Oscar comes back into the house three minutes after he left for work. Gil looks up, surprised, from his cereal.
"My car won't start," says Oscar. "And I'm going to be late. Can you drive me?"
The air conditioning in Gil's car is on the fritz again so they drive to the office park with the windows rolled down. It's getting muggy even this early in the morning and Oscar rests his arm on the open window and fiddles with the radio. Gil yawns as they sit at a stop light but stops when Oscar switches the station to one that's playing that song about being crazy.
"Ooh, leave it here," he says and starts mouthing the lyrics and Oscar tries not to smile.
He tenses up when they pull into the parking lot, though. In a perfect world, Gil would be as far away from work and Michael and the cameras as humanly possible. The next state would be too close, really.
Gil taps on the steering wheel with his thumbs as Oscar unfastens his belt and turns around to fumble in the back seat for his briefcase. He's still backwards when he looks up through the back window and groans.
"What?" says Gil, turning around to look.
"Angela," says Oscar, nodding to where she's locking up her car.
"Oh, I want to see!" says Gil, craning his neck.
"No, don't--" says Oscar. She's walking toward the building now, and it'll take her right past them.
"Wait, *that's* Angela?" says Gil, just as Angela glances over, pauses, and looks again. She changes her path and starts walking toward them. This is so not okay.
"... Gil?" she says as she gets close enough to peer in the driver's window.
"Angela!" says Gil, his voice a little too high. "Um, hi, wow. How are you?"
"I'm fine," says Angela, and pauses. Beat, beat. "It's been a long time."
"Oh, yeah," says Gil, and Oscar finally gets his briefcase unstuck and gets out of the car as quickly as he can.
"Well, thank you for the ride," he says, and Angela straightens up and looks at him over the roof of the car.
"No problem," says Gil. "Um, bye. Bye Angela."
"Bye," says Angela and she and Oscar stand and watch Gil turn the car around and drive away.
"My next door neighbor," says Oscar briskly. "My car broke down this morning."
Angela looks over at him and turns to walk inside. He follows.
"We went to high school together," she volunteers as they show the security guard their badges.
"Oh!" says Oscar, with something like relief. "Small world, I guess."
In the elevator, Angela pushes the button for the second floor and clears her throat.
"If you must know," she says. "We went out a few times."
Oscar chokes as the doors slide closed. There's something almost like approval in Angela's voice.
"He was always a perfect gentleman."
Author's Chapter Notes:
If you think these characters are mine, you're a moron.
kyrafic is the author of 8 other stories.
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