Curve ball

Johnny's life did, indeed, change unexpectedly. It was an event that seemed to pass him by, sweeping him along only as an afterthought. In retrospect though, he saw it as an unprecedented whirlwind that catapulted him to the centre of world-altering events. It all started with her.

He'd seen her around for weeks; as he finished his shift, she started hers. They would pass eachother by in the corridor, sometimes stealing glances; more often feigning preoccupation with their footwear. They were spectres, haunting different domains and separated by the impermeable barrier of time. He wondered what she did in her time off. Did she have an X-Box too? Was she a gender-altered mirror of himself; the Yin to his Yang. Or was she more mysterious than that? There was something in her eyes, some light behind the glazed expression of disinterest that drew him in. One day, as weariness set in and he clocked out, he mustered the blanched courage to speak to her. As chat-up lines go, it wasn't ground-breaking, but it was ice-breaking, and enough of a precedent to augur some promise:
"Do you have the time?"

She didn't answer straight away. She paused and regarded him as if seeing him for the first time. Her dark eyes searched his face, the pupils dancing as if to some unheard music. She was close to him, and Johnny became uncomfortably aware of the curve of her hips. She was a little shorter than him; little more than an inch, and her hair fell in long black curls over her shoulders. Her skin was olive-toned, and hard for him to place - not quite mediterranean in origin, but neither was it from as far as the subcontinent. She reminded him of a Georgian singer he'd once seen on TV (Johnny prided himself on ethno-geographical knowledge, and delighteed in every opportunity to make use of it). Her soft lips pursed themselves as she formulated a reply,