Marianne and Susan
This was being the most boring meeting in the last few months. But it was important, compulsory, interdepartmental...
Yesterday, about this time, I was playing table football with Marianne and her friends. That idiotic phrase from the movie Forrest Gump came to mind. *Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.*
The phone vibrated in my pocket. It was the third message in twenty minutes. But I was prevented from answering, the rules were clear. In fact, I shouldn't even have the phone in my pocket.
*I have to get out of here now,* I thought.
I touched Susan next to me, and I got up.
"I'm so sorry, but I really need to leave for five minutes," I said to the president of the meeting.
He looked at me surprised, but he said, "Certainly, there is no way to avoid physiological needs. Is that it? "
I went out quickly, straight to the bathroom. I went into a cubicle and took the phone out of my pocket.
It was Marianne, as I thought. Or should I say, as I wished?
"Hi, it's me Marianne."
"You surely remember."
"Can't you take messages?"
After all I had not been in another dimension yesterday. I immediately replied: "I'm on a meeting. Phones are forbidden. I'm gonna have to go. I'll text you later. Okay?"
"Sorry. I'll wait for your message. Eagerly."
I turned the phone off, flushed the toilet, got out of the cubicle. Outside, I washed my hands and face. I went back to the meeting room. The meeting resumed, and it was exactly my turn to speak.
My speech was so convincing that I got an increase - never seen before - of twenty percent in the annual appropriation for the math department.
Susan gave me a pinch... and a smile.
The math department was basically composed of me, as head, Susan, as assistant, and Mrs. Thompson, the secretary. The original facilities consisted of; 1) a large office with two desks, an ancient enormous cabinet, and a pair of metal archivers with drawers; 2) a meeting room with a large table in the middle, the larger walls completely covered by full bookcases, and one of the top walls partially occupied with a huge blackboard; and 3) a parlor between the hallway and the office, with a table and several metal archivers. The office and the meeting room had both large windows opening to an antique cloister, and the set was located in the oldest building of the university complex.
The department also had an office in the premises of the Computer Science department, a small office in the premises of the Statistics department, and a desk in the large room of printers and plotters, but all this located in the new buildings.
Susan and I went to celebrate with a strong drink: coffee.
We were returning to the office when she asked me abruptly: "What's her name?"
"What do you mean?" I answered avoiding the question.
"Oh, man! Please! You, who never pay attention to the phone, this morning peeped it eight times.
And then you go out in the middle of a meeting and turn back full of energy, with a bulge on the front of your pants."
*Eight times? Really? Damn it! Mathematical women count everything*, I thought ironically.
I kept quiet until we both got into the office. Only then I asked: "How long since we have had a department meeting?"
Susan made a big smile and replied, "two weeks."
"Today at five?" I asked.
"Great," she said widening the smile.
"Please make a list of suggestions where to apply the extension of the department money."
Susan pinched me again and laughed.
The bell of the old university clock hit five times. Five minutes later Mrs. Thompson's head showed up at the semi-open office door.
"Do the professors need anything else today?"
My assistant looked at me with an exaggerated interrogation look, and replied: "No, thank you very much, Mrs. Thompson. Have a good evening."
