”We recommend sending friend requests only to people you know personally.”
He knew Matthew and Helen and his other colleagues with Facebook accounts. But he could not recognize that. He was supposed to remain the manager of the business consulting company “Business PXS Consulting”, as he had written on his Facebook page, to Facebook’s insistent questions about who he is. To be more convincing, he had also bought a domain name, also under the name of Dorian Townsend, and had developed a small business website with him as CEO.
And when he called for the friendship of some New Yorkers, he had received such a warning, but only after he had gathered about 80 friends from that area. Now the warning came from the fifth request for friendship.
He became very loved on Facebook. He carefully chose the demands of friends, usually businessmen and influential people, and he accepted also carefully new friends. He publishes on his own page only interesting and neutral articles and opinions, sometimes from business, sometimes with a personal touch (he had noticed that Facebook users were reacting even more so as the post was more personal, but at the same time he did not even want to post too much personal details in order to have a greater margin of maneuver in various situations). Comments on friends’ posts were also common sense, but before commenting, always check as much as possible the personality and preference of the person who posted the post so that his comment would get the maximum effect.
And there were the groups too. He quickly noticed that there were three types of discussion groups: one where everybody posts anything he wants and no one reads, one where each post is taken seriously and receives comments but where off topics are not accepted, and the third where there is an undisputed leader of the group that engages in any discussion and does not accept to be contradicted. He always chose to enter the groups of the second type.
“Dan, Octavia is here!”
He gets angry. He was in the fire of creation, he intended to write a post about the evolution of Snap shares after being quoted, and now he had to stop. He sighed, saved the text in a separate file, and shut down the tablet. He went to meet his classmate waiting well in the living room. He had forgotten that he had promised her, when he had visited her at home with his parents, that he will help with math. “That’s what I need, if I blab,” Dan reproaches himself.
“Hello, Octavia, are you here?”
“Hello, Dan, volens nolens I had to take my time to avoid the math teacher to tangle my plans.” (“More volens,” Dan said in thought)
“Come in to my room, I still have not got the homeworks, I’ll help you first and then I’ll handle it, I have all night to do it.”
Only then did he looked at Octavia, and he was stuck for what he saw. The dull Octavia changed her deux-pièces suit with a short skirt lying on her body, and a blouse that emphasized her developed forms. “I think that I am the one she put her eyes on,” Dan thought.
“I’ll come with the coffee later. How do you drink the coffee, Octavia, with or without sugar?” asked Dan’s mother.
“No sugar, thank you!” Oana replied vociferously.
Dan pulled a desk beside him for Octavia, and pulled out the math book from the briefcase. Oana pulled out from her handbag a notebook folded to fit there, and opened it on the desk. Dan was totally against making the homework of his friends, but he helped them in his own way. Through thoughtful questions, and suggesting how and where to look in books or the Internet, he made them find answers to the problems they came to him. That’s what she did with Oana now. Only her perfume, fresh and sweet at the same time, almost dazed him.
Dan’s mother entered the room quietly, put the coffees on the table beside the desk, along with two glasses of water and a plate with sweets, and withdrew without disturbing them.
Octavia seemed determined to understand the complicated strings of mathematical formulas, but she did not quite understand the logic of them. He approached Dan more closely to see the logical scheme he had drawn on his own notebook. Dan was in his shorts walking through the house, so he feel in a pleasant way the velvety and hot touch of Octavia’s foot. She spoke slowly, but it seemed too slow, as Dan saw his fleshy lips move, but he could not hear anything she was saying. His ears were ringing, and he stared with his eyes fixed on those lips that seemed to have their own life. He drew hypnotized his lips to Octavia’s, stopping his tire of meaningless words through a long and fierce kiss. His hand squeezed beneath the desk, on Octavia’s foot. He was floating. But at the same time a thought did not give him peace: “Do we need so less to forget all the anguish and the deepest problems?“
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