Turn 10 of 12

Write back to Nadine on the fourth page

The felt-tip is where you left it, clipped to the cabinet frame. You pull it free and the barrel is cold this time, or your fingers are, or the basement has opinions about what you're about to do. You lay your folder flat on top of the cabinet and open to the fourth page. Your handwriting sits in the upper left corner, small and cramped. Nadine's reply curls underneath it, round and warm, the loops of her W and her N as deliberate as handwriting on a birthday card.

You don't write immediately. You stand there with the pen hovering and the boiler humming behind you and the knowledge settling into your wrists like a vibration: she opened this drawer without the badge. The badge that's supposed to be the only key, the badge that's clipped to your lanyard, the badge that was in your apartment all weekend. She got in anyway. And instead of changing your tab — instead of filing you — she wrote back. Like a conversation. Like a door she's holding open with one hand while the other rests on something you can't see.

You write: 'How did you open the drawer? The badge was with me.' The letters come out steadier than you feel. You press the pen harder than necessary and the felt-tip dents the page, leaving grooves you can feel with your thumb. Under that: 'You could have changed my tab. You didn't. Why?' You cap the pen and set it down on top of the cabinet and your hand is shaking, a fine tremor, the kind you'd attribute to caffeine if you'd had any.

The page stares up at you. Your handwriting, then Nadine's, then yours again — three voices in a margin, a conversation held in a space smaller than a receipt. You slide the folder back into the drawer and push it shut and the rails swallow the sound. Then you stand there in the basement with your hands empty and your badge warm and the fluorescent tubes buzzing their one tuneless note, and you listen to the building above you. Stand-up is happening right now, fourteen people in a room, Chad saying something that makes someone sigh, Nadine — wherever she is — not answering her page yet. But she will. She answered once. She'll answer again. And when she does, the page will have your words on it, waiting.

You climb the stairs to the third floor. The hall is empty, stand-up still going, and you can hear Chad's voice through the conference room door — strident, certain, the sound of a man taking up space. You walk past without stopping. At your desk, your phone shows 9:14. You missed stand-up. There will be an email about it, probably from someone named Karen, probably with a frowny-face emoticon used sincerely. You sit down and log in and open your inbox and you don't think about the basement. You think about the basement. You think about Nadine's handwriting and the way the loops of her W looked like a smile, and you wonder what she'll write next, and you wonder whether wondering is the manageable part of you or the part that isn't.