Carolyn dropped her reading glasses on her blouse, the slight silver chain on the ends keeping it in place as she rubbed her eyes. She sighed and slumped into her chair away from the glowing PC screen. Reams of paper lay strewn around her crowded cubicle, reports and reports about reports, numbers without end. She was tired. More than just body tired, more than just mentally drained, she was exhausted in her soul.
Her husband had left 5 years ago and her only son was away at college for his freshman year. Her house was so empty she dreaded it and spent much of her free time at work putting in extra hours. Not that it was much of an improvement but at least she was getting something done. Wasn't she?
She stood and stretched her tiny frame, all 5 feet of it. She shuffled off to the ladies room in her frumpy, comfy shoes to relieve herself, bowed by weariness. The numbers never end, she thought. There are always more numbers to crunch. Killing time lets time kill you, and crunching numbers lets the numbers crunch you eventually. She chuckled inwardly at her play on words, then immediately soured on how little it took to amuse her now.
As she left the ladies room she paused to look at herself in the mirror. She didn't understand. She was a few years shy of fifty but she didn't look it. She was still petite, still had much of her good looks, still had most of her figure, even if her butt was slowly widening from all it's time in that damn seat. Her red hair was well styled and pretty, she thought.
"So why am I alone?"
All she could see were the signs of age. There were lines on her face, a slight sag to the skin under her chin, and gravity was wining a few limited skirmishes around her body.
"Still...I'm not hideous. Am I?"
Depressed even further, she walked slowly back to her isolation chamber, back to the numbers. She was half a foot shorter than the cubicle walls and always felt like she was lost in a maze. Fortunately it was late enough that her coworkers were gone and not able to bowl her over as they rounded the corners without seeing her. She recognized how sad it was that she actually enjoyed those collisions. For one brief moment she could prove she still existed, that she could be touched by another human being.
No such encounters lay in wait for her this time. She returned to her cubicle without incident and settled back into her butt-numbing chair in front of her mind-numbing computer at her soul-numbing job. Again she sighed deeply, and again she rubbed her eyes, wondering if she were at the beginning or the end of some endless cycle of inaction.
"Hey, no sleeping on the job!"
Carolyn jumped, startled at the sudden intrusion into her dismal state. Danny, the overnight production control guy, was making his rounds of the paperwork boxes looking for last-minute jobs left by late-workers and had stopped by to chat. He knew she worked late and often dropped in for a few minutes.
"Hi, Danny," she said, turning her chair to face him where he stood in the doorway. She liked Danny. Probably too much. He was tall, in fact very tall to her point of view; sandy haired and handsome and had an affable quality that made him easy to talk to. Plus, he looked damn good in a tight pair of blue jeans.
"Why are you always here?" he asked.
"I guess it's just what I do," she replied. She tried to strike a casual pose and crossed her legs. Her dress was fairly long and for a moment she wished she had worn something shorter, perhaps something that might catch Danny's attention. Her legs were still nice, even if nobody noticed. But of course that was ridiculous. Danny was half her age.
"I think you need a new hobby. You are the only person left on this floor."
"I know. I like the quiet but it does get lonely." She tried to be subtle but she couldn't help letting her eyes linger a bit on his frame. He was a strongly built man, tall and wide-shouldered, and as always he wore tight blue jeans that made her think improper things. Her eyes drifted across his body and she gave a slight start as she saw the definite outline of a bulge shackled by the blue cotton. Her eyes immediately darted away in embarrassment as she blushed. She picked up her glasses and placed them on her face, trying to shield her guilty face from his notice.
"Well, you could look at it as lonely. You could also look at it as private." What was that in his voice?
"Private? Why would I need privacy on a whole floor?" He stood there in the doorway, leaning against the partition wall, and she could smell his cologne. He smelled good and she breathed him in deeply.
"Oh, it's just a thing we talk about on the night crew. The whole building is essentially empty so big spaces like this become private. Almost intimate in a backwards kind of way." Again there was that inflection to his voice. What was it? He had lingered on the word 'intimate' almost as if...
"I, ah...'intimate?' I can't say as I have ever thought of it that way, but I guess I can see your point." She stammered a bit in apprehension. He couldn't have meant THAT.
"Can you see my point?" He hooked his left thumb into his pants pocket and drummed his fingers lightly against the front of his jeans, drawing her eyes to the movement. His fingers tapped an inch away from his bulge. Again she looked at his crotch, then up at his face. He was looking at her face closely and she had just been busted. Flustered, excited, worried, and a little scared, she replied.
"Uh, Danny...look, what exactly are you getting at?"
