Trigger Warning: This story contains inappropriate sexual workplace behavior and sexual scenes.

Inspired by the song and music video “Surfing the Warm Industry” by Kashmir

1

The letters had been coming for quite some time. Tucked into the closed frame of the front door like forgotten AA pamphlets. Nel made it a point to never read his girlfriend’s letters or go through her phone. This time was different, it wasn’t going to be like the last relationship. And it hadn’t been. So far at least. This one had been going on for six months longer and this time things were a lot calmer.

Eva was already at the table when Nel made his way into the kitchen. It was a Tuesday. Letter day. There the letter was lying next to her coffee with the back facing up with their address and her name typed clearly. Never a stamp, never a return address.

“Job open up?” Nel asked, pouring the remnants of what used to be a full pot at the start of the morning into his mug.

“Mhm. It’s a receptionist position at that firm on eighth .” Her red lipstick never left the lines of her mouth and the rest of her outfit also fell perfectly into line. Not a crease nor fold out of shape.

“Wonderful.” He chuckled.

She merely glanced up from the paper she had been reading. Her buttered toast was forgotten on the blue ceramic plate.

“You’re not gonna open it?”

“Open what?” Her eyes returned to scanning.

“The uh…the letter.”

“No, I’ll read it later.”

Nel shifted his weight to lean against the sink.

“Who are they from?”

“Nel…”

“I’m just asking.” His free hand went up in defense.

Eva checked her watch.

“Eight-thirty. I gotta go. Love you, babe.” She grabbed her things along with the letter and dropped them into her purse. She planted a short kiss on Nel’s cheek then turned searching the ring connecting her jangling keys for the one that belonged to the car.

“I…”

The door closed behind her.

“...love you too.” Nel sighed. He washed and dried his cup then looked around. Clean. Everything was spotless. He slumped into the chair opposite the one his girlfriend had just occupied. He stared at her chair listlessly. Thoughts flowed around his head like trapped dust.

Resurfacing the heads on the engine of the GNX.

Those bastards at the site who won’t call him back about paychecks.

That damn letter.

2

Eva found herself in a pool of warmth as she went through the first few weeks of her job.

The warm air flowed from the vents onto her desk.

The warm lights on the high vaulted ceilings. Timers and sensors made the light strengthen as the dark nights fell outside.

A warm hand on her shoulder.

Warm fingers on that hand made their way down the front of her shirt.

Warm breath caressing her ears.

“You are absolutely beautiful.”

She could feel the lust drip from her boss's teeth. His breath became short and clipped.

He pressed himself closer.

“You free tonight Eva?”

His room was warm.

Yet the whole rest of the house was feverish.

The space in the bed where his body was felt warm, but the rest of the space under the sheets was chilled.

It was exhausting.

Just laying there.

His back was lined with sweat.

His spine rose and fell heavily from the effort.

3

She had been gone all night. Over the phone, she gave an excuse. Someone whose office could only be reached easily by elevator in that building needed something done. Reports needed looking over, documents needed copying, people needed to be called, and Nel lay in bed as he imagined his girlfriend’s hand wrapped around a black receiver only a few miles away.

“I wonder if she’s thinking of me?” He asked this out loud. A singular moment after that, he dashed it from his mind.

Of course, she isn’t. He couldn’t even fathom the number of things that were on her mind as she sat at that giant desk.

He turned over, drawing the sheets over his shoulders. The bed was comfortably sized for two people, but Nel moved so close to the edge that one wrong move would land him on the bedroom floor.

It was hard to sleep, but he must have been because he woke up the next day right in the middle of the bed. The rest of the sheets were empty, but there was an imprint on the other pillow. So at least she came home.

4

The kitchen tiles were chilled from the open window above the sink. The wind brushed underneath her hair. Chris didn’t even allow her to take her hair down before he took her. Her cardigan hung off her shoulder, crumpled from the rush of putting her clothes back on.

