Turn 3 of 11

Tell Ellis you're thinking of returning the keyboard to Marguerite

You spin your chair a quarter-turn toward the aisle, toward his lamp, his two-fingered typing.

"I think I'm going to return this keyboard to Marguerite."

Ellis stops typing. His right hand lifts off the side of the keyboard and he looks at you properly for the first time in an hour. His face does the thing it does when he is recalibrating — not startled, just attentive, narrowing slightly, the way he looks at a manifest that doesn't add up.

"The replacement? What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing's wrong with it." You are aware that this is not a convincing sentence. The keyboard sits between you and the monitor, unremarkable, beige, the standard refurb from the supply cupboard. The unlabelled key is invisible from his angle. From yours it is a small dark rectangle, slightly matte where the rest are gloss, warm in a way that has nothing to do with the desk lamp.

"It's just — it was Marguerite's. Before it was mine. She signed it out to me from the cupboard, but it was on her desk first, I think. I want to ask her about it."

Ellis considers this. He is a man who respects the instinct to return a thing to its source. He turns back to his screen, not dismissing you but processing, his left hand finding the home row by feel.

"She's in early tomorrow. Six-thirty usually. You could catch her before the floor fills up."

"I could."

"Or now, if it's bothering you. She's probably still in the building — she leaves late on Thursdays, something about the cleaning roster."

You didn't know that. You know a great deal about the people on this floor, their habits and their small daily textures, but you did not know Marguerite stays late on Thursdays. You think of her peppermint tea, which was lapsang until this morning, which has always been peppermint, which nobody remembers any other way. The requisition form is in your top drawer. You pulled it out at two o'clock and read it twice, looking for something in the handwriting that would tell you whether she knew what she was handing you. The form is ordinary. Marguerite's handwriting is small and precise and betrays nothing.

"It's not bothering me," you say, which is the wrong word and you hear it land wrong. Ellis gives you a look — brief, sidelong, the kind that says he has filed the phrasing for later. Then he nods at your desk.

"You've been staring at that thing since four, Dara. Whatever it is — the keyboard, the work, whatever — just go talk to her."

The ventilation hum fills the silence after. Your hand is on the desk, not on the key. The key is where it has been all evening, unlabelled, warm, waiting with the particular patience of something that does not need you to hurry.