All copyrights reserved by Jenny Hsing-I Liu 1998(c)
She squeezed out of her office building after ten whole hours of typing and answering the phone with an exhausted body. Dragging herself against the swarm of people heading to the subway station towards her shaggy little car parked half a mile away, she sighed deeply. Every day for five years now, she had been working as a secretary in a package company with an undersized salary. This became a routine for her, though she dreamed of something greater, something more exciting¡K
Since yesterday night, a new stream of strength flowed into her body. It seemed as though she was in love (at least she thought she was). Today, she worked with extra energy, doing everything in such a way that one would believe that she enjoyed her work. At five o'clock promptly, she packed up her stuff and left the office filled with confidence and walked with a special stride. She even smiled at the guard at the gate. All others in the office whispered and wondered.
As she stepped out of the air-conditioned building into the steaming city, she looked across the street and there she saw him. He stood there with a sparkle in his emerald eyes, and his perfectly shaped lips seem to be smiling at her. She even spotted him winking towards her direction. Pump¡Kpump¡Kpump¡K the butterflies were fluttering in her gentle heart. A crimson flush rushed to her not-so-bad looking face. With shaking hands, she brushed back her hair casually and pretended not to be looking. "How handsome he looks," she exclaims in her thoughts. She stood on the sidewalk silently, not wanting to go away; for fear that she will lose sight of him in his designer clothes. "Why does he always seem to be under the spotlights, shining so?" she wondered.
She felt an urge to cross the street and ask for his name, but she had just noticed him yesterday and surely he must be waiting for someone. As she peered at him through her thick, plain glasses one final time, she hurried on to get her car. No one, not even I, understood how she did not want to take her eyes off that gentleman on the other side of the street. He seemed so near, yet so far away¡K
A smile hung on her often absent-minded face. The documents she typed became filled with her heartless typing errors. Her boss scolded her for messing up his important phone calls. Strangely enough, she did not seem to care. She just waited for the five o'clock strike on the clock. He appeared at the same spot everyday, rain or shine, but always dressed in fashionable clothes. Everything detail of him was so perfect.
She was deeply in love with this man and he appeared constantly in her thoughts. One night, she walked out of her office building as usual in her new confident stride just in time to see workers circling around him. They took the clothes off him. He was naked, but yet good-looking. The workers picked him up roughly to take him to a repair factory. She was bewildered, shocked, and hurt. "No! You can't take him away from me! He's mine, he's mine!" she screamed and howled as she attempted to run across the broad street with giant automobile honking and brakes shrieking in her fragile high heels. "He's mine! He's mine!" She dashed halfway through the boulevard and a speeding truck on her lane slammed its brakes too late. Her slim body flew and her mouth kept repeating: "He's mine!" The workers put him into the van that was marked: "Model Repairs Inc." and drove away just as she hit the ground and ruby red blood spread from her gentle head¡K