The alarm continues its muffled testimony.
She is warm against the wall and I am between her and the rest of the stairwell and there is not much stairwell remaining,and her hands on my sides are doing something to my nervous system that my continuing professional development programme did not adequately prepare me for, and I am making sounds that I spent eleven years not making in professional or quasi-professional environments, and I find I cannot apply the required level of effort to stop, because she responds to every single one of them with a rolling urgency against me and a very specific expression that I am now, finally, learning to read correctly.
The expression means: more.
I oblige.
And then, with the timing of a risk event that arrives precisely within its stated probability window, the alarm stops.
The silence hits the stairwell like a dropped spreadsheet.
A beat. Two beats. Three.
The magnetic lock on the door above us disengages with a sound like a gunshot, and the door swings open, and the stairwell fills with industrial overhead light and the silhouette of an individual who is large even by the standards of a building full of Orcs, broad-shouldered and grey-tusked and with the aura of a person who has run an actuarial firm for twenty-three years and has personally reviewed my last four performance evaluations.
"Drokk Guumstrop, Chief Executive Officer of Guumstrop and Varik Actuarial Associates and the individual who signed both my initial employment contract and my last three annual salary reviews, comes to a complete and total stop in the doorway.
He looks directly at me, his gaze sweeping from my dishevelled shirt to my loosened tie to the specific angle at which Livia is currently pressed against the concrete wall.
He looks at Livia, whose glasses are askew and whose hair has come entirely free of its usual neat arrangement and whoseblouse is displaying a degree of structural compromise that would not pass any reasonable professional dress code audit.
He looks, with an air of grim methodical assessment, at the navy blue cardigan that is draped over the metal railing approximately four steps below us, one sleeve dangling in a manner that suggests it was removed with some urgency and without particular attention to its subsequent storage location.
His expression moves through several distinct phases in approximately two seconds.
"Narod," he says.
"Drokk," I say. My voice is the other voice still, which is not ideal.
The silence extends for exactly the length of time it takes my blood pressure to "The all-clear," Drokk says, with the flatness of a man who has decided that some variables are outside his current scope, "has been issued. Your team is returning to their floors."
He reaches into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, extracts a crisp business card, and extends it toward Livia. She reaches past my arm to take it. "Call if you ever need anything," Drokk adds.
A pause. "Take your time." He pulls the door shut behind him with great deliberate care.
The magnetic lock clicks back into place.
Livia's face is pressed against my shoulder and her shoulders are shaking.
CHAPTER 11
LIVIA
The CEO's footsteps fade up the stairwell and I'm still pressed against Narod's chest, laughing so hard my ribs ache, and Narod is making a sound I've come to recognise over the past few weeks as his laugh, this low, careful rumble he seems to deploy very precisely, like he's been rationing it his whole life and is only now learning that the supply might be renewable.
"Your boss," I manage, when I can actually form words again that aren't just helpless giggles.
"Yes," Narod confirms, with the kind of patience I've noticed he reserves specifically for my moments of conversational incoherence.
"Your boss just walked in on us," I continue, still trying to process the entire mortifying sequence of events, "actively making out in the stairwell of your office building."
"Yes," he repeats, and there's the faintest hint of amusement threading through that single syllable.
I press my hand to my mouth, another wave of disbelieving laughter threatening to escape. "And he looked at the situation, looked at you, looked at me, and then he just said 'takeyour time' like he'd interrupted you updating a pivot table or something."
Narod's chest vibrates under my cheek and his arm tightens around me by approximately three inches, which, given the circumference of the arm in question, is a significant development. "Drokk is," he begins, with the care of a man who is choosing each word like he's defusing something, "a pragmatic individual. He has mentioned on several occasions, during performance reviews, that my social isolation represented a long-term actuarial risk to my productivity metrics."
I pull back far enough to look at him. The overhead lighting is not kind to anyone but it is particularly not kind to a six-foot-nine Orc with dishevelled hair and a shirt that has come entirely free of his trousers, and he still somehow looks like the best thing I have seen in this specific calendar year.
