UNFINISHED/In progress
Short story fka "First Contact"
DRAFT 1 - Working title #2:

Interruptus

"How long does Orientation last?" I ask, even as my head swivels to survey my surroundings yet again, as if in the seconds since my last check something significant will have appeared. (Or disappeared.)

This time I notice that I haven't detected a light fixture in the room. I scan the ceiling. Nope, no lighting panels there, either. The large room is perfectly lit, with a pleasant suffused white light. There is something shiny about this light, though. I analyze its effects on objects and skin. It's as if the sensation of .shininess is everywhere, while nothing in the room actually reflects light back to the eye the way patent leather shoes do.

For some reason, patent leather is my personal Definitive in defining "shine".

I wonder why I am fixating on the lighting just now, but that issue queues somewhere in my mind along with the other several million questions I have waiting. He is answering me.

"Your orientation continues until you are finished."

I realize that no time passed between my question and his answer, all those thoughts had processed instantly. I jerk myself to his answer, briefly forgetting what I'd asked.

My mouth opens with another question when he adds, "A lot more quickly if you would give your full attention to it." There is an inaudible but tangible sniff at the end of that sentence.

Ignoring this, I continue as if he hadn't spoken again, "But what would be a good ballpark estimate? I mean... given your experience at this?" I consciously rivet my eyes to his, embarassed at my by-now visible obsession with environment and appearances.

"I have no experience at this."

I secretly gaze at his head as he says this with a truly wonderful smile that impossibly bridges Mona Lisa and Jack Nicholson. His scalp is completely bald, the skull a sculptor's dream ­­perfectly round on top with an even slope at the crown-- no lumps, no indentations. He cannot be old enough for total baldness, I assess, He must shave his head every morning. My mind catalogs this under strange vanity .even as it occurs to me that there are many reasons why someone could find hair a simple annoyance. What I say next covers for these thoughts.

"What? You mean I'm your guinea pig, enrolled in a course with no fixed term?" I don't wait for a reply, reacting finally to his earlier barb, "How long was your Orientation?"

I am shocked by the tone I hear in my own voice, and I feel myself blush and drop my eyes in submission to his unspoken authority. Even so, I am thinking, How come I don't rate a proven instructor?.

He answers what I didn't ask, first, "There is no such thing as a 'proven instructor' here." He hasn't moved from my face yet. Has he blinked at all? .He is right --I haven't been paying attention, allowing emotion to interfere with my half of the conversation.

I look up to find warmth and compassion piercing me from clear brilliantly blue eyes, and the incongruous full grin of a benevolent pirate. His face is transformed by this expression, and he is suddenly the most beautiful, most charming man I have ever seen. I am struck speechless by the intensity of my reaction and the implications. Immediately I am overly conscious that I am female, and I find that all the questions relentlessly circulating through my mind are for the moment abruptly halted.

For the first time since we met, he now has my full attention if, in a sense, against my will. I am at the same time contrite, rapt, alert, entranced, and instantly in love. All of those things. No wonder I cannot utter a word.

We stand there this way for a moment, me locked in place by those eyes --and that smile-- .him, allowing silence to act as emphasis to what he has just said. He wants me focused, and he's got me focused now.

"Why don't we sit down," he says in the sexiest velvet voice that could ever possibly escape from male lips, "and have a bite to eat? Let's get to know each other --There's no reason we must plunge into Orientation without relaxing first."

When I say nothing, frozen as I am in his gaze, he pulls out the chair nearest to where I stand, and seats himself in the one across from it. This requires, of course, that he move his eyes away from mine, and I am freed at last.

Quickly, I fall into the chair. He opens a menu that was lying on the table between us. I look down to see its twin right in front of me. These were not here before! I swear to myself, This table was empty! .I pick up my menu and notice also a napkin holder, place settings, and condiments in the center of the table. Still I cannot speak.

Just as I am opening the menu I realize I already know its contents. All of them. Bewildered by this, I look up to see a waiter standing at his right. He orders something. I do not hear what he says because of the swirling roar that now fills my head with new questions I cannot ask. I am still in shock from before, a mute. The waiter is smiling at me now, expectantly.

"I'll have the salmon," I croak, my voice unfamiliar after prolonged disuse. My mother used to say that my speech center has to be hot-wired into the right side of my brain, that nobody on earth could shut me up once I begin to process new ideas. For me to be silent these few minutes in the face of all this mystery has to be my all-time record. Mama would be flabbergasted.

"And a coke," I add, "No ice." As the waiter goes off to get our food, I try to begin normal conversation.

"I really shouldn't have ordered an endangered species," I chirp, "but it's been so long and I just love salmon."

"Nothing is endangered," he replies with a soft laugh I haven't heard before. It suits his morph from severe --almost grim-- older teacher into objet d'arte and subject of my new infatuation. I like his laugh, it makes me laugh too.

"Before you ask me about what I just said," he continues, apparently reading my mind, "Why don't you let me ask the questions for a few minutes?" Another rakish grin splits his face, and I am helpless to do anything but obey.

"Sure," I somehow mumble. A real understatement, considering. My irrepressable brain begins an automatic list of what he might want to ask me beginning with, surely, Why did you want to enroll here? .But just as I realize I do not know the answer to that fundamental question, start to search for a reason, he stuns me with this one instead:

"Where are you?"

What kind of question is that? .I react but don't say.

Our food is arriving, and with it comes it my understanding of his question.

I have no idea where I am!

[End of Part I. To be continued...]