Aside from the fan's constant hum there's occasional dialogue, but nothing specific, as in what people are actually saying out there beyond the bathroom, is discernible. Like just now Alan can hear what's obviously some exchange occurring, conversation that seems hushed but maybe only on account of the fan. Plus the closed door, which remains unlocked since just its being closed means the place is occupied, Alan presumes, despite multiple stalls. And so when the door opens and someone comes in and announces his presence like he's looking for a response, Alan, startled, doesn't say anything at all. When the voice comes again Alan starts thinking is it Patrick but still he doesn't say anything. A silence follows, which is literally pregnant. The silence is with child, Alan conceives. He hears who he's thinking is Patrick knock twice on something, then another set of footsteps, during which Alan pulls his own feet onto the toilet seat and hugs his legs to his chest. He just listens. There's some whispering and the sound of the door locking and Patrick or someone exhales a bit louder than what seems appropriate or necessary, as if perhaps it's being exaggerated for effect, and one or the other of them makes a sort of odd hushed vibrato whistle. There's silence and then once more Patrick wants to know is anybody in here.

Outside the bathroom you can't feel/don't notice the way the building tends to vibrate at times, almost seismically, from the elevator's continuous ascent/descent. Being this far up means there's a view, however pedestrian, and windows running around the entire floor's circumference means plenty of light. There's a broad stairwell, but an oppressive air permeates it on account of all the fire hoses and the metal railing and plus just that pall of unfinished concrete that all stairwells everywhere are composed of. Anyway, up this high, people tend to take the elevator.

There's some rustling which Alan can't really put his finger on and then eventually a bunch of this affected breathing starts coming out of Patrick and after not long it's pretty clear what's happening on the other side of the stall door, despite the fact that Alan is positively incapable of moving and thus cannot be sure. Though, it's not that he's particularly intrigued about it or even averse to being discovered, to be honest. It would just, at this point, create a scene of significant tension were he to step out from the stall and come upon whomever it is out there, especially since Patrick had issued those several hellos and Alan hadn't responded to any of them. Anyway it's pretty obvious that what's transpiring here is in some way either coital or else precoital; mostly Alan keeps thinking if he had a pair of headphones with him he could just put them on and pretend not to have heard anything in the first place. At which point he might confirm what's happening and also get back to his phone, from which he's starting to feel pretty distanced. Patrick keeps breathing hyperaudibly and making little grunt noises and Alan imagines hair being tousled, since that's what it sounds like. Aside from the tousling and the breathing, though, whoever it is is being almost implausibly quiet, relatively. But understandably. Alan hears a whispered mmmff.

With Karina gone Alan had had no choice, this was last night, but to pop You, the soon-to-be-released-on-DVD romantic comedy he'd been assigned to review, into the player. He watched the characters zip by in fast-forward as he ate his dinner, scribbling a few notes here and there. The occasional arbitrary thought. Rare is the article that necessitates watching a film in its entirety. Unless it's at a screening, in which case you're obviously stuck. Also rare, though, and this is the point, is the film that deserves a complete view. So most times you'll focus on a single scene usually about 70% into the disc, then skip forward again and take detailed notes on how this final scene relates to or reflects upon or reveals, vis-ˆ-vis the first one, a director's message or a narrative arc or whatever, and then you're done and who's the wiser. Of course Erica had once read a piece he'd written and called him out on the technique, sermonized about it like she was onto him or something, rattling her prescription bottle like a maraca, tapping it on his desk as punctuation. As if it weren't pandemic, this method of just breezing through a film and only focusing on one specific detail, as if she'd have found him out were she not doing it herself. She'd probably invented the technique, actually. Alan stopped fast-forwarding at the scene where the two characters share their first kiss. After which scene there was no more fast-forwarding.

The worst part was how Karina could be just about anywhere, and the kicker was: with just about anyone. Alex wondered was this typical behavior for a woman, to decamp with absolutely no indication of a whereabout or a return. He'd seen his fair share of women doing all kinds of ridiculous things in films, of course, but was that because this is how they conducted themselves in real life? Alex sat and stared at his cordless telephone. The only thing he could come up with was to wait a few more days, wait a full week, see if she showed. If not, he'd call her mother. This solution seemed, somehow, fundamentally sound. A definite last resort, sure, but really what choice did he have. Alan watched You several times over, always with one eye on the cordless, silent and plastic and ineffectual.

And now there's little else he can do but stay put, sit it out atop the toilet, maybe speculate in a sort of visually imaginative fashion or listen for the elevator and feel the building shiver.

It was just last week that Cynthia had first brought her brand-new yellow-white kitten into the office. It hadn't been her choice, really, doing this, but rather the result of the unexpected third degree she'd received from the man at the Pet Haven shelter from which she'd rescued/purchased the thing. Because, see, she'd painted herself into this corner by admitting that both she and her husband were full-timers and were thus, as far as any sort of pet would be concerned, AWOL from like eight to six. And so she'd been forced to lie to the man after he'd informed her, his tone both apologetic and resolute, that it really is preferable, especially until it's a good five or six months old, for a kitten to have some company during the day, just psychologically speaking, et cetera and so on. Like for instance the cat who receives a good deal of attention early on in its life is the sort who's more inclined to develop the habit of it'll come snuggle up next to you while you watch a DVD or just veg out on the couch or whatever. Cynthia'd gathered everyone and regaled them with all this in the kitchen late Monday, how she'd had to outright lie to the man for fear of him not allowing her to take the thing—which she'd already fallen severely in love with—home with her. And how she'd then told the man that actually she and her husband were living with her mother at the moment and that although this was a temporary situation it meant there would at least be a body around twenty-four-seven to attend to the kitty, to lend it the attention it needed throughout the day for a good four, maybe five months until she and her husband sorted things out, meaning until they found a new place for themselves. Alan imagined sharing cramped hallways and living room space with Karina's mother. Leaving enough coffee for her in the morning. Censoring himself in the bedroom at night. Making small talk. Alan imagined the conversation he'd have to have with Karina's mother on the telephone.

