Turn 105 of 228

While working even more efficiently, comment on office smell and ask Diane how her weekend was.

The fourth report takes three minutes. Lena's fingers haven't slowed — if anything they've accelerated, the yellow nails clicking the keyboard in bursts that sound almost like typing and almost like something else, something rhythmic and organic, the way rain sounds when it finds a groove. The insights are arriving before she finishes reading the data. She sees the pattern in the Henderson numbers before the spreadsheet finishes rendering. She types the recommendation and moves to the next file and the next and the belly settles deeper into the chair and the chair groans and accepts and the work flows like water. The fifth report. The sixth. The seventh. Each one faster. The mind is clear and the mind is sharp and the wish hums under the clarity and the hum is fuel.

She stops typing. The office is quiet except for Diane's keyboard and the hum of the fluorescent lights and the hum of the building and the hum underneath everything. Lena breathes in through her nose. The smell is layered — the old stream smell, the piss-soaked carpet, the stained wall, the corner behind the filing cabinet, the ninety-six hours preserved in the fibers like a fossil. But there's something new underneath. Something sharper. Two months of closed air and no cleaning and no ventilation and the slow decay of every wrapper and bottle and stain that was left behind in December. The carpet has darkened. The wall has darkened. The office has become something that was an office and is now a habitat.

"It smells worse in here," Lena says. She isn't complaining. The voice is flat and observational, the same tone she uses for the Henderson numbers.

"The sabbatical let it set. It's in the walls now."

Diane doesn't look up from the keyboard. The beard shifts. The fingers keep moving.

"I noticed. The carpet near the filing cabinet has a new color. It was brown in December. It's black now." The typing doesn't pause.

"I think the stream soaked deeper than we thought. The pad underneath has mold. I can smell it from here."

"How was your weekend?" Lena asks. The eighth report opens on the screen and her fingers start again — the yellow nails finding the keys without looking, the eyes on Diane, the body doing two things at once because the body can do two things at once and the wish hums and the work flows.

Diane's fingers stop. The beard moves — not a smile, not a frown, the expression underneath the hair doing something private and unguarded that lasts half a second before the face catches it and smooths it flat.

"Long. Carl and I didn't leave the apartment. We ordered food seven times. The delivery drivers stopped knocking — they just left the bags at the door and walked away." She pauses. The brown eyes are distant.

"Carl gained eighteen pounds. I gained eleven. The mattress on the floor has a new depression. We watched the stream archive twice." The typing resumes.

"It was good."

Lena smiles. The yellow teeth show. The ninth report is done — two minutes, a new record, the fingers barely touching the keys before the analysis is complete and the recommendation is filed. The office smells and the carpet is black and the walls are stained and the two of them are enormous and unwashed and barefoot and the work is pouring out of them like the work has been waiting for them to come back and the wish hums and the numbers climb and the morning is theirs.