Already this first day, they almost made me tired with their chatting and giggling, all four of them. Not that they didn't do their job, but it was just too much girl's talk, if you know what I mean, too much giggling and too many cigarettes. All four of them... and my office - and here comes the visual difference between my "lower" department and the other suit boys' "finer": I was the only department manager not having a separate office of my own. Well, what I mean is; I had a room with a nice desk and so on, but there was no door to close between the office and the next room - and the next room was occupied by one of the younger subordinates of mine and one of the older ones. I could see every move at least one of them made all the time.
I finished my first day by going through my subordinates'
personal files to learn about their background, formal
skills, education and so on. No university studies,
but the older ones seemed to have quite much experience from similar
sorts of administration. Not a complicated job, I thought,
it was basically a question of being able to doing more than
one thing at a time and keeping things in a good order.
Anyway, I was surprised when I found a fifth employee with a
foreign name, Manuela Ramirez. Spanish? Latin American?
Something like that I guessed. I went over to the two
girls in the other office, who were chatting about whether
French lipsticks were better than Italian at the same time
as they were looking for a purchase order from Xerox that
seemed to had vanished in the air.
- Do anyone of you know who this Mrs Ramirez is?
- Manuela Ramirez, yes, Mary (the older one of them) said.
- LIZA, she shouted towards the next officee where the two other
assistants had their places. Liza, who was one of the two
younger, appeared in the door with a Marlboro Light in her hand.
- Liza, when will Manuela Ramirez start worrking here, you said?
- The day after tomorrow, Wednesday, I've hheard. She's just been
employed, Liza explained to me and dragged on her cigarette.
- Hmm, so where am I going to place her theen, I muttered to myself.
- Oh, your predecessor fixed that before hee left, Mary said.
- She's going to move in where I and Anne aare sitting today,
we're moving to the empty room next to the lunch room.
- Ah, splendid, I said and went back to my room to study Ramirez'
papers.
Spanish-born, 51 years. That's almost ten years older than the oldest of the first four, I noticed. No formal education, but a long history of miscellanous jobs. No family. Plus a documented, good knowledge on the computer software we're using. I guess that's why they hired her, despite her relatively high age. The other four didn't manage so well with the computers, my predecessor had told me...
Manuela Ramirez turned out to be a fairly slim, dark woman of middle length with thick, slightly curly hair down to her shoulders, dark brown eyes (almost black), red big lips and ... the most remarkable hawk nose I've ever seen. The first time I saw her, on the Wednesday morning when she arrived and I asked her to sit down in my office room, my first thought was something like "her face is basically just one big nose". Her nose went directly out from her face between her eyes, then the nose bridge was bent in two places so that the final part below the second bend was leading downwards, until it reached the nose tip so to speak. The whole nose wasn't very wide but it wasn't thin either. Compared to her actually quite beautifully curved and not very big body, her nose looked almost enormous, especially when seen from the side - its sides didn't just look, they *were* ... big, simply, and I've never seen so long nostrils on a woman before. Suddenly, I woke up from my thoughts and hoped she hadn't noticed that I had been staring at her.
Directly after shaking hands, she quickly cupped her left hand over her mouth and coughed with two hacks, both of them producing a really wet and deep rattling sound. Now I noticed that she was smelling like a cigarette factory. I was already used to the smoke from my four smoking female subordinates, but this was something else. During our short meeting, where I described my expectations on her and told about some practical things, I noticed she often coughed the same way. Or rather, she had a few variations. One was like I just described, she suddenly cupped her left hand over her mouth and coughed with usually two, a sometimes one hack. She could also inhale after the first one or two hacks to cough another one or two. One or two times, she made more than two hacks. Sometimes, she began a coughing by inhaling with her cupped hand over her mouth rather than all of a sudden cupping the hand to cough without any deeper, "preparing" inhale. One thing that all her coughings had in common was that deep, tight, rattling sound. She also got them very often - at least once per minute. I wasn't sure if it was a smoker's cough or if she had had a cold or something, but it was something I liked with the sound. It was so... so warm, I thought. Maybe it was because there was something I liked with the woman. She was 20 years older than me, probably a heavy smoker while I didn't smoke, she was one of these admin people while I was a manager with a master's degree in business administration; everything was so different. Still, there was something I couldn't define that I liked with her. For the second or maybe third time, I noticed that she was quite beautiful and a bit exotic.
We finished the meeting in no more than five minutes.
- May I smoke in my office?, she asked and I noticed
how dark and raspy her voice was, probably because of her cigarettes.
