Fourteen Minutes, Thirty-First Floor

Thirteen minutes, forty seconds. I checked before I locked the door.

The fluorescent light in here does what fluorescent light always does — flattens everything, makes the mirror clinical, makes me look like a deposition witness rather than a woman who has just pulled a wand vibrator from the front pocket of her laptop bag and set it on the edge of the sink. I look at myself the way I look at opposing counsel: locating the tells, finding what needs to be managed. My jaw is set. My collar is straight. Nothing visible yet.

The tile is cold through the back of my blazer when I lean against the wall to assess. That contrast — the chill at my shoulders, the specific warmth already present lower, the warmth I catalogued two hours into the first session when the CFO started his third slide on Q4 projections — that contrast is information. My body has been running its own parallel meeting all afternoon, taking its own notes, reaching its own conclusions. I have simply scheduled time to hear the report.

This is not reckless. I want to be clear about that, even here, even alone. I have thought it through the way I think everything through: single-occupancy lock, which I engaged; tile walls, which amplify, which is why the setting stays at one; the seam of the slacks, which I know from the last quarterly review falls at an angle that does the work without the wand ever making contact with anything that would leave evidence. I have risk-assessed this the way I risk-assess a negotiation. I know my exits. I know my exposure. I know exactly how much time I have.

Thirteen minutes, four seconds.

I pick up the wand. It is lighter than it looks, which I have always appreciated — a thing that does significant work without announcing its own significance. I don't turn it on yet. I hold it in my right hand, the grip loose, and I look at myself in the mirror: blazer, slacks, the slight tension across my shoulders that has been there since the morning session, the thing I have been carrying since the CFO said my name in that particular tone that means he is about to ask me to solve something he created.

My left hand rests flat against my outer thigh.

The wool is warm from an afternoon of sitting, structured enough to hold its shape, and the inner seam — I am aware of it the way you are aware of a door you have not yet opened. The fabric presses there with a specific, unhurried weight. I have been aware of it since the second hour. I have been aware of it every time I crossed and uncrossed my legs under the conference table, every time I reached for my water glass and felt the slight shift of the fabric against the inside of my knee.

I exhale. The sound comes out longer than I meant it to — it unspools into the tiled room before I decide to let it, and I watch my own face in the mirror register the small surprise of it.

Twelve minutes, forty seconds.

I press the button. The lowest setting hums to life against my palm, patient and precise, and I lower my right hand toward the seam.