She could see that the floor of the kitchen was littered with the filtered light from the bedroom. Nel always kept a night light on in the bathroom in case she came in after he fell asleep.

The light was like a pathway. It was so easy. She knew that Nel would be on his side, his back facing her side.

But she didn’t dare to even look.

She made her way to the couch. Underneath she had hidden an emergency bag.

A change of clothes.

Heels.

Lotion.

Every makeup sample she had collected over the years.

She didn’t dare use the sink, she could shower at the gym at work.

She took one last look at the bedroom door. She could almost hear the rising and falling of his breathing.

The front door made little noise as she left.

5

Months went by and never was there a late letter. They all arrived on time. All the same. Nel never opened them but he would study the envelope every time. The lookovers started as curious glances, but now throughout the week, his mind spun an endless wheel of schemes of how he could read the back of all the envelopes without her noticing.

It came to where any time he would hear something outside of the door his pulse would quicken. Adrenaline would flood down to his fingers. It was a high that cut through the drone of the AC and the whirring cars outside the window.

The idea of trying to catch whoever was leaving the letters did cross his mind, but only briefly. It became a part of his day, waiting for those letters. They never changed. He poured over the handwriting for hours. Trying to find some crease in the seal or dent in the corner. But each one was exactly the same. He didn’t want to ruin the perfect illusion that was this perfect person leaving these letters.

These letters had changed his girlfriend. He would look into her eyes and he could almost see the perfect handwriting on the back of the envelopes.

He had started to dream. Dream about what could be written within those envelopes. Were they even letters at all? Were they pictures? Who of? Stories? Nothing?

Was nothing in these envelopes? Was it all a sick joke?

All the while he asked himself these questions he wrote avid replies to these ghost letters in his mind. Not once did it occur to him to ask his girlfriend if he could see them much less if he could read them. But the words would appear before him. Sometimes the letters would be in blank ink, but sometimes they would be written with pure gold.

6

The new office, several floors above her old secretary desk, smelled like a new car. It was eerily clean. The girl who was there before did an immaculate job of clearing her things out when Chris told her he had found a new secretary to sleep with. Eva placed her things around the desk and just as she had put her IN and OUT boxes down, a new head peeked in through the window.

Chris had been warm, but John was cold. The heat of his bare chest never seemed to reach out to the tips of his fingers.

It was nice being able to look out the tall windows this time. Before, it had been the dead eggshell wall behind Chris’s headboard.

The scene on the other side of the glass tilted as John moved underneath her. She could see her cold world tilt.

7

She never left them out. Once he saw a letter, Nel never saw it again.

Isn’t it a lovely thing for a boyfriend to help out his busy girlfriend with laundry? He usually only did his own, but seeing her come home late and tired every night and pass her growing pile of dirty clothes gave him the idea.

 She liked her socks orderly. The letters were never in her sock drawer. Not that he deliberately checked, but it was just something that he noticed. He also noticed she would never put them anywhere in the bathroom. The bathroom had started to get a little disheveled, so he tidied things. She never kept the letters in there.

He never deliberately went to look for them, but he could never find them.

8

Chris was warm, John was cold, George was nice, and Les was not. It didn’t take long until the windows behind Eva’s desk started to welcome the clouds into the frame. The room was big and empty and the plaque on the door directly across from her read “Henry Layton COO”. There wasn’t an E in the last bit that Eva wished was there.

She looked up, almost as though she could see through the ceiling. She knew there was only one more set of clouds she needed to see through her window before it was all over.

She stopped coming back home. She stopped bothering to check her cell phone. She knew the voicemail box was full.

9

The envelope felt nice in his hands. Nel ran a finger down the crisp edge of the paper. The envelope was thin meaning there should only be one piece of paper inside. In his mind, he had about a hundred different letters written out, word for word. His palms sweat as he thumbed over the pasted lip.

