The Stairwell That Led Down Too Far

I was the last one in the building, which was how I liked it, which should have been the first thing to frighten me.

It was past eleven. The report had eaten the evening the way the reports always did, and I had let it, because letting work eat the evening meant I did not have to go home and sit across from Mara in the silence we had been building for three years like two people laying bricks in the dark. My phone had buzzed twice around nine — her name, *Mara,* lighting the desk — and both times I had turned it face down and told myself I would call her back when I finished this section. I never finished the section. There is always another section. That is the whole secret of a wasted life, if you want it: there is always another section, and you can always tell yourself you'll call her back.

When I finally shut the laptop the office was that particular kind of dead quiet that office buildings get at night, the hum of the servers and nothing else, the long carpet stretching off into dark cubicles like a field after a battle. The elevators were down for the night — they always shut the elevators after ten, some maintenance schedule nobody had ever explained to me — so I took the stairs at the end of the hall, the gray fire-stairs I had used a thousand times, down toward the parking garage in the basement.