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The sticky note had been taped to the edge of Melody’s computer screen because the sticky had faded from the back. The edges were beginning to curl inwards and there were three folds in it that had faded. The words were written with a pink highlighter stolen from her neighbor’s cubicle because her neighbor was neurotic and always brought her own office supplies from home. Pink was pretty.
It was the only pretty thing in her cubicle. The walls were faded and stained, all of her pictures were of her friends making kissy-duck faces while drunk and the light was the kind that turned your skin green. The only other thing that could be considered remotely attractive was the smiley face she had made out of multicolored pushpins on the wall just above her computer screen. But that was lopsided and not one of the twelve pushpins was the same color as the others.
The words on the sticky note were from a quote. Somewhere, she had seen it on the Internet and though it was funny. So she wrote it down and stuck it where she could see it. It had been the start of a conversation with the cute guy four cubicles down that had led to coffee and tofu at the café downtown, but he had quit years ago. His number was still on her phone, but she hadn’t talked to him since. No one else noticed the note. She barely noticed it, except for when it blocked the “File” menu on Excel. But a little adjustment of her chair height and then it wasn’t even a problem.
The seat adjustment was just a little too short for her and so a spot right between her shoulders would twinge after a few hours. The twinge wouldn’t turn into an ache for about an hour more, but that hour was always the worst as the twinge progressed into the ache. The progression was worse than the ache itself and so the hour just before lunch break was always the worst time to talk to Melody. Lunch break would provide her with caffeine and calories, so the last few hours of the day weren’t so bad, but heaven help the person who tried to get more than a “yes” or “no” out of her before that.
Melody didn’t notice the appreciative wolf whistle from down the hallway this particular pre-lunch hour. She hadn’t had breakfast and the progression from twinge to ache was happening a bit faster than usual, exacerbated by the quiet gurgling of her stomach. Had she noticed, she would have rolled her eyes. The only person who could whistle down that particular hallway was the too-skinny, too-bleached department head who hadn’t been fired for sexual harassment yet because she was hyper-competant and knew how to make a killer PowerPoint presentation. Had Melody noticed the whistle, however, she would have been slightly more prepared for the sight that presented itself when it finally did.
It was preceded by a soft knock against the frame of her cubicle.
“Excuse me?”
She looked up, more because of the sheer politeness than the words themselves. No one in the office was that polite - if they even dared to approach her at this time, the worst possible hour.
He was gorgeous. Not Cabana beach-boy gorgeous or some sort of nancy pretty-boy gorgeous, but with blond hair that was almost ginger and a nose that was just a little crooked and eyes that were a brilliant brown. He had stubble that had been clumsily shaved and there was a fading bruise on his temple. And he was gorgeous.
“Hi,” he said, his broad shoulders tilted politely, “I’m looking for Melody Gainer.”
Melody just stared for a minute. Her stomach, growling menacingly, demanded that she send him away with a grumpy retort, but her brain was struggling for some sort of clever reply. The two nullified each other’s efforts and all that came out was: “I’m Melody Gainer.”
He answered almost immediately, but the way his eyes roamed over the office just before he spoke seemed to take forever. It was like he was searching for something. He was looking around the cubicle, taking in the lopsided smiley face, the duck-faces of the people she danced at cheap clubs with on the weekend, and the obsessively-neat piles of paperwork stacked in neat rows across her desk. She suddenly wanted him to look at her, to see her, not her workspace.
“I was hoping,” he was saying. His eyes came to rest on something and he smiled. His smile was even more crooked than his nose. “I was hoping I would find you.”
Out from behind the cubicle wall where he had been leaning, he presented a white garment box. It wasn’t wrapped and it was battered, as if it were being reused from something else, but he held it in a way that made it seem like it were made out of fine china. Or contained fine china. Or diamonds. He extended it to her.
“This is for you, should you choose to accept it.”
He smiled at her again when she looked confused. He was wearing a suit that was slightly too small for him. It strained around his upper arms and she could see his white socks above scuffed shoes. She had stretch and arch her back to take the box without standing up.
“Thank you,” she said. He nodded, making it look almost like a bow.
“If you have any questions,” he said in a voice that was hoarse, as if he had shouted too much recently, “please, don’t hesitate to call.”
His hands were broad and corded as he extended a business card. He made it seem like a flourish without any extra motions. Melody took the card, careful to keep their fingers from touching. The ache between her shoulders was in full swing. He was still smiling, his gaze drifting down to the box expectantly. She looked down too, laying a hand on top of the box. When she looked up again, he was gone, without even a “good-bye”. Melody said a bad word, arching her back again against the ache, and opened the box.
Inside was fabric, slick and certainly artificial, sequined in gaudy, twining patterns. It was silver and blue and white and as she pulled it out, it pulled itself into a leotard, tiny and puckered with elastic. Melody said another bad word.
“What the?”
A dozen vitriolic responses to whatever pervert would give something like this to a total stranger ran through her head as she angrily shoved the fabric back into the box and turned her attention to the card the man had given her. Oh, there would be questions all right, perhaps asked by an officer of the law.
The card was the normal size, made of normal cardstock, but it had a shine effect that glistened slickly as she held it under the fluorescents. It was printed in all-caps. On one side was an out-of-state phone number. On the other were two lines of text.
THE GREAT COLLINS AND HYPE
TRAPEZE EMPORIUM
Melody stared at it for a moment, then looked behind herself at the contents of her cubicle. She pulled the sticky note from her computer screen. It was covered with a fine layer of dust that came off on her fingertips. She stared at it for a moment as well.
QUIT WORK. BECOME A TRAPEZE ARTIST.
Spoiler
Yeah, I blame Sachi for all this. I open up my Feed a few hours ago and there is a line of all-caps screaming "QUIT WORK. BECOME A TRAPEZE ARTIST." I couldn't not write something.
