"I'm just here for the wastebasket," I said and stepped into her cubicle. At first, she was completely focused on the screen in front of her. She didn't notice me until I lifted the liner from the wastebasket and said, "You're working late."
Thunder crackled outside the building, and she jumped. The lightning must have been close. She took a second to get her composure back, and then she looked very professional. She wore a dark dress suit, and her hair curled under just at her shoulders. "Are you new here?" she asked. Her eyes settled on the badge sewn into my coverall. "Mr. Dugan."
I touched the badge, "That's the name of the service. It's my bosses name." I stepped out to drop the liner into my cart and noticed the name plate on her cubicle. "I've been here for a couple weeks, and I've never had to dump the trash from this cubicle. Are you Becky?"
That made her laugh. "I'm not her. She's on maternity leave and the techs have my computer, so I'm using hers." She turned back to her screen, so I replaced her wastebasket liner and moved on to the next cubicle.
Thunder crackled outside again. The lights flickered once before the power went out and the office went dark. I stopped where I was, leaned on my cart, and waited for my eyes to adjust. It wasn't completely dark. There were emergency lights on over the doors, and I could see the glow of the computer screen from the cubicle I just left.
The woman I'd been talking to said, "Dammit, dammit, dammit!" She wasn't going to get much work done on backup power. Her computer screen went dark.
I woke my phone, used its light to find a chair, and sat down to call Dugan. "Wait for me," he said. "I'll call the power company and see how long they expect to be out."
The woman stepped out of her cubicle and found me waiting. "Boreland needs a memo by noon. I'm going to wait here. Are you waiting?"
"At least until my boss calls back. He's calling the power company." I stood up and smoothed my coverall. "I'm going to wait in the atrium. It's outside the card reader, and the seats are more comfortable."
The emergency lights lit my way out and I dropped into a soft chair by the rail. Normally I could see down to the lobby level from there, but with the space lit just by the occasional flash of lightning and the dim glow from the exit signs, the lobby was lost in darkness below me.
My phone rang almost as soon as I settled back in the chair. It was Dugan. "The power company says an hour, maybe two. Stay there and wait, and we'll bill your time."
Like the woman in the cubicle, I had work to get in by noon, but mine was school work. I would have walked out on the job if a light from the office hadn't caught my attention. She stopped at the office door and let her phone shine out toward where I sat, and then turned it off and picked her way through the darkness.
"Do you mind if I wait with you?" she asked. She didn't wait for an answer before she set a water bottle on the table by the rail and perched on the seat across from me. "Have you heard from your boss?"
I told her what Dugan said, and she slid back into the seat. "I've been with a client for the last week. That's probably why I haven't seen you around before."
"You won't see me again, either. It's my last night. The hours are too long." My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I watched her cross her legs. "Do you work late very often?"
"I'm an engineer. We work late when we have to, and that happens a lot."
If the light had been brighter, then she could have seen my interest jump. She probably heard it in my voice. "I'm a Senior. In another year, maybe I'll be an engineer, too." She laughed, but I didn't feel like I said anything funny.
"If you want a chance to be more than a technician, than you should probably get a Master's degree before you dive into the job market.
"I'm environmental. What are you?"
"Electrical." I leaned forward and tried harder to see the expression on her face, but I could see little more than her silhouette. "Maybe I'll do grad school. It depends on a lot of things.
"Was the job hard when you started out?"
She gave me that humorless laugh again. "It's still hard. I was never very outgoing before, now I don't spend much time at home. I feel like I'm married to the job, and my job is a terrible lover."
Lightning flashed—farther off then it was before—and without thinking about it, I counted the seconds before I heard the thunder. "It's moving away." There was hardly a sound from anything but the rain on the skylights. "What do you do when you aren't working?"
I noticed while I waited for her to answer that even the hum of the air conditioners was gone. Her voice was quiet when she finally said. "I go to my dream house. You might want to build one too."
That made me laugh. "Is that a house that cleans itself?"
Each pause before she answered seemed longer than the last. I heard her draw her breath. "It's not a house that cleans itself. It's a Gothic mansion on a hill where I go in my dreams, and sometimes even while I'm still awake. Each room in the house lets me explore a fantasy, and I wander through it until I find what I need."
She waited for my reaction, but I didn't know what to say. She shifted uncomfortably in the dark. "I probably shouldn't have told you that."
I stumbled over my own words. "It's OK. I'm OK. What kind of fantasies?"
"Sexual fantasies. Some are common, maybe some aren't. Do you want to hear more?"
I hoped the shadows kept her from reading my expression the same way it kept me from reading hers, but it probably didn't make a difference. I sat up on the edge of the seat, and that had to give me away. "Sure. I'm listening. Is that something you talk about very often?"
She tucked her hair behind her right ear. "Never before, but for some reason I want to now." She let thunder pass before she went on. "Have you ever had a girlfriend you couldn't get out of your head after you broke up?"
