Climb the Ocean
By Ephemera and Byrne
The set up, by Byrne

Oliver Kurland had flown in, stopped at his apartment long enough to make sure it was still there and no one had broken in, sent out his laundry and headed right to the office.  He didn’t actually have to talk to Simpson about the Miami trip until the next day, but he was still trying to get his paperwork from London sorted out and filed.  Jetlag was to blame for many a misplaced CV, and he’d learned early in this job that letting the filing wait for a day or three was easier than trying to do everything at once.

In this case, however, the stack of CVs, information sheets, assorted notes and a few business cards had been sitting in his inbox for almost two weeks.  The Miami trip had been last minute, a switch with Michelle so Oliver could get out of going from a trade convention in Chicago straight to a recruiting seminar in Las Vegas.  Recruiting for three days in Miami was much more pleasant, even if it did mean he wound up doing paperwork just off the plane.

There weren’t many people in the office, which confused him a little until he realized it was past four on a Friday—most people fled for the weekend as soon as they could manage it.  He passed a few empty desks on the way to his office—really a glorified cubical, but at least it had a door—and waved to Janet as she headed out.  He figured he could get his desk cleaned inside an hour, hit the gym and then…well, there was always something good on TV on a Friday.  Or not.  Maybe he’d sleep.

He’d at least had the foresight, earned the hard way, to keep each person’s papers together and stack them in order of people he’d hired, people he was impressed with, people who were impressed by the company, and people who’d asked to be kept on file for a few months.

Filing the newly hired was easy—he’d passed the forms on to Janet as soon as he was back, and now he just filed his copies.  The rest was pretty easy too…colour code, file alphabetically, and voila.  Clean desk.  Except for the last CV.

Thomas Moorfield.  He hadn’t been hired, hadn’t really seemed interested; even a company as big and diverse as Koine Industries sometimes fell outside of someone’s chosen field.  But Oliver had kept his CV anyway, for the most pathetic of reasons.

The man was cute, and that’s all there was to it.  Oliver, who always followed the first rule of recruiting—don’t hit on the prospective employees—had found him charming and easy to talk to, and had kept his CV.

Oliver shook his head at himself as he looked at the paper.  Thomas lived in London, for pity’s sake, as in across the ocean, and no matter how well he memorized the details that wasn’t going to change.  Still though…the details were nice to think about.  He was a few inches taller than Oliver himself, probably about six foot two, brown hair about six shades lighter than his own.  The same haircut though—short and cheap.  Oliver had never been one for spending money on something as simple as hair, and he guessed Thomas—and would he use Tom?—probably went to the Student Union.  Glasses, little gold wire rimmed ones.  Only a few years younger than himself…twenty two to Oliver’s twenty six.  

Oliver sighed and moved to trash the CV.  He hadn’t listed anything like the GLB Society, but that didn’t mean anything.  Not many people made a point of being out on their CVs.  He’d listed climbing as one of his interests though, and that might be…

Oliver looked at the white board on the wall, almost without conscious thought.  He’d sketched in the next five months of trips, all of which could change at the drop of a hat or someone’s whim, but it looked like he had three trips to London in that time frame.  He switched on his computer and waited for it to boot up, already composing an e-mail.


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