In His Mind

[rosetto 0]

<H2 style="MARGIN: 3pt 0in">In His Mind</H2>Sal was doing his best; making a show of it, but he really didn’t know what to think of this place, this crew, this captain, this whole situation. He sat and listened to the others chatting and laughing as if they had no care in the universe. Was it that they had truly found their freedom out here? Or maybe they were just as confused and uncertain as he was? Sal didn’t have any answers; none that made any sense. He sipped his Rom Ale and laughed quietly at someone’s off-handed attempt at a joke. It wasn’t that funny to him. But then he wasn’t really listening either. Their voices all seemed to melt together like a gaggle of geese near a cool pond of water.

 

Sal could do that; disappear into the wallpaper. Perhaps it was due to his upbringing. That’s how he had attributed it. Right or wrong didn’t really matter. The fact was that though he wasn’t consciously focused on anything, he would remember almost every conversation in the room. His mind was preprocessing the information and simply storing it away for evaluation at a later time. It was all a state of mind; a built-in autopilot.

 

What Sal was focused on was his performance, or lack there of, during this interview process. He couldn’t read this Manning fellow at all. Sal struggled with this because usually he picked up on psyches quite easily. He could do the task as required and had proven that many times over in his career. Whatever it took, Sal would figure out a way of getting the job done. But this seemed different because he really didn’t know what his job would entail.

 

A bottle had hit the floor. There was a dispute at the dom-jot table. He turned to see one gentleman picked completely off the floor and placed precariously and unwillingly on a hi-top table. Sal turned away as the other gentleman pulled back his huge unclad left arm while holding the man with his right. The sound of his fist repeatedly striking the man’s face had made Sal cringe. What ever the dispute was about it was best to keep one’s place, he thought. It was, after all, none of his business.