Wob

"Look! Up in the sky!" Rayloc shouts out.

"Is it a bird? a plane? Superman!?" I say "or Spiderman perhaps?!?"

I gave a hard look and squinted just to get my eyes to focus. "Holy moley! It is indeed a person in a black shirt coming towards us." But of course, he wasn't really flying, as Rayana's always prone to exaggerate. It's Rob and he's just hovering towards our desk.

Rayloc, seeing another opportunity to play a practical joke, quickly whispered to me "When Rob gets here, don't forget to ask him about his girlfriend Sam okay?"

I was perplexed "Who's Sam? and when did he procure a girlfriend?"

Rayana quickly cut me off by making a shushing gesture, apparently to warn me that he's just round the corner coming towards our pod.

"Kneel you puny mortals!" Rob shouts out as he announces his presence to the pod. "Cower in fear before the mighty Sclaterro! Mwahahahaha!!!...." He says in his menacing and thunderous voice. "But you can call me Wob if you want to."

"Well okay" I thought. He really wasn't the Superman I was expecting. And no, he definitely wasn't wearing his underpants on top of his jeans, but he was wearing his stock standard costume with the spider pig logo emblazoned on his shirt.

"So how's things?" I say, as we haven't really caught up lately. He's been busy back in his hometown hooking up apparently, (100's of kms away). Wob answers with the usual chatter that everything's fine etc etc. I can't help but see Rayana peering behind her chair winking at me, prodding me to set Wob up for the question.

Now, I honestly don't know why I participate. I know that I could get into serious trouble as Wob, the super chap that he is, could easily beat me up using his jujitsu, feng shui and karate but perhaps its the curiousity of finding out who this elusive Sam is.

I give in and without knowing what's in store for me and finally say "...and how's your girlfriend Sam going?"

This is where Wob displays one of his super powers and turns red as a beet root - okay, more like pinkish red, like what a chameleon in a red leafy jungle would do to hide from office predators.Except this time, no color in the world would help if you were to hide in an office pod. I tried this once with Tracy, disguising myself as a rather dull supply box, trying to evade the weekly catchups - but didn't work as she quickly sniffed me out and rattled the cardboard with her forelimbs.

Wob tried explaining, to Rayana's delight, that she's not his girlfriend or anything "just somebody who makes me breakfast at six in the morning."

"Mmmmkay, more clues I thought." Logically, I could now assume that they do live together unless wob lives in a makeshift cardboard box under the motorway bridge and waits for the homeless to serve him breakfast, and that she's definitely not a cat, because I've never seen a cat wake up at 6am.

But there's still a lot of unanswered questions. Like, How'd they meet? how did Wob get a girl to stay with him without having to give his credit card details? (hehe)

Rob's beginning to sense our reluctance in believing that there's nothing going on between them and defensively says "There's nothing going on! She's an old woman."

"An old woman huh?" I said and then thinking about those ladies in walkers hobbling around the retirement home hand in hand with Wob.

"You shouldn't say that aloud! The people around the office might get an impression that you're into that sort of thing." Rayloc says. "Just think of all the commotion when those oldies flock around you."

I think this is where Rob realised his mistake using the word "old". "No!! Not that old! she's only 37!""

Darn." That apparently ruined the momentum I had building in my mind. I thought we had an exciting story of cradle snatching going on.

I never did get to find out the entire story about Sam as Rayloc quickly switched to talking about Coke this time and how Rob doesn't seem to be drinking anything but.

"Wob can finish at least 2-3 litres of Coke a day (?). He doesn't even drink anything apart from that. Not even water or juice."

"What do you mean I don't drink water? What do you think I am? a cactus?" He replied, in which the whole conversation was drowned out by Rayloc laughing. (Yes, kinda like when you're in the airport and a jumbo jet flies by.)

I think Rob would make a great cactus though. Soft on the inside, but prickly to the touch. In fact, he'd be a great comic book villain. "Pathetic humans! Bow before Cacktarr! The Master of Moisture! Mwahahahaha..." -- Which coincidentally sounds like a catchy tune for an aromatherapy ad.