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His eyes are desperate crimson saucers, streaked from looking at the computer for far too long. He knows he has it much better than most, but can’t bring himself to recognize that for too long. He only writes when he is troubled and slightly irritated. His inspirations come only when he has a grudge to bear.

His brown suede coat is still streaked with the large dollop droplets of rain from last night. He wonders if the coat is ruined and his mind jumps into panic mode when he thinks about attempting to buy a new coat.

A whole Saturday, in January or perhaps February, wasted.

Wait, he tells himself, let’s not be too hasty. Sure he can’t wear the coat to black-tie functions anymore-not that he ever could, mind you-but he can still wear it out and about. It’s vintage and hip and has cred. Perhaps if he wraps himself in a coat embodying these adjectives, onlookers will simply identify the descriptors and him as one and the same. Yes, hopefully that’s it.

At least he has his looks.

He wheels from the coat to the computer screen once again. He traces the edges of her face with the cursor. He highlights the picture. Then clicks aimlessly around it. He sits at his computer and pines and fantasizes after a picture of someone he knew yesterday and thinks about how there is nowhere else in the world he’d like to be, sitting at his desk clicking at her photo and daydreaming.

It’s the easiest thing for him to do, and feels the safest and the most comforting. It’s like gently easing down on the edge of the bed, putting his feet up, and falling back asleep after he’s already gotten up, taken a shower, shaved, tied his tie, and bundled up for the winter cold.

He makes a note to write this down later in his blog. It seems like a terribly important, slow moment. Full of gravitas, yes. He’s stopped time by momentarily losing track of it.

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The dark-skinned chin jut out and the thin lips press together with the purity and the swagger of upper middle class youthful luster. The pose is simple and entirely for the camera. He wonders what she is thinking at the time the photo is snapped. Is she thinking about how she’ll look when the picture appears online? Is she perhaps thinking about making a different face? It is a lovely face, but a little stilted. There is poise and tenderness and regret. Yes, she is thinking of making a different face to hide that gnawing regret.

A simple wide-eyed pose, ears pinned back, teeth bared, eye whites gleaming off the fluorescent lights. That’d do the trick. Everyone looks the same when they make that face.

And yet, she can’t make these calculations fast enough and is left with a slightly pensive pose. Vulnerable but barbed with bitterness in her inability to make an unreadable, bulletproof face for the camera.

Indeed, later she’ll scold herself for not only realizing the weaknesses but for allowing them to erupt so suddenly on the creases on her forehead and in the tilt of her eyebrows like rapidly blooming Morning Glories.

But no matter. She will take more pictures. She’ll take as many as she can before she becomes old. She’ll take as many as she can before the deeply rutted emotions hit clay and become a permanent fixture on her face and deep inside of her. Oceans of rainwater will not take them away. Each day sees them mindlessly plowed a little deeper. Eventually, she’ll be unable to dig herself out of the holes and the best efforts of time and nuture and positive attitudes and willingness to change will be useless and she’ll have to live with the track marks.

She donates a moment and questions if those trenches will remain arable in old age. The soil is gritty and uneven now, but still redeemable with a little work. When does it turn poisonous.?

She banishes the thought from her mind. She has her looks now.

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He swivels in his chair and looks out the dark windows. He thinks of his own neatly manicured facial furrows and wonders if they reveal too much in his own pictures. He then wonders if someone else is tracing his own face with their cursor.

The feeling that there is someone behind him, or just down the hall in the deserted office overwhelms him. He shuts off his music and peers around the corner, just to make sure. The tracked carpet, littered with leftover carcasses from the violence of the hole-puncher lays a neat trail from his office to the copy room. He will be asked tomorrow morning to pick it up.

Looking at his watch, he knows it’s time to go to the gym and perform the nightly group ritual of intimidation of other scantily clad members of his approximate age group. He feels particularly menacing at this moment. Women love that, while other guys hate it, which makes women love him even more. He traces her photo affectionately with this cursor once more but it is more out of habit rather than reluctance to go. He has already excused himself and is thinking about sizing up the rest of his competitors. His place at his table for one, with her picture, will be reserved for him when he returns to his laptop.