Daily Themes

They are staring into their tupperware bowls. I don't have tupperware, but aluminum foil, and I'm looking at it and admiring the fact that it is both metal and flexible. Out the window, a flock of gray geese swoop down in sync, as if tethered together to a string in the sky. They land on the lake. "I thought the geese go South in the winter," I say.

Kris, a skinny British woman who talks often of tea time and her love of overcast weather, says, "Not all of them. And they're just an atrocious nuisance in the winter."

I ask her to elaborate, and she explains that their droppings harden and then melt with a brief thaw just like the snow. There's doo doo slush everywhere, all over the grass and the walkways.

Everyone but Lillian is looking out the window now. Lillian is my close colleague, and I like her. She's seventy-one, and I wonder if she's in the early stages of senile dementia. She tends to enter long periods of impenetrable silence, during which times she stares blankly at the wall. Today she's sitting across from me, which means I'm constantly wondering if she's staring at me. Sometimes I think, "Who knows?" Maybe she still has her full mind and just likes to brood on facts.

"Oh, look at those colors," Kathy says. Kathy is the clinic nurse. She's skinny, but not British, and is kind of kind and a super worker. She's 42, married, with three teenage boys who are active in sports. Every weeknight it seems she's off to some Detroit suburb to watch high schoolers run hard/jump on top of each other/bounce balls/fight.

Someone mentions how brilliant the colors must be up North. Kris promptly shuts this idea down, saying how it seems silly to drive six hours, glance at trees, then turn around and come back. The way she puts it, I tend to agree.

On the table is a box of donuts from Meijer that Kathy brought in to celebrate Gillian's recent engagement. Thinking that a Meijer donut couldn't be good, I take a bite of a glazed and am pleased by the familiar fatty sweetness. It leaves no film in the mouth. I eat the whole thing.

Gillian is a tech. She's a little bit husky and has a round face and pinchable cheeks. She blushes easily. She's been blushing all day today. We all take turns gazing at her ring, which sparkles enough that it makes my eyes hurt. Pat, a secretary, says, while looking directly at me, "See, you have to make sure that it sparkles." Pat is from Florida but has a New Jersey accent. For some reason, I'm not irritated by her comment. I laugh.

Pat starts talking about the Monday night lineup on NBC. She names all the shows. The only one I remember now is "King of Queens." Pat loves them. "I like to laugh on Mondays," she says. (cf Fellini, "There is nothing sadder than laughter...")

Suddenly, Kathy starts talking about horror movies. She's constantly filled with enormous energy and rattles through a series of scary films her sons like. "They loved 'The Ring Two,' she says. They thought it was scarier than 'The Ring One.'" And on she goes. Nightmare on Elm, Halloween, the entire Stephen King oeuvre, we get the entire list, and everyone except Lillian, who still is gazing at the wall, affirms their scariness. And then finally Lillian speaks up, "Those kinds of films never scare me. I have a way of detaching myself."

It's the only thing she's said all of lunch. A long silence follows, during which Kathy stares at her huge bottle of ranch dressing. I look at it too. I wonder if the bottle is actually white with black specks in it or if it's transparent and it's the dressing that gives it that color. I try to figure out what Kathy is looking at, and decide it's the label, which has "99% fat free" written on it as well as a cartoon depiction of rolling hills surrounded by fall trees. Realizing that that's the exact scene outside the window, I avert my gaze that way. And then Kathy joins my line of vision. Lillian is back to examining the wall.

I guess it's all a matter of vantage. I think these people are becoming my friends.