"Maria?" "Are you alright?" "Do you need some time to yourself?"
She said she would get it together, and that she didn't expect to unload like that. Maria had traded in her coding skills to work personal at InterSpace. "Don't you remember me?" "I took all your classes." She asks as if I had ignored her at the airport.
And what about those tears? I look into hers sad eyes and realize that I'm feeling something I had tried to ignore and forgot decades ago. I could actually feel her body. I feel what she feels inside her own tiny beautiful body. Her curvy grace and physical sensuality. I'm more than distracted. I feel that embarrassment I used to feel when I still felt an attraction to someone. My head hurts and my ears starts to ring. It was looking through her eyes back at me, I have to pull back.
"Of course I remember you Maria." "What are we, I mean,... what are you feeling?" I'm truly baffled. This is that little fitness model that got men to jump through hoops for her and now I feel like I treat her badly.
"Didn't you know? I've always had a crush on you." And then she said, "It seemed like you just wanted me to go away" "When I first read your "ZENOPHILE" I new I wanted to do profiling and learn the Spiritual Technologies that ultimately made you famous." "I knew I might be one of those few readers that understood what you were saying." "I ultimately helped prove your Propositional Assertions to be correct." "Then when I got to participate in the trial Mutual Support Systems Workshop, I felt a kind of peace I never known before." "Being able to touch, to explore and experience my body and express that knowledge through touching and feeling the same sensitivity you shared with all of us was almost more than I could take." Maria looks at her hands as if what she wants to say is written in the lines in her palms. Then looking straight into my eyes she says, "You were always so pure, so inaccessible." "You never gave anybody a chance!" "I ended up thinking that you hated me and yet I studied everything I could get my hands on that would make me as talented as you." "I felt like there must be something horribly wrong with me."
"Maria, I'm going to ask you to cut yourself some slack here," "I have always tried to admit to having my own issues and I just wanted each reader to exercise healthy Diplomatic Immunity." "I'm old enough to be your father and fifteen years ago that meant all of my students, including you, were off limits."
"Forgive me," she said. "I know why you are here." "You're reading us so as you can help Gretchen sever business ties with the new board here at Oraca." "This place has turned into such a cash cow that the board is trying to blame anyone for the unplanned and unpredicted reactions of the new converts." "There seems to be something wrong with the Programs."
"Who else knows why I'm here?"
"All of us that came from InterSpace." "We are here as plants to check out the latest issue of the Confidence Game." "We're not even sure if Gretchen even knows why we're here yet." "No one even talks to each other around here, and it's starting to get to all of us.""Gunter was terrified something bad would end up happening to Gretchen, he staged this whole court case and everything." "We all think Gunter still has feelings for our new boss."
My Belgian fishing excursion was turning into a real bug hunt.
