I was still thinking about the movie the next morning. The woman’s face in deep despair, the oppressive mood. Hi, Anna, one of my colleagues greets me in front of the building with a cigarette between his fingers. I wave back.  I go through the main entrance and try to figure out what I’ll say to Cerasela. It was great, too feeble. In the elevator, it occurs to me to pretend I didn’t like the movie. By the time I sit down at my desk, I don’t like either of those ideas. I turn on my computer, it starts up slowly, the icons appear slowly on the screen. It bothers me more today than usual. I want to tell her that I saw the movie. I’m looking for her on the internal contact list, but she’s offline. It’s 9:07 and she hasn’t signed in yet, she must be late, the bus didn’t come. Then I remember that in Romania it’s 10:07, not 9:07. By now it’s 10:08. She didn’t mention that she was going on holiday. Perhaps she got sick, or there’s some problem with her son. Radu is often sick, last time he had a bellyache. He always has a bellyache when he doesn’t want to go to school. On those occasions, Cerasela works from home. She’s very conscientious, she changes her location on Chat to “Working from home” rather than “Business Park, Building A, Bucharest.” I think it’s more likely that she got sick, and if she doesn’t check in from home, she may even have a fever. Once she told me that she can’t tolerate fevers, she ends up in bed whenever her temperature is only a little bit elevated.  

I open Chat History, and, indeed, she didn’t mention anything. I scroll back, they went to the movies the day before yesterday, Radu spilled his popcorn by the cashier. He was given another box for free. It happened to me as well, I replied, and recounted how once, despite watching the lights at the edge of the stairs, I made a wrong step, and popcorn spilled everywhere. I drink the last gulp of my coffee and go to the kitchen. Ever since the coffee machine was removed, I’ve used instant. Some of my colleagues switched to the coffee downstairs, but it has a bitter aftertaste. I don’t know what causes it or what it reminds me of. I rinse my mug, fill it with water, and go back to my desk. 

Cerasela and I warmed to each other a couple of months ago when we worked together for a week on one of the international projects. The first thing I did each morning was to put a red flag on her work-related emails.  I replied to every one of them, one after the other, or forwarded the question. Cerasela is my Romanian contact, she handles the international side. We’d worked together before, but during that project, we chatted every day. It was a huge project involving several hundred HP machines. We needed to get price quotes from local business partners. We laughed a lot—how easy all this would be if I could talk directly to the third-party—but the rule is that we can only communicate within the company. Cerasela had to play the mailman between me and the business partner. I’m not allowed to use names, that’s another rule. Once I leave the building, I’m not allowed to name any of my clients. 

At the beginning we wrote the usual things to each other during work. How are you, I am fine, Have a lovely weekend, Same to you, things like that. Later we wrote to each other when we were tired or needed a coffee break, chatted about how well we’d slept the night before, the movies we saw, the books we read. It was she who recommended the movies Child’s Pose and Graduation. I went to see Graduation a couple of weeks ago. I liked it. I can’t imagine what a mother’s love is like, I wrote to Cerasela after. She replied that she couldn’t have imagined it either because it was not possible. I recommended On Body and Soul, the movie with deer in it. She liked it. She once saw a deer in the Cluj zoo when she was a child. Her family was still living in Cluj; they moved when she was fourteen. For a long time, she used to say that they were going home when she and her family visited her grandmother in Cluj. In the zoo the deer stood far away from the fence, but she would’ve liked to pat his back. She imagined that his hair would be silky, strong but silky.  

I sign into Facebook, enter her name in the search bar. I know it’s unnecessary, but I check it every now and then. She’s not on. She told me that there were two types of people in the world: those who were on Facebook and those who weren’t. It’s out of spite that she’s not on, because everyone else is. Even she laughed at this, but she didn’t want to register no matter how much I prodded her. I spread my shawl across my back, the air conditioner is blowing cold air on me.

We exchange pictures via Chat. Hers are mostly of her son, Radu at Roșu Lake, Radu in the Godeanu Mountains, Radu eating ice-cream. She never mentions her husband, and I don’t ask. I mostly show her photos of our family vacations. Mom, Dad and I often go to Bibione. I send her beach photos. Cerasela loves the sea and always asks me to send more. She has never been to the Adriatic. One of the pictures shows the three of us sitting on a ship. Cerasela says that I look a lot like my dad. A lot of people mention that, sometimes even in front of my mom, who gets peeved by this.  

One of my colleagues behind me is talking to a man from India. She turns the speakerphone up so high that even I can hear the man’s voice. He speaks so fast that it’s hard to understand him. I don’t know what Cerasela’s voice sounds like. Whether her spoken English is clear or has a strong accent. I don’t know what type of accents Romanians have, Cerasela doesn’t like to phone. My pronunciation is very good, I’m told, I articulate well. For some reason English is easier for me. Sometimes I realize that I’m thinking in English about what to pick up at the store, sentences come to me in English in my mind and sometimes I speak in English to my mom and dad. They stare at me a bit longer than usual, then I quickly repeat it in Hungarian. Last week, I talked to Aleksey. The Russians like to phone, they pronounce my name as Annya, the English say Ann-ah. Cerasela liked the diminutive and called me Ani from the beginning. At first this was strange. No one, except my parents and my friend Adél, calls me Ani, even though I like it. People are afraid to use diminutives.

I go downstairs to buy lunch. Today’s menu is stuffed crêpes and cauliflower soup. I ask for it to go and take it upstairs to the third floor. It’s 11:45, no one is in the kitchen that early. I like the silence before lunch. There is stirring in the corridor, but it’s quiet in the kitchen, only the fridge hums softly. I sit down at the table farthest from the door, I always sit here. In a couple of minutes, two of my colleagues arrive. They don’t normally eat this early, but they have a meeting at 12:30. They ask if they can join me. I nod and move over a bit. One sits down across from me, the other beside me. He can’t open his soup container, the heat made the cover stick. He doesn’t have long fingernails to pry it open. I should ask if I could help, I have long nails and could open it in a second. I don’t ask. It takes him minutes to remove the top. By that time my other colleague has finished half of his breaded pork cutlet. The topic is the lunar eclipse due this evening. One of them says it’ll be cloudy, just like now and points out the window. The other says it’ll clear up, and that he’s angry because someone took his unopened yoghurt from the fridge and ate it.

 We figure out together what to put on on a note to post on the fridge door. Wr-r-rite dear amigo, I say. My colleague nods and writes on top: Dear Amigo. Where will you watch the lunar eclipse? he asks. I d-d-don’t know yeh-eh-et. Y-you, y-y you?  He waits patiently and then replies, In the Philosophers’ Garden. I remember Cerasela, perhaps she’s available by now. G-g good-bye, I say, get up and put my plate in the dishwasher. I fill my mug with water and go back to my desk. My screen saver is on, colorful bubbles bounce around. I move the mouse and sign in. Cerasela is still offline.  

I look up Liviu, the person who usually fills in for Cerasela. Hi, Liviu, how are you? A few minutes pass before he replies, Hey, Anna. Then I write, Do you know if Cerasela will be available today?  No, he replies, she will not. Yesterday was her last day. I ask if he means the last day before her holiday. No, he replies, and tells me it was her last day at work because she moved to Cluj. Thank you for the info, I write, then close the conversation. In the Romanian movie Child’s Pose, a mother does everything in her power to prevent her son from going to prison after he ran over and killed a child. I write an email to Cerasela. I tell her now I can imagine what it must be like to be a mother. An error message appears right away: User profile is inactive. The chat window opens, it’s Liviu. He asks me to send the new projects to him from now on. OK, sure, I reply, and say goodbye. La revedere.