How We Met

“Please call him again.”

“Sir, he hasn’t answered yet and I doubt he will soon.”

Alex paced across the room in frustration. Isaiah, his secretary, sat by the computer monitor, the office phone still in his hand. 

“We need to finalize next week’s schedule and he is the only employee that hasn’t responded yet. Let me know if he’s free.” Alex grabbed a printout of a schedule from Isaiah’s desk. “He’s a very important member of our company; if he isn’t here, we cannot make efficient progress on our work.”

“I’m sure he’s just busy. He’ll answer when he gets back to his phone. He’s probably with a patient.” Isaiah was growing irritated with his boss, and began questioning why he was never so insistent with their other employees. Alex sighed and dropped into an office chair. 

“Alex?” Isaiah cautiously chose his words. “Why is Josh so much more special to you?”

Alex straightened up and stared at the wall. That was a serious question. Was he sure he wanted to tell Isaiah the honest truth? Isaiah feared he only made him angrier. Concluding he wouldn’t be able to get an answer, he began to turn back to the monitor. 

“He’s just interesting.” Alex answered.

“Interesting?”

“Yes. I enjoyed studying him before.” Alex seemed much more calm as he reminisced on the past. 

“You’ve studied him before?” 

“I have. Back in college.” Alex laughed to himself. “It feels like so long ago. It was back during my time as an undergraduate. I started off trying to get into medical school. But as you know, that didn’t quite work out. I’m still grateful for that, though. After all, that’s what connected me to Joshua.” 

“So you knew him from college? Small world, huh? It just so happened that he got a job at your company?” 

Alex paused and thought for a moment. “Yes… funny how things work out that way, don’t you think?” He stood up and began to pace the room. “Being a psychology major, you had to study real people and understand them. Ever since I met him, I had always wanted to understand Joshua. He’s always been that reserved, quiet person he is now. I know he tends to fade into the background, which is what he prefers, but something about him caught my eye. He’s so peculiar, I knew there was something deeper to him that I had to get at. So, I studied him. I figured that we already knew each other from medical classes. Often times, all people need to get that spark is a common interest. I mostly found him at the library. That mind of his always had to be absorbing information. He was in several high level classes, actually; he was quite talented. I’m not surprised that he’s such an excellent dentist now.

“I would meet with him as often as possible, but just as I felt like I was getting somewhere, he closed off entirely. He completely shut me and everybody else out. He refused to talk to me, and our meetings in the library became less and less. I had to take matters into my own hands. I assume this is what you’re asking, Isaiah. This is likely where it… started. Since he wouldn’t talk, I looked into it. He was a… a friend, after all, I needed to know what was wrong. So, I searched. 

“People put their whole lives on the internet nowadays. Do you notice that? It’s so easy to get all the information you want about anyone or anything— if they post it, that is. It’s incredibly hard to find information on inactive and nonexistent accounts. I scoured everywhere, and I found a few old posts here and there, but nothing too recent, and nothing that was regularly updated. I worked so hard to find new information that it felt so exhilarating to finally uncover something new. It renewed my hope every time that there was more to be found out there. To tell you the truth, the search became nearly addicting. I worked hard, but usually it was for a great reward.” Alex’s pacing had quickened in speed and he began making large gestures as he spoke. 

“It drove me crazy to know I had him right under my thumb those first few months and he just slipped through my fingers. I kept thinking about moments we had together where I could have asked him anything and he would have told me. You don’t know what I would have given to go back and just ask him all these questions that I could never find an answer to now. I would wish to go back and repair our bond where it broke, but to be honest I wouldn’t know how. It was so so frustrating to need more information and I just could not get to it. Sometimes I felt like everything I needed was behind some impenetrable glass wall. Whenever I saw him, I knew everything was right in front of me, and I just couldn’t reach it.

“Him and his brilliant mind graduated a year before me. The realization hit when I heard from a friend he was set to graduate in my junior year. I only had one year left with him before he moved off to bigger and better dreams, and I couldn’t possibly lose him forever. I had to have him back, closer to me, where I could get information from him. That year I searched wildly for records of him, activities he participated in, friends he was close to. I came up with the most clever plans, Isaiah. It was very much a balancing act between trying to squeeze everything I could out of our remaining time and convincing myself to drop it and move on as well. It felt like he left so fast. 

“For a while, I did feel like I had moved on. I felt like I’d finally accepted that Joshua was gone and out of my life. I was able to go days, even weeks, without him crossing my mind. I continued to pursue my own degree and that is when the earliest stages of this very company began developing. But that burning need to know more and more kept coming up and bugging me. I wanted to know the inner workings of his mind, the way he ticks, his thought processes. I wanted to know his personal life, what were the root causes that made him act the way he did? He was so cold to others, what was it like being closer to him, and not locked out of those walls he always put up? 

“After his friends graduated, I’d lost track of him for several years, but I never stopped searching. I found both his parents’ names, his hometown, his middle and high school, his childhood address, his phone number, his license plate number. You can discover so much if you just keep looking. Sometimes I wished I could implant a tracking device into him—it drove me crazy to never know where he was at all times.” Alex paused and scribbled something down on some paper before continuing. “But these are all surface details. It frustrates me to no end to not be able to learn the deeper, personal details about his life.”

Isaiah suddenly stopped him. “Was this all because of an unfinished psychology project?”

Alex stopped in place, stunned. It seemed as if he didn’t know what to think of that suggestion. 

“No. No, it isn’t.”

He began slowly pacing again, deep in thought. 

“It’s not about the psychology project anymore. No, that’s long gone, Isaiah. I just need to know more. It pains me to know I once had him just where I wanted him, but I lost him. But what’s important now is that he’s here, working for us. It’s so fortunate we had similar interests. It may be hard on him now, but he has thousands of dollars of student loans to pay off. All because somebody just had to go to medical school. I never thought of him as the type to stoop to vivisection to pay off debts. I thought being a dentist would pay well, but apparently not well enough. I love slicing him open as much as anyone would, I just worry he won’t stick around as long as I’d like. I know I have a limited time with him now as well. He’ll leave once he has enough money to keep him financially stable. But I have control over his salary, his hours, and by extension, his schedule. I can make him do whatever I need him to do, and now all that’s left is to simply get closer. That sort of ambition can’t be all bad, can it?”

Alex paused as he heard the phone ring. He turned to sit back in his chair and listen as Isaiah answered. He recognized the number on the caller ID. It was Josh. 

“He says he can come back next Monday. Anything else?”

Alex’s demeanor changed back into his usual friendly, customer-service-ready, CEO self. He smiled an emotionless smile at Isaiah. 

“Tell him I’d like to see him this Friday afternoon as well. I have another job for him.”