You had told Rafael you would stay to finish the migration and you had meant it at the time. That had been at four. It was six now. The office had emptied except for the guy in accounting who was on a call in Portuguese two rows over. The monitor's brightness was cutting a rectangle out of the fluorescent light. You leaned back in your chair and stretched your neck. It cracked at the top.
You reached for the mug. The hand that met the handle was not the one you had left at the keyboard. The fingers were longer. The nail on the ring finger was painted a color you did not own. You put the mug back down. You looked at your wrist. There was a hair tie on it and you had never worn a hair tie. The office chair felt lower under you. Your knees pressed together on their own.
There was hair against your neck now. Long hair, high on your head, pulled up. The end of it hung past your collarbone. You reached up and touched it. Purple. Not any color you would have picked. The shirt across your chest had gone tight. A button had already popped. The tie at the collar was a bow now. Red. Satin. You had never worn a bow tie in your life.
The glasses on your face were not your glasses. The frames were red. Heavier than yours had been. You caught your reflection in the black of the monitor. You did not recognize the woman in it. The skirt that had replaced the trousers ended a hand above your knee and the stocking under it was thigh-high. Darker than the office light. You smelled the printer toner from the machine you had walked past on the way to the desk. That was still true. That had not changed.
The Portuguese in the next row had gone quiet. A chair rolled back. Footsteps came around the partition and stopped at the mouth of your cubicle. Rafael. He looked at the woman in the chair the same way he looked at anyone he did not know. He looked at the migration ticket up on the monitor behind you. He looked at your face again. He said, "Sorry, I was looking for someone."
Rafael said, "Sorry, I was looking for someone."
"He stepped out," you said. Your voice was not the voice you had used at four.
He didn't move. He looked at the migration ticket on the monitor, then at you.
"You covering for him?"
"Something like that."
He set the folder in his hand down on the corner of your desk. He did not sit. He stayed standing at the mouth of the cubicle looking at you and you looked back at him over the top of the red glasses. The Portuguese in the next row was gone. You did not hear a chair anywhere on the floor.
"He said the migration wouldn't be done till late," you said.
"How late is late?"
"He didn't say."
Rafael waited a beat. Then he stepped into the cubicle. He rolled the second chair over from the empty desk next to yours and sat. He was close enough that his knee touched yours through the stocking. He did not move the knee.
"What's your name?" he said.
You gave him a name that came out of your mouth before you chose it.
He looked at your mouth when you said it. He reached across and took the mug out of your hand and set it down on the far corner of the desk. Then his hand came back and went to the underside of your jaw and stayed there.
You leaned in first. He met you. His mouth was warm. The kiss was slow at first, and then it was not. The chair rolled a little. You put your hand on his thigh through the trousers and you felt the shape of him through the fabric and left your hand there.
He stood up. You stood too. He turned you around by the hip. He walked you backward against the desk and lifted you up onto it. The keyboard slid. Papers moved. The chair rolled back behind you and hit the partition and stopped.
He undid the bow tie one-handed. He pulled the shirt out of the waistband of the skirt. He got the skirt up to your waist. There was a garter at the top of the stocking and he did not stop to be careful with it. The desk was cold on the backs of your thighs.
He undid his own belt. He pulled you to the edge of the desk. He pushed into you standing between your knees and you gasped once against the collar of his shirt.
He held there a second. Then he started to move. The desk creaked with every motion. The monitor rocked forward once and he reached up with one hand and held it steady. The papers under you slid the rest of the way off the desk. He worked slow at first and then not slow, and one of your heels came off and dropped onto the carpet without a sound.
He got faster. His forehead was against yours. Your ponytail had come half undone and was against the back of his hand at your neck. He shifted his angle and slid one of your thighs up over his hip and the change in it made you close your eyes. You could feel him breathing against your temple. He said your fake name against your ear. You said something back but you did not hear yourself say it.
You came sitting on the edge of the desk with both hands twisted into the front of his shirt and one leg over his shoulder now. He kept going. He slowed once when he thought he was about to and then started again. The second time he did not slow. He pulled out and finished on the front of the pencil skirt where it was bunched at your waist. The mark was dark and grew darker.
Afterward he sat back down in the chair he had rolled over. You stayed on the desk. He handed you the tissue box from the desk beside without looking. You cleaned the skirt as much as it would go. Neither of you said anything for a while.
You looked past him at the monitor. The migration had finished on its own while you weren't watching. The dialog box was up. It said Success in green.