Eva had her party tonight, she wouldn’t be back. In fact, she hadn’t been back for a very long time. Every time he looked at his phone to call her he thought of the long conversation it would inevitably lead to about how it was exhausting that he needed to know where she was and what she was doing every second of every day.

“He missed her.”

That thought floated around with the different letter drafts but it was in there somewhere. He missed her. A lot. And it hurt.

10

The music shook the walls and Eva could swear she saw the wrap-around windows sway along with the thundering bass that pumped from the speakers. The colored lights didn’t so much wash over her as they crashed, shoving her through their wake. There was movement and sound everywhere, but her eyes were focused.

Despite no change in light around him, at the center of the room was a man, seeming to create the effect of a spotlight around him. Glances were thrown in askance. Eyes scanned him.

It was like the stream of bodies surrounding him was blood that flowed from his seat, the heart of the room.

The building was Babel, and they were on the top floor.

11

Sweat peeled down Nel’s forehead as he ran up the stairs. His legs were moving faster than any elevator could carry him. His breath ripped and tore at his throat. He couldn’t speak but his mind was racing.

“No, no, no.”

The letter crumpled in his grip.

Not one of his imagined drafts had been right. He wasn’t even close.

He dared not stop to check his watch so he gambled glances as his wrist moved in front of him to grab the railing. 11:56.

12

Her wrist strained to bring her handbag up to check the contents. It was a lot heavier than she thought it was going to be. She looked around. Chris sulked in the corner, his face sour. John had his elbow resting above the head of a young woman, his mouth twisted up. The woman looked up into his eyes and smiled softly. Eva’s stomach twisted.

13

At this point, Nel’s feet had missed several steps resulting in him crashing into the railing and a trickle of blood following the curve of his face and down his neck. Sweat mingled with the red, forming a halo.

Finally, he reached the last door. His heaving chest begged him to rest, to stop. His arms didn’t feel like his own as they forced the door open.

14

George was on his phone. The light from his screen coagulated with the lights that flashed from the ceiling into a sickly color on his face. His thumb scrolled slowly and mindlessly, his eyes glazed over.

Les leaned up against a beam that was painted red to hide the industrial rust underneath. His arms were crossed, lips moving as though they were trying to speak, but their owner couldn’t think of any words that would sound good if they were shouted over party music.

There was a girl who sat beside the important man on the plush couch. His cold fingers drew her closer, but the soft angles of her body silently fought against the manipulation.

To Eva, the noise of the party began to fall away. The sound was dampened by the rush of blood in her ears. As she moved toward the couch, guards began to notice and make their way to flank her.

The man on the couch raised a hand signaling for them to step aside. They did so and Eva, with her eyes still fixed on the girl, came closer.

The girl stood up, her feet uneasy beneath her. She greeted Eva with a kiss on the cheek and a whisper in her ear.

“Thank you.”

15

The door crashed open and, through the sea of bodies, Nel could make out Eva’s form in the center of the room. The warm lights above her made her look as though she was on fire. Her body was pressed close to a woman in a blinding silver dress.

Nel watched in terror as Eva’s hand dived into her purse.

“EVA!”

His voice split through the deafening music. The song continued, but the voices stopped. Everyone turned.

16

The last thing Eva heard was her name. She turned to see Nel framed by the doorway. Her heart dropped. He was supposed to be at home. He was supposed to be safe in the kitchen. Safe in the garage with tools in his beautiful hands.

A tear fell.

It was too late.

Epilogue

The bomb at the bottom of Eva’s purse was powerful. The wavering windows burst into the open sky above the lit streets and glass fell like deadly rain upon the sidewalk below. Flames erupted and smoke billowed into the sky and met with the stars above.

The kitchen sink faucet in Eva and Nel’s apartment continued to drip, unbothered. Along with the rhythmic plunking of water onto stainless steel came the fluttering of paper from underneath the door. The final envelope lay on the cold entryway floor. It wasn’t sealed and there was no paper inside. Where their address should have been was only three words.

“Babel has fallen.”