The Girl At 603 E. Washington, Suite 1000

There was a bet - I think between Sam Jackson and Bryan Wyatt, and perhaps any other Jimmy John's delivery driver wanting in - that the first person to get the phone number of the girl who works at 603 E. Washington, Suite 1000, would get like $20.00. I never quite understood the monetary aspect of it - the sheer number of endorphins that would fire off in one's brain upon punching the digits of said phone number into one's cell phone would be its own reward. I'm pretty sure the girl's name is Amanda, but it could just as easily be Katie or Jennifer or Jessica or Stephanie or any other name that someone could shout at a group of girls at the mall and elicit at least three or four head-turns. The girl has brown, shoulder-length hair and bone-structure that makes a solid case for universal beauty. She dresses earth-tone-professionally, but somewhat seductively. Her skirts typically fall to the shins, a side-slit showing off her thigh a little. She's impossibly nice, but in a way that is in no way contrived or unctuous. It's as though she had no external influence on how to conduct herself, but that she just knew, from the moment she emerged from her mother's vaginal canal (or from Zeus' forehead, were one to liken the girl to Athena, the immortal, indispensable beauty of Greek mythology-fame) that love and friendliness are the only vehicles for conduct. It's as though she's lived thousands of lifetimes and that love and friendliness was the gambit she consistently learned and would subsequently reinforce and delight others with from a trillion B.C. to 2009 and onward. She works in an office. I'm pretty sure I've heard her answer the phone and say, "Good afternoon, Indiana Business College, how can I help you?" before, so I'm assuming she works for Indiana Business College. She sometimes orders vegetarian subs with no cheese, so she may be a vegan, but I doubt she acts sanctimonious and irritating and preachy about it, unlike anarchist kids with dreadlocks and poorly-edited zines and hockey pucks in their ears and shitty dogs and breath that smells like boiled eggs and cigarettes, who crucify people for owning a television and not "waking up." She wouldn't even bring up the fact that she's vegan, unless it was for a practical concern, such as discussing dinner options with her waiter.
Anyway, she has won the hearts of just about every Jimmy John's delivery driver at the Meridian store. Whenever an order to 603 E. Washington, suite 1000 is called in, drivers will scurry around, negotiating a trade between one's $30.00 order for the other's $5.50 603 order.
"Oh, I need to stop and get gas, anyway," I may say to Bernie, in order to score his 603 order, just for a chance to squeeze in any sort of charm or footnote into the girl's psyche, hoping that we may run into each other when neither of us is in uniform, and that some form of intimacy will follow.
It's always annoying when the other drivers manage to talk with her and brag about it.
"I talked to [girl] for like ten minutes just now," Bryan may say, sauntering into Jimmy John's after a 603 delivery and hi-fiving the other drivers, who reciprocate out of courtesy, but whose hearts are being poked and jabbed, the rusty gears of jealousy cranking and churning cacophanously.
"Yeah, I talked to her for like fifteen minutes yesterday," I might respond, falling into the ugly world of Freudian one-upmanship, embellishing my claim with the knowledge that there is no tangible evidence to back it.
"Right on," Bryan will say. He'll nod and smirk in that knowing way that his conversation was fresher and newer than mine. I'll then envy Bryan for the rest of the afternoon. I'll leave on delivery and pass by an attractive girl and avert my eyes when her's and mine meet, thinking that even looking at another girl is somehow a form of cheating on the very idea that the Girl from 603 E. Washington, Suite 1000, and I could conceivably form an intimate union.
"See, at least I'm faithful," I'll say to nobody, rubbing the bridge of my nose.


