IGMS Issue 10 by IGMS

Author:IGMS [IGMS]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hatrack River Enterprises
Published: 2008-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

Gwynne answered the door again.

"You're back."

"You left."

She looked at him in the same calculating way that made him want to flee. He stood his ground.

"Come in," she said after a while. She led him back to the work room. Arthur was still there, kneading at the clay. Gwynne picked up a lock of hair and started snipping bits of it into her father's clay.

"You do realize," she said, "That you will get the floor that you need. It might not be the one that you want."

"I know what I need."

"Hmmm." She shrugged. She finished with the hair, turned around and said, "You must let me see everything."

His irritation must have shown on his face.

She smiled up at him. "I don't mean to be so irritating."

"Okay." No, no. It was not okay. He hated having his soul weighed by her stare. Why was he doing this? He stood at this floor, with its tiles, and looked down and struggled to not need a floor by the same maker. "Okay." Just let him be.

She was at the agency the next morning before he even got there. He saw her a few times in his office, during meetings, with clients. Other people didn't notice her much. Gwynne was that way, blending into the background. He came to know her gaze and wonder what she thought of his actions. Sometimes the woman just stared at him in that infuriating way, but it was her very silence that made it bearable.

Then there were the times when her eyebrow rose just a little and she smiled. And when that happened, his heart burned.

He looked up one day after letting one of the producers take their vacation early, unconsciously expecting approval from Gwynne. But she wasn't there. It dawned on him that he hadn't seen her all day. The month had passed. Gwynne would be back in the workshop making the tiles now.

Paul waited, at first more aware of her absence than he'd been aware of her presence. He remembered the smile and imagined what it would take to make it appear on her face -- and that is what he did with his clients and his employees. He'd look up, but there was no smile, or even that cold gaze that made him wither inside, so after a while he didn't look for it. The longing faded. The struggle and need crept beyond conscious thought. The comfortable feelings of power and control settled back in.

He had, in fact, completely forgotten it until Lawrence dropped in to discuss business one day. The rest of the day Paul couldn't stop thinking about Gwynne and her stare. It had been four months now. He determined to go see what was taking so long.

On the way, Paul realized that he wasn't worried about the floor being put in at the agency, but rather that Gwynne wasn't there anymore. The more he thought about it the more he realized that the floor was nothing to him, the girl was everything. He remembered the curves of her neck, and the way her hair was never quite in control.

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