- Oh yes, of course, I replied, hoping that my little... secret
wasn't too obvious. You see, sometimes I can't take my eyes of
a smoking woman. I've had it for as long as I can remember, and
I don't what it is. It doesn't disturb me or so, I'm just afraid
that I'm staring too much at smoking women and girls, so that
I'll just look stupid or something.
Anyway, back to Mrs Ramirez. Or was it Miss? I felt like asking, but said "come on, don't be ridiculous. Let's not get personal, it's a 51 year old administrator, not a 22 year old tall blonde studying laws at the university" to myself. Manuela had gone into her office - she was now alone occupying that room next to mine, and her chair was where I could see it from my desk. She immediately lit a cigarette - a Marlboro red I think - dragged for a *long* time, immediately inhaled, kept the smoke also for a *long* time before doing a mixed exhale. I went into my work and she did too, but I noticed that she kept coughing like I described. Her left hand was over her mouth at least once per minute - all the time. And, one more thing - she lit a new cigarette within a minute after finishing the previous one.
I understood that she knew the two older of the four other that worked at my department, Mary and Susan, very well. I guessed they had been working together before somewhere else. I couldn't help glancing at Manuela when she was standing right beside her chair, talking to Sue who probably stood beside the door to the corridor. Manuela smoked like a chimney and sometimes nose exhaled through her almost extreme nose. Her large, long nostrils seemed to be made for transporting cigarette smoke out from her black lungs. She kept her habit of coughing every now and then, and I was getting more and more sure it was a pure smoker's cough. What a woman - chain smoker and an unusually frequent smoker's cough together with a nose that probably had got her lots of nicknames in school. The Cherokee? The Totem Pole? The Eagle? Hawkface? No, I was sure I had never seen a face like that, and not often such a well-formed body at her age by the way. I looked at her slim, attractive body and watched her fill those heavy, black lungs inside that slim chest with smoke, exhale it out after a while, and then that beautiful chest needed to cough again. And what a sound... The poor, thin, dark-skinned, beautiful, sexy chest must be filled with mucus that her body couldn't get rid of because of her heavy smoking.
Suddenly, Manuela Ramirez noticed I was staring at her and I made a quick, silly smile and started to tap on my computer keyboard. "Sexy"? I had just called her "sexy" in my day-dreaming. I've never been thinking that way of anyone at that age before. Never. And never of any woman with a face like that. Why would they call her nicknames at school, I thought to myself. She's beautiful really, she's special, unique, she's sex... That word again. I heard her cough again, she had left her room with Susan to get some quick introduction to the computers so I couldn't see her now. I tried to calm down and realized that I felt excited, more than I'd ever felt before I thought, by thinking of Mrs Ramirez. Or was it Miss?
After two weeks, I was sure I knew every detail about her way of smoking and about her cough. The only times she didn't just cup her left hand over her mouth (except for some rare occations when she coughed just a little without any hand at all) was when she was standing, talking to someone. Then, she could sometimes put her cigarette in the ash tray when she felt the urge to cough (if it didn't happen between two cigarettes) and cup both her hands up over her lips. I wanted so much to see her cup her hands up over that exciting nose, but it wasn't until a day in the third week that I got the opportunity to see it. Unfortunately, she probably felt I was watching, so she looked in my direction afterwards and our eyes met for a second. I felt afraid that she would think I was staring at her just because of her nose, but there was nothing I could say, I guessed. I just pretended like I was totally uninterested in her.
I got more and more... almost obsessed by her. One Friday afternoon, I went into the lunch room to fill my coffee cup together with some of the other department managers. Lots of people were sitting in there for a break, chatting about the upcoming weekend and so. Manuela was sitting there too, smoking, drinking coffe and chatting together with Sue, Anne and the others. I was standing so I could watch her between one of my colleagues and the coffee machine when he was filling his cup. Her deep, chronical smoker's cough was there as usual. She looked so beautiful every time she put that hand over her mouth and coughed with that deep, dark, wet and tight sound. I could hear her voice so clearly through all the other chatting going on, because it was so much darker than any other voice in the room. I wondered if the other girls ever commented on her cough. Or her chain smoking. Or ... no, not her nose of course, that'd be too personal.