Because Cynthia had already purchased, see, this is beforehand, a litter box and countless feather-tipped rods and a bed and a water bowl and food and everything, plus the PETaxi carrier she'd brought with her to the shelter, the carrier in which she was completely prepared to take the kitten straight home with her then and there. But anyway the point being there was no way Cynthia's husband—whom not a single person in the office had ever met, and who Alan speculated was nothing more than a fabrication, meaning Cynthia was both an extravagant liar and probably pretty lonely, hence the cat—was about to take the kitten to work with him. But it was really her cat anyway, technically, like she'd come up with the name Margarine and everything, so Cynthia'd heeded the man's advice and, after spending the entire weekend in bed with it, had coaxed Margie into her PVC PETaxi Monday morning with a gingham mouse and carted her to work. And she'd left her in the back of her Passat and not said anything to anyone until that afternoon when she'd broken down and gathered everyone up and explained the situation thusly and would anyone mind if she brought the little angel in and just let it drift around the office for a week, like could we maybe just test it out for a bit and see how it goes?

There's shuffling and other assorted sounds and Alan can basically see the two of them fucking now, on account of the assorted sounds are pretty demonstrative; he can see Erica's—it's probably Erica's—small and mousy face all scrunched up the same way it gets just before she suggests you might want to fix some things here and there before handing this one over to Richard, just as an FYI. Alan sits there hugging his arms to his chest, staring at tiles, wondering if Karina's called yet.

The fact that Karina was Polish—third generation—had once made Alan feel sort of cosmopolitan. She's got that little dimple in her chin and some fairly prominent cheekbones. Alan sometimes joked that her cheekbones were even more prominent than her breasts. When they'd first met he'd wanted to know had she ever seen Three Colors, but she wasn't familiar.

Out of Patrick comes a particularly emphatic syllable, this followed by same from his colleague. Then, from somewhere out in the office, a brief but horrific shriek. Movement is suspended. Patrick mutters nonsense, a voice now clearly belonging to a dyspneic Erica is going hmmph, what, what was? Then nothing. Another chilling scream from outside and Alan can feel Patrick/Erica not moving. Finally a whisper and footsteps and Alan hears the lock unlocking and one of them exits and shuts the door again and Alan is sure it's Erica who's still present because now he's hearing clothing being straightened and aspiration which is totally female. Alan shifts his weight on the toilet, timing his movement with Erica's running the water and pulling some paper towels from the wall and then she leaves the room and Alan doesn't hear the door shut. The fan and the light are run by a single switch that no one ever touches and except for maybe your first week or so you don't really notice the resonant hum unless you're making a conscious effort. A sign taped to the toilet entreats employees to clean up after themselves and contains two typographical errors. The shrieky yelps coming from outside are intermittent and variable in both character and length but they do continue; just when Alan thinks they've ceased he hears another one.

It seems right to wait a few minutes before leaving a room one has just shared with two copulating persons, during which minutes Alan keeps hearing the varying screechy cries and ohmigods from the office. At a specific point in time he exits unceremoniously.

The cat's warming to people was immediate. Vagrant-like it browsed pairs of ankles, soliciting a rub or a scratch. Cynthia kept urging everyone not to feed it, although it seemed to want only attention and anyway feed it what? Some muttered vapid civilities to it, like Annabelle, whose civilities were particularly vapid but also delivered in such a manner that Alan wondered does she even know she's speaking out loud. The only way Alan can describe Annabelle is she looks like someone you've seen before. Nonspecific. You knew someone who looked just like her in grade school; everyone did. Apparently she's lactose intolerant and you'd swear she subsisted solely on dry Cheerios and water. Glasses ever-present to the point where you start to not even notice them. Karina wears glasses too, and whenever she takes them off to fish out an eyelash or something she becomes severely cross-eyed and affects the appearance of some sort of halfwit or retard. Annabelle's working at home on a screenplay about an alcoholic/abusive father and basing the main character off her own dad, she's told Alan.

Or sometimes the cat would fall asleep on someone's desk and stay there for maybe half an hour until something disturbed it. Alan noticed Cynthia all week pretending not to be wishing the cat would spend more time at her own desk, instead acting thrilled, just tickled pink, over how convivial and gregarious Margie is turning out to be, how she's already becoming the office pet, in a way, always vaulting up onto everyone's desks and everything. Cynthia kept the PVC PETaxi on the floor next to her chair and open at all times, always remarking how it's amazing she never uses it, how you'd think the cat would at some point want to crawl inside and sleep there, under Cynthia's own desk. Which desk is incidentally impeccable in terms of organization. On Alan's desk there's an antique lamp and some computer speakers, a balloon filled with sand for squeezing away stress. There are photos of Karina and himself in London and a magazine ad which he's torn out and pinned up on the wall since he thinks it's funny in an ironic way, pinning it up there. And there's his telephone, its red light currently, perpetually, nonblinking.

Back at his desk, Alan ignores the burgeoning chaos and watches Cynthia stand behind her chair with a frantic look on her face, respiring visibly, her hands on her hips. Staring at the ground as if some instruction were buried in the carpet. She doesn't notice Alan looking over like he maybe wants her attention. But he's not trying to get her attention, he's simply watching. Cynthia's maybe a bit thinner than Karina, and taller—like leggier—and then no dimple in the chin. She's what, twenty-eight? Twenty-eight and totally unmarried, Alan thinks. Everyone knows she's unmarried. It's beyond rumor. It's essentially fact.