed some file folders, then proceeded to leave. On his way out, he told Nadirah to be nice to her and flashed her a friendly smile on his way out.
Nadirah glanced her way before turning to focus on what she’d been doing, contempt once again present in her dark eyes.
“Essere gentile con me, cagna,” said Joni.
“What?”
Joni just smiled and shrugged.
“Well, if you have the guts to tell me whatever it is you just told me in Spanish, why not English, too?”
“I would, but there’s just one problem.”
“Yeah, what?”
“That wasn’t Spanish. That was Italian.”
“Oh,” Nadirah said, rolling her eyes and returning her attention to her work.
Joni reached for her purse which sat across the table, pulled a small notepad from it, and scribbled something down. A moment later, she tore the sheet of paper from the pad and set it on the table.
“You need to settle down and sit still,” Nadirah said, just as a knock sounded at the door. A second later, in stepped the boss lady.
Joni and Nadirah gazed up at her. “Can I steal your little helper?” she asked Nadirah.
“Oh, you sure can,” Nadirah answered. “You sure can.”
The boss lady looked at her and smiled warmly. “We need help with a visitor who speaks German. Think you can help?”
“Not as well as with some other languages, but I can try,” Joni said, rising from her seat and grabbing her purse. She had mixed emotions about leaving Nadirah. She was a bitch and she knew she’d never get anywhere with her even if she remained in town forever, and she hated sitting around doing nothing, even if Nadirah was wonderful eye candy.
Nadirah followed her movements as she headed for the door.
Not sure where she got the guts to say so, Joni said, “You’re going to miss me.”
The boss lady laughed, but Nadirah didn’t seem to know what to make of the comment. She seemed a touch surprised, a touch confused, and even a touch amused by it. Either way, she simply shook her head and rolled her eyes more for the boss lady’s benefit than for Joni’s.
The metal door swung shut and Nadirah wasted no time in swiping up the piece of paper Joni had left on the table.
It was written in a foreign language.
She should have figured as much.
Although it seemed to take forever, the end of the day had finally arrived and Joni sat waiting on a bench outside the employee exit and entrance in hopes of catching Nadirah on her way out.
Her heart rate sped up in anticipation when she finally spotted her leaving the building. “Nadirah!” she called out.
Nadirah glanced around her and then her eyes came to rest upon Joni. She stopped chewing her gum, unsure and wary of why Joni would be waiting for her outside of work. “Yes?”
Joni approached the forensics specialist and said, “I want to know the reason.”
“What reason?”
“I want to know what’s going on.”
Nadirah glanced impatiently at her watch. “Joni, you have to be more specific than that. Unless you’ve been spending so much time on other languages that you forgot your own.”
“My English is fine. Is yours good enough to explain what it is you have against me?”
Nadirah blinked in surprise. She hadn’t expected this.
“It’s ok. Whatever it is, I can take it,” Joni assured her.
Nadirah’s gaze locked steadily with hers. A dark and serious expression overtook her features. “Well…” she hesitated. “The parking lot where I work isn’t exactly the place for this.”
“I didn’t think the laboratory room you work in was either or out in the field where some of these unfortunate people are getting fifty-seven…”
“Ok, Joni. I often hang out in a more secluded spot than this during lunch.”
“Off-en.”
“What?”
“The word often is pronounced off-en. The T is silent.”
Ignoring her, Nadirah said, “I’ve got to go now. Maybe I’ll catch you tomorrow.” Without saying goodbye, she sauntered across the parking lot to a blue compact car.
“I’ll make you catch me tomorrow,” Joni vowed in quiet determination.
Nadirah was frustrated. She’d looked up the foreign words Joni had written online in both Italian and Spanish. Yet she’d come up empty. She studied the words again. To her, most romance languages looked the same at an initial glance.
“Hmm…” she said aloud to her cat. “It doesn’t look like French. Could it be Portuguese?”
The cat meowed at her.
“Yeah, maybe it’s Portuguese,” Nadirah decided and began tapping at her keyboard. “Ok, let’s see if we can find a Portuguese dictionary.”
It took her a while, but after looking up the words one by one, a sentence began to form.
And she couldn’t help but smile when it did.
Alone in her secluded little cottage-like house, Nadirah went through her usual after-work routine now that she’d deciphered the note, with her only company being the sound of the wind whistling through the evergreens outside, her cat, and constant thoughts of Joni.
Joni, the one thing she wished would kindly exit her life and her mind forever.
The question was whether or not it was wise to tell Joni who she really was. Was it worth the bother of bringing up the past when Joni wouldn’t be around much longer anyway? Seeing her and remembering the past was one thing, but talking about it was another.
Nonetheless, she couldn’t help but wonder what made Joni act the way she did. Was it stress? Abuse? Something else? Although Joni wasn’t exactly shy, she did seem moody and distrustful in a way that was often associated with those who had been abused. But what did she know about that sort of thing? Her mother and her deceased father may’ve been strict, but they hadn’t been abusive. And so, like most people who couldn’t relate to that sort of thing, she was automatically put off by people like Joni. She knew a lot of people would consider her insensitive because of it. After all, if anything bad had happened to Joni, it wasn’t her fault, was it? Yet she went on with this image in mind of what her ideal and damn near perfect woman should be like, and she wasn’t anything like Joni. She was predictable and non-eccentric. She wasn’t much fun, nor was she full of surprises. She was stable and “normal.” She didn’t care if Miss Perfect didn’t make much money, but she would certainly be virtually devoid of emotion, never getting all that mad, sad or emotional in any way, for Nadirah had no patience to deal with any woman who was less than strong, quiet and calm.
Sometimes she wondered about herself. Why was she so impatient and insensitive? Why didn’t a crying woman tug at her heart? Why was she unable to feel people’s pain at times or accept those who weren’t like herself?
Perhaps it was because she didn’t want to and because she just didn’t give a damn.
Joni was only good-looking and definitely not Miss Perfect. And that would never change whether Joni was leaving town soon or not. Besides, Nadirah had been wronged by Joni and if anyone knew how to hold a grudge, it was her. She simply did not move on and let go of the past. She’d heard it said many times before how those who could forgive were to be commended for their ability to do so. But Nadirah rarely did anything commendable of that nature. This meant that right or wrong, she would go on waiting for Miss Perfect, even if Miss Perfect didn’t exist and it meant she may always be alone. And the older she got, the more likely she knew she would probably be alone forever.
But Nadirah was also human and could easily close her eyes and imagine… fantasize… Why not? It was safer. In her imagination, Joni was available anytime she wanted her to be, no matter where she was, and she always behaved in a manner she found appealing and acceptable. And she could make her disappear anytime she wanted to, too.
Well, almost anytime. Lately, Joni was getting awfully good at nudging her way into the forefront of her mind. And nothing seemed to stand in the girl’s way tonight. If thoughts of anything else crept into mind, Joni was quick to shove them aside and remain in the spotlight. Nadirah decided to let Joni have her way that night, reminding herself that she would be gone soon enough and then she would go back to being nothing more than just a memory.
Or would she find herself missing the cute and quirky little language fanatic?
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