After Hours, Eleventh Floor

The glass held the city at a remove, rain sheeting down the outside of the window so the grid of streets eleven floors below dissolved into something impressionist — orange smears, white threads, the slow pulse of a traffic signal going red. She stood close enough that her breath left a ghost on the pane. She had been watching it do that for several minutes, the fog appearing and fading, appearing and fading, while the office settled into the particular silence that only arrived after everyone else had gone.

She was still in her blazer. That was deliberate.

The wool held the shape of the day — a full day, a long one, three meetings and a presentation and the specific low-grade tension she had been carrying in her jaw since approximately two o'clock. She was aware of the tension now. She was aware of where else it had settled: in the backs of her thighs, in the place just below her sternum, in the fact that her knees were pressed together and had been for some time.

The drawer was unlocked. It was always unlocked. She knew exactly what was in it.

She let herself stand at the window a moment longer, watching the rain rewrite the city below. This was part of it — the not-yet, the knowing-what-comes. She had learned to stay in this part. To not rush past it toward the thing she wanted, because the wanting itself had a texture she had come to require. The drawer would open when she opened it. The city wasn't going anywhere.

Her right hand moved first — not toward the drawer but to the window, palm flat against the glass. Cold came through immediately, a clean shock against skin that had been warm all day inside the blazer's sleeve. She held it there. Her left hand stayed at her side, fingers loose, not gripping anything yet.

The exhale that came out of her was not planned. It arrived before she did — shorter on the exit than on the entry, with a small catch at the end that she did not name. Outside, a gust pushed the rain sideways and the city grid smeared further, the lights running into each other like something about to give way.

Her thighs, still pressed together, registered the pressure of her own skirt across them. The fabric was thin. She had known that this morning when she put it on. She had known a lot of things this morning.

She turned from the window.

The drawer handle was cool under her fingers. She held it without pulling, one breath in, the city's rain-light reflected in the dark monitor behind her desk, in the glass of the framed print on the wall, in the window she had just left — everywhere she looked, the blurred grid below, patient and indifferent and lit.

She pulled the drawer open.

Outside, the rain came on harder, and the city below went softer, and she stood in the space between deciding and doing, her blazer still buttoned, her knees no longer quite as close together as they had been.