35. "I'm in love...Do you know what the heck that means?"
The trace of blind jealousy that was crowned by my bashful smile and my unstoppable tears formed an instrumental ensemble for imparting openly to him, and beyond any doubt, what my shy love had been withholding. Such exuberant proclamation amounted to turning the light to an out-and-out green for him, allowing him to haunt my office for as many times as he wished and on various pretexts. First, it started with him increasing the number of his visits to two or three daily. Soon they rose to as many as five, some of which were meetings with other advisors, which he would designedly orchestrate so that they took place in my office. Or he would drop in more often than not for casual collegial chats, in which he would position himself in strategic angles that allowed him an ideal view of me. There was for me the unutterable joy of seeing him pop in for tasks he could simply achieve over the phone. But most wonderful of all were those visits that he would resourcefully fix up at those times