The girl passed me on the way to the bathroom while I was sitting at the bar and binge drinking with Ryan and Josh at May's Tavern on Dorman Street the other night.
"Hey, what's up?" she asked.
"How's it going?" I asked back.
She was still in her work clothing, unless she always dresses like that. I didn't recognize her for the first 1.4 seconds or so of our brief interchange. She clicked on to the bathroom in her professional-looking hi-heels and I was left at the bar, hunched over my blackberry vodka and club soda and in a state of social paralysis. Ryan, a big, burly, well-read and possibly ethnic fairweather bar buddy of mine was talking about Detroit, or something, and I nodded and said "yeah" and "right on" and some other affirmations, but I wasn't following what he was saying - I was figuring out how to talk to the girl, how to come off as charming, and not as a clumsy and repulsive goat-legged fellow, blowing hideous notes into his flute. She eventually returned to her seat, but I didn't see her pass by, as I was busy nodding ingenuinely at Ryan and planning this insurmountable, juggernaut task of walking over to the girl's table and talking to her.
"Talk to her/that's right," sang Crowded House's Neil Finn in my head, "It could mean more than you think."
The men's room is close to the table where the girl was sitting. I walked in, shut the door, and splashed water in my face in the same way that Paul Giamatti's character does in the movie Sideways, when he's having intimacy issues and is calling himself a loser after that long, awkward scene when Virginia Madsen's character grabs his hands and indulges in her soliloquy about life or loneliness or whatever and he retracts it because of insecurity and the fucking critical demons who shrink out dicks with irritatingly enigmatic magic and jab their firey pitchforks perpetually into our lower backs whenever we're supposed to be confident. I thought about shaving my beard when I got home and leaving the mustache but decided that I would look like a used car salesman so I flushed the urinal to make it seem like I was peeing and left the bathroom and returned to my seat next to Ryan at the Bar. He was talking to Josh about something deep and intangible, so I turned toward the girl's table and she had her coat on and was about an inch away from some guy's face. They were talking, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. I mean, I was too far away from them to be able to hear them, anyway, but they were talking in that way that people talk when they are in love with one-another - you know what I'm talking about - when you can't necessarily discern any words, or even phonemes, but they are obviously talking about something that is immensely pleasing, because they punctuate each exchange with blue-skyed giggles and soft kisses on the mouth. And they were doing just that.
She passed me by after their darling little moment, heading towards the front door. I watched her, hoping for some eye-contact - as though the mere sight of me for the second time of the evening would erase any sort of memory she had of the guy. But no - she was looking down and fighting a smile. I don't know how many of you watch The Office, and I hate to drag this all down with pop culture, or whatever, but she looked exactly the way Pam did when Jim asked her out on a date at the end of season 3, which was a long and difficult season for Pam. In other words, uncontrollable, absolutely genuine happiness, like God pissed Kool-Aid into her mouth.
The guy she kissed was, to use a colloquialism that may not stand the test of time, a bro. He was probably like, 5'4" and wore a black sock hat and sort of baggy jeans. He looked like his name ought to be Chad, or Blake, or Bryce. He was playing pool, his boner inflating against the side of the pool table with each shot he took. He held his head high and laughed at his friend's jokes, even if they weren't funny. He probably listened to Nickelback...forget it - he reinforced every single negative stereotype that one attributes to a guy who has managed to succeed in some way - this being not only sharing an intimate moment with a remarkably beautiful young woman, but making her smile as a result of it, as though she actually looks forward to taking time out of her day to spend time with him, phone him, text him, and think about him. I want to take a picture of him, hang it up on my wall, and invite my friends over to throw darts at it; I want my roommate to draw him on a punching bag which I can then inflate and dropkick; I want to write an essay that serves the purpose of defining exactly what a bro is, so that I can relieve myself of narcissistic subjectivity and create awareness, through thorough research and citation, that this guy is not entitled to indulge in any sort of intimacy with the girl from 603 E. Washington, Suite 1000, and that she has been finagled into this courtship through oily rhetoric and shit-eating grins.

If I ever meet him though, I know exactly what will happen. I hate to quote Morrissey, but, "In my life/why do I smile/at people who I'd much rather/kick in the eye?"