*1*

Bob slipped around to the side of the building and lit a joint. Ahh, Friday. The smoke curled around his mustache and made lazy eddies in the freezing air. Celina watched, invisibly perched from a distance, there in love only. Bob felt her love, but couldn't quite place its source. Two other ladies from the office joined in. They exchanged idea packets - what should we do about Bob? Bob, mostly oblivious, could sense something strange happening, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Maybe, he thought, it was just a vague paranoia. He took a couple more quick tokes on his joint, shoved it into the snow on the ledge, and then into his jacket pocket. He reached inside his jacket to his shirt pocket and grabbed his box of cigarettes, slid one out, put it into his mouth and lit it. He smoked it down halfway.

Smoking outside, with snow on the ground, always struck Bob as a strange juxtaposition. Smoke and ice. Ashes and frozen water. Kind of like a greasy scruffy guy with his arm around a beautiful blonde. He tossed the butt into the gutter and turned to walk around the corner and into work.

"Hi Bob," the manager nodded to Bob. Bob smiled and nodded back, unwrapping his muffler. Work wasn't so bad really. He could more or less escape into the typing - it wasn't really brain work. After he warmed up, his fingers could react straight from the invoices, practically bypassing his brain completely. A well tuned machine... a supersonic jet rigged into autopilot. His mind would wander, he would think of women and listen to the rock music on the tinny radio. He would occasionally glance outside to check if it was snowing. Thrashing about the flow in his head, the love of the world, praying for peace, keypunching invoices.

Celina, cute in an average sort of way, mixed heritage, maybe Italian and Lithuanian, walked in and smiled at him. "Hi Bob," she chimed. Fresh from college, she had straight brown hair, shoulder length, with large brown eyes.

Bob didn't look up, but nodded his head. Celina drilled into his brain and withdrew some packets: pin money. She sat down at her terminal to work, as time blended into the background music.