Shortly after their coffee break, I was on my way back to my room when Manuela coughed as usual. This time, though, she got a short but quick sequence of deep hacks after one of her usual coughings and she inhaled a bit deeper than usual and coughed a bit harder than usual in her left hand. I knew it was just a bit deeper and harder because I had by this time become an expert on Manuela Ramirez' cough. If someone would wake me up in the middle of the night, I could describe every detail. She left her chair and left the room. For some reason, I got curious about why and went out to the corridor. I heard the door to the ladies' room shut and almost instincively went there. Manuela was in there, she was coughing heavily and I could hear that she was coughing up her smoky mucus. It was terrible to listen to, my heart started to beat harder and I wish I was in there with her, to give her some massage over her chest or something. Her coughings stopped and I silently left my place outside the door.
After she had come back to her room, I wanted so much
to talk to her. I hadn't had any real conversations with her
since she started. I went over to her place and she looked
up at me and smiled. Her beautiful eyes almost made me paralyzed.
I was about to just ask if she was looking forward to the weekend
or something, when a photograph at her desk caught my eyes.
It was a smiling woman, a bit older than me, with very short
hair of the same colour as Manuela's. Manuela noticed that I
was looking at the picture.
- Oh, it's Ana-Maria, my daughter.
- Oh, I see, I didn't... didn't knew you had a daughter.
(I interrupted myself, though unintentionally, when
Manuela coughed in her left, cupped hand)
- Oh yes, she's 33 now, I was quite young when I had her,
Manuela said. Her voice sounded a bit "thick" after her coughing
and she swallowed before continuing.
- And, I have a grand daughter too, Manuela said, and pointed
at another photo which I for some reason hadn't noticed. Christa
is 13 now.
Ana-Maria seemed to have almost exactly the same sort of nose,
and I wondered why she was having such a short hair - it would
just make her nose look even larger. Christa looked very much
like her Mom and Grandma too. I couldn't help wondering inside
myself whether Ana-Maria was a chain smoker too.
Just as I left, Manuela had to cough again and surprised
me by suddenly cupping both hands up over her mouth and nose.
The whole weekend, I dreamt about her finger tips touching
that nose while her hands received her smoky cough and
her smoky lungs did their best to help her body to get rid of
the most smoky mucus any female chest had ever produced.
I have to explain one detail, to start with. Me and my five subordinates, we don't work close together. They're more or less doing their business and I'm doing mine. They're employed to do the (to me) boring admin stuff and I'm to coordinate it towards the rest of the company. I've decided to run a meeting every three weeks with these five women, well "girls" then for two of them, but apart from those we say hello in the mornings and goodbye or similar in the evenings. On rare occations, I need to ask someone about something, or someone needs to ask me, but it doesn't happen more than three-four times per week in average. I have lunch and coffee breaks with my department manager colleagues. So, this was the first time I was going to have any real co-work with any of them. And, it was with Manuela Ramirez. This thought came across my head during the breakfast on the Tuesday morning and suddenly I noticed that my heart was beating harder when thinking about it. Those beats were not the only thing getting harder, I noticed too and suddenly I also remembered that I had been dreaming about her in the night. In the dream, we were trying to work together in front of my computer and she insisted on sitting on my knee, because of a bug in the software that required it. She also said she HAD to smoke all the time while tapping on the keyboard so she needed me to put the cigarette between her lips when she wanted a drag. To my disappointment, and as it sometimes happens in your dreams, suddenly that cigarette was a pencil that she needed to suck on all the time. "Why not a cigarette", I asked her in the dream, and she replied "Because pencils remove my cough". I looked up at her, sad, well almost heartbroken, and suddenly it was Pam, my ex-girlfriend who sat there.
As if my dream about Manuela and all the thinking of her during the weekend, wasn't enough Manuela was working with some paper-based job most of the Tuesday. Usually, she used to sit so I could watch her from behind, with her back towards me so I saw her face every now and then, when she moved or so. But today, I could see her from the side almost all the time. It made the view of her back, chest and her "curves" in general a bit more hard to see but instead I could see her face all the time. She lit cigarette after cigarette as usual, made mouth exhales, nose exhales and mixed exhales. Her left hand was there over her mouth time after time when she coughed. I realized that she probably never gave her cough one single thought, it was a reflex that she was used to. I wondered when it had started?
Because of a meeting I had to go to, I couldn't start with the
computer until six o'clock, and everyone else had left. It was just me
and Manuela Ramirez there. As soon as I came back from the meeting,
Manuela looked up at me.
- Ready for some computing, Mr Simmons, she asked, smiling friendly.
It felt like I was going to drown in those dark brown eyes.
She asked if I preferred to use my computer or hers, and without having
to think I said hers. I hoped she would go on smoking if she was sitting
in her own office, with her own ash tray and everything.
