Black was watching me again, which was a bit disconcerting, seeing as I'd told her off. I didn't want to do it again, she'd get pissy instead of just menacing. Still, she was getting on my nerves, and I was about to look back hard when she turned away and disappeared.
That was the most obnoxious thing about it, too. If she'd disappeared, just melted away with my hair in her eyes, that would at least have been poignant. I would have been deeply affected by the sentiment, and missed her greatly when she was gone, at least until I went on break.
But goddamn, to just give me one of those dull, frankly bored glares and then turn away and melt into the unknown, that's a real downer, a thick insult. It wasn't even a proper glare, if you know what I mean, it was like a glancing stare, apathetic and unsympathetic all at once and to an extreme, like we didn't have the slightest thing in common and I'm so hopeless she might as well just fade into oblivion for all the good she's getting out of this.
I couldn't possibly forgive her the moment, so I jumped up and patiently waited for something else to happen. I couldn't very well chase her into the infinite void, but she'd left her handbag, so she'd have to be back eventually. After five minutes I decided to walk over to her desk, just to check whether she had left her handbag or not, since I couldn't remember her taking it, or wasn't sure whether she had or not, and it wasn't obvious.
She did grab it, evidently, thoughtlessly, after turning away but before she disappeared, because it wasn't anywhere near her desk, not underneath certainly. I didn't expected it would be, of course, but I felt like checking regardless, since no woman with any sense would place a nice black-leather handbag, Gucci, where she could easily kick it with a dusty black pump! Or that day, red. It rankled. She hadn't bothered to say goodbye.
What she had neatly gone about taking every single thing out of her desk that was of any value. No pens, paperclips, loose change, photograph of her brother, bottle of makeup (either lipstick or eyeliner, I never could tell the difference), silver pendant she never wore, ruler I couldn't figure out why she had, pads of paper that she went through one a week, not even the cinnamon gum I gave her that she hadn't liked and had said as much, right when I was standing there, right in my face, a flat-out rejection of my gum.
And then she just morphed into nothingness without a smile. A smile. At least that would have been meaningful. Sheesh.