Every morning, I sit across from you, staring at the doughnut crumbs clinging to the corners of your lips. Or stuck to your chin. Or pasted to your blue tie (it’s always a blue tie!)

I wonder why your parents didn’t teach you proper use of a napkin. Or personal hygiene. For it’s not just the crumbs, but the shiny hair (what’s left of it), that stinks up the small meeting room. (I can smell you from here!)

And the moldy smell of damp clothes left to rot in the washing machine for days on end.

Fortunately, I can look out the window behind your back, something I do in order to avoid your moonstruck eyes as you stare at me, a woman old enough to be your grandmother.

There’s nothing appealing about you. Nothing that would entice me to spend time with you outside of the daily meeting. Nothing that would inspire me to sit next to you during lunch or walk down the hall with you as we return to our various cubicles.

I stare out the window, entranced by the clouds like matted white fur that race by. They remind me of the stray cat that wandered into my garage too many years ago to count. The poor thing looked like an alien: it’s luminescent green eyes summoned images of space invaders staring into human residences.

I’d scooped it up in a towel and carried it inside the house. Using a damp cloth I’d removed some of the filth- but then the cat wriggled away before the job was complete.

A trip to the vet helped. The technician sprayed the cat with something…not sure what…and then combed and combed and combed.

After an examination, I learned that it was female. Fluffy seemed like an appropriate name. Now that she was clean, she was a ball of white fur.

The boss says something that draws me back to the meeting. Something about reports and accounting mistakes that I care nothing about. You guffaw even though no one else does. I look, because it’s too compelling not to, to discover that you’ve got white fur clinging to your black suit jacket.

I know you’ve got a dog, because you’ve bored us all with too many photos of the thing. It’s a miniature something. One of those long-haired things with four-inch legs and eyes buried beneath layer upon layer of fur. Rover. That’s its name. Weird choice since there’s nothing roverish about it.

I tried to like you after seeing how much you cared about the dog. After all, a huge, burly man cuddling a tiny dog does something to the heart. But I can’t get past the daily crumbs and the filthy hair and the disgusting smell.

I sit here, across from you. day after day, assaulted by your stench.