I sat down on a chair to the left of her while she logged on to the system and
finished a cigarette in the over-full ash tray. I was so afraid she wouldn't
keep smoking while I was there, so I was almost going to tell her that it was OK
if she wanted another, but her crave for another cigarette was faster than
my thinking...
- Do you mind if I smoke?, her raspy voice said and suddenly I could
feel her smoky breathe almost flowing over me. Her clothes and her hair
smelled like a cloud of smoke, too.
- Not at all, Manuela, not at all I said and realized I had called her
"Manuela", not "Mrs Ramirez".
I tried to pretend like I didn't notice her surprised look.
She asked me what sort of information we should start with before
she started navigating around the computer system's menus. Often, she
brought a cigarette to her lips, inhaled deeply and turned her head
to blow out a cloud of smoke about four-five seconds later (I was counting).
I knew she tried to avoid blowing out the smoke too close to me, but I found
it quite funny that she didn't care about her second and third exhales -
often, that almost gigantic hawk nose sent out a second, but a bit smaller
cloud if she didn't talk it out, and a third one similarly. Often, her left hand
left the keyboard, got cupped over her mouth to catch her cough. Oh, that large
nose side was so close to me and I started to fantasize about touching it with a
finger tip. That left palm over her mouth was also so close to me, her body
was so close so my fantasies soon were including putting an arm around her
to feel her body shake when she coughed, and to let her smoky lungs cough
in my own palm. After around five minutes, I couldn't keep my mouth shut.
I laughed a little and asked her;
- You're really a smoker, aren't you?
She looked at me and gave me that warm smile again.
- I know, I know (she giggled a little which produced a deep, rattling
sound from inside her chest and she turned her head and coughed twice
with the back of her right hand over her mouth) - I know, I smoke like a
chimney. I'm terrible...
- Not at all, Man... Mrs Ramirez, I said and pattered her just a little
on her shoulder. - But your cough doesn't sound...
Doesn't sound too good, might have been the obvious thing to say,
but some other insticts took over my brain and stopped me from saying that.
- I know that too, she smiled with a face expression of pretending to be
a very, very bad girl.
- I guess you're used to your cough, I said quickly.
- Yes, precisely, I don't even bother anymore, she laughed with deep
rattlings, inhaled deeply, turned her head away and coughed with two hacks
which were much louder than usual. She then inhaled again and I could here
a new rattling sound from that slim, well-formed chest before she coughed
with two more loud hacks. Again, she had used the back of her right hand
to cover her mouth.
- Look, it's ready now, she said looking at the computer screen.
We were going over to the second and final part of the data I needed when
the computer seemed to stop working.
- What happened, I asked.
- I think there's something with the communication over the network,
Manuela guessed. - I think we should see if your machine works better,
it will probably be quicker than waiting here to see if my communication
starts to work again by itself.
We got up from our chairs, and Manuela was on her way to my machine
when I got an idea. She had just finished a cigarette when this happened.
I took the ash tray, her pack of cigarettes and her lighter and put it
beside her on my desk before sitting down to the left of her, like before.
- Oh, thank you Mr Simmons, but I COULD be without them, and I don't
want to smoke in your office.
- If you want a cigarette, light one up - that's an order, I said,
looking into her eyes. She started to smile and we laughed. Her laughter
made her cough of course, but it didn't prevent her from lighting up
after her last hack had forced her smoky breath out over her left hand's
palm.
My computer's communication did work and we finished the job, accompanied
by clouds of smoke and Manuela's coughings. I thanked her and asked if I could
drive her home. We lived in different parts of town, and Manuela declined
politely. Just as she had got up from the chair, she got a longer coughing fit
than usual. She hacked deeper and deeper and finally she bent her body
slightly forwards, cupping both her hands over her mouth with her fingers over
her lips. She coughed with deep, dark rattlings for over 20 seconds.
I was about to just patter her on her back, like a joke, but my hands
seemed to be almost out of control. The pattering became a long, soft
caress and she looked up at me surprised. I just had to feel her smoky
breathe, and put an arm around her, pulled her close to me and we kissed.
I say "we kissed", because that's what happended. If I'd said "I kissed her",
it would have been me only who took an active part in it, but she surely
responded immediately.
- I've seen your glances, Mr Simmons, Manuela whispered, or rather
wheezed. "Tim", "it's Tim, please, Manuela", I whispered to her and we
kissed again. "My place or yours", I continued.
- Maybe you could drive me home, after all, Manuela whispered.