#cubicals

It had to be frink. I mean, look at him! What’s next? TRIanGLES?!?!

Never let this man go to geometry class ever again !!!

The dim lighting on the office's 3rd floor was like the basement of Brian's old elementary school. That and the low ceiling with gray plastic tiles, just a few inches above the top of the cubical walls.

Friday at 7 p.m., Brian and Harini were as usual the last to leave. They worked slower as the evening progressed. More trips to the kitchen and bathroom, less sitting at their keyboards. More talking loudly into what would otherwise be a silent office.

By 7:30, Harini had stopped typing entirely and was pacing the room. She talked to herself, and also to Brian. She sang a bit. Her voice was surprisingly melodic.

Brian nearly collided with Harini as he rounded the corner of the row of cubes. Harini stepped back. She removed a hand from the front pocket of her jeans. Brian went on his way to the bathroom.

Soon after that, Harini approached Brian in his cube. Her small body blocked the also small doorway. Brian finished typing before turning his swivel chair around.

"Do you love me?" Harini said.

Brian paused. "I guess I do," he replied, as if he had looked it up in a dictionary.

Harini undid the button of her jeans. While her body stood confidently, her hands were awkward, like a small-town mayor asked to perform a ceremonial ribbon cutting.

"Pull them down," she told Brian.

Brian did not immediately respond. When he did, it was "I can't."

"Why not?" asked Harini, pulling down her zipper as she spoke.

"Because the late evenings we have here just fooling around are the best thing I have in my life, and if I lose them, I'll have nothing."

Harini's eyes did not cry as she redid her button and walked back to her cube. In another ten minutes she had packed her backpack to head home.

"I do love you," Brian said to Harini as she walked to the stairwell that led out of the gray, dim 3rd floor.

"Thank you," she said.