meet_cute raze he loved her, but he didn't know her. he felt it best to keep his distance. they worked in the same hotel. she was a desk clerk, handling reservations, checking people in and out. he was part of the housekeeping staff. he liked to write character sketches for the people who left imprints of themselves behind in the rooms he cleaned, giving them rich inner lives. the more boring and torpid they seemed to him, the more interesting he imagined them to be when no one was paying any attention. he never spoke to her. but he would watch her. the way you watch a film you don't want to end. he watched her run her fingers through her hair while talking to guests as sort of a low level nervous tic. she always had a book in her hands during breaks. she only ever read while standing. he loved the way her tongue poked out of her mouth beneath her upper teeth when she came across a passage that made her smile to herself. how she would stop to pet any dog that crossed her path outside, crouching to meet them on their level. the way she spoke to them like they were people. not the way most of us talk to animals, as if they're uncomprehending children. the beautiful scowl her face made when the sun stung her eyes. he saw all of this happen and felt there was something different about her. she was tuned in to a frequency the rest of the world was deaf to. he wanted to exist on that same wavelength with her. to hear the same things she heard. after months of watching, he worked up the courage to approach her. telling her how he felt without a proper segue would be too simple. too predictable. he needed to do something more remarkable than that — something that was at once crude and clever, to appeal to her basest sensibilities. something he'd learned on the playground as a boy. he walked over to her, smiled, and once they'd made eye contact he gave her a playful kick to the shin, not knowing that in doing so he'd dealt a fatal blow to the object of his affection, for behind the frail tibia was where her heart lived. and as he told her all the things he'd been rehearsing for weeks in the soft prison of his mind, she died with her eyes wide open, not hearing a word. 130211 what's it to you? who go blather from