On the way out of the bathroom this morning, I ran into a co-worker from a different department, and as soon as I saw him, I knew it would be no less than 15 minutes before I got back to my desk. Friendly as friendly could be, Bryan had a smile for everyone and talked like he was at a coffee shop or a friend's house or a social mixer, anywhere but a corporate office building surrounded by beige hues, benign wall art, and work piling up on our desks.
I actually enjoy talking to him. Surprisingly. I tend to prefer my solitude at work, but Bryan and I are the same age (two years apart when I'm approaching 31 constitutes 'the same age') and have led oddly parallel lives starting from high school. We both attended the same private Catholic one, though I transferred out the same year he began. We both then moved on to UC Davis, where we double-majored in English and psychology. We both lived in Sacramento for a year afterward, and both moved back to the Bay Area, orbiting in the east bay for a few years before taking the leap and finding an apartment in the City and closer to work. Oh, and we both of course ended up with our current company.
Over the weekend, he had gone to Davis to visit a cousin, staying in the dorms.
"I can't remember the name of it now," he said. "A newer one, right by Segundo."
"Primero?"
"No, those were graduate dorms," he said.
"Tercero?"
"No, that's where I stayed."
"Me too!" I said, a little too excitedly. "I loved it there."
"Me too!" he replied, now his turn to be excited. "But I moved out to an apartment complex down by the Safeway. Chapparel, or something like that."
"Down Sycamore Lane?"
"Yea yea! I definitely remember that address."
Ah, here we go. "I lived down Sycamore Lane," I said hesitatingly. "At Temescal."
"Yes! Temescal!" Of course. "Oh my god, this is getting scary," he said, reading my mind.
"I was only there for a year, though. In C-4."
"Man, this is crazy! I was in C-5."
And so we went, rattling off neighborhood haunts and landmarks that other Aggies would know, finding other ways to prove that we are indeed the same person: the Death Star, the silo, the 24-hour reading room at Shields Library, though I didn't have the heart to tell him that in all four years of my time at Davis, I probably only visited the library four times.
He said that he saw a hotel on campus, right off the I-80 next to the new-when-I-was-there Mondavi Arts Center. "A hotel!" he repeated, as if aghast at the audacity of the Hyatt to build on sacred ground.
"Remember the old Rec Hall?" he asked. "The one with the weights on one end and the gymnastics stuff on the other?"
"Totally. I was there every Tuesday," I said, "without fail, doing gymnastics. Broke my fingers on the tumbletrack once. Still hurts if I extend them in the morning when I first wake up."
"Oh, man, I probably saw you there then. I was always there in the evenings."
"I think they moved it to Hickey Gym around the time I graduated, though. I stopped going after I got a job in Sacramento."
"Yup," he said, tapping his temple with his finger as if pointing to the exact memory. "My indoor soccer got kicked out of our room to make way for the gymnastics equipment."
"Indoor soccer, huh?" I probably sounded more condescending than I had meant to. For some inexplicable reason, I imagined lawn bowling and a scene out of My Fair Lady.
"I think my team picture is still on the wall in that gym somewhere."
"The gymnastics club picture should be there as well, I think, but I probably don't want to see what I looked like back then."
"What do you mean, man??" he said with a huge smile. "Those were the good old days!"
I chuckled. What an unexpected trip down memory lane. "Yea, I guess, huh? Those were some pretty great days."
The walls around me seemed really beige, and the various office noises (typing, papers shuffling, plastic mice scurrying across laminate desks) never seemed louder.
"Well. . . have a good day, man!"
"Thanks. You too."
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