Lauren felt naughty sneaking into the men’s room. It was a no-no, a forbidden place for women. She couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed, but also couldn’t put her finger on why, exactly, she felt that disappointment. What had she been expecting? A condom dispenser by the door? Dirty words and pictures scrawled in marker along the walls? Pornography stacked neatly in the corner? Aside from the two urinals, and the blue tiles, the room was no different from the women’s on the other side of the elevators.
The blonde shook her head. At least she had a place to shower. She took a step back towards the hallway, but stopped herself.
Yes, she needed to go to the bathroom. But wasn’t she already in a bathroom? Did it really make sense to risk getting caught by the elevators? To walk all the way up the hall, around the corner, and down the far hall alongside Suite 2650?
No, she told herself, glancing back in the direction of the two overflowing toilets. There was a reason the men of her office were trudging up and down stairs during the day. And Lauren wasn’t exactly equipped to use the urinals to her right.
But still…
“What am I doing?” Lauren asked herself as she crossed the room again, away from the door. She stepped into the handicapped stall, pulled the stall door shut behind her, and glanced down at the drain at her feet. She asked herself again, “What am I doing?”
But she was committed at that point. She squatted over the drain, closing her eyes as she did so and willing the bladders of any remaining male colleagues to hold out for a few seconds longer. She pissed into the drain, her stream joining that of the toilet-turned-water fountain beside her.
How, exactly, had she become so depraved? She was cumming in her boss’s office and pissing on the men’s room floor. She was sleeping at work and strutting around in nothing but heels. If this really were a poorly written online sex story, the next thing Lauren knew, she’d be bent over in the stairwell while one of her coworkers fucked her from behind. The blonde shook the thought from her head as she stood, hoping to nip the thought in the bud before that coworker got assigned a name and face.
But using the men’s room had been easier, she admitted. It was closer, for one. And while there was the fear of someone walking in, she’d dreaded each pass by the elevator bank and Audit department that she’d made on the way to the women’s room that day. Late at night or early the morning, Lauren would certainly be using the men’s room from that point on. During the day tomorrow, and Friday — well, that would have to wait.
Lauren washed her hands at the sink, dried them beneath the blower, and left a set of high-heeled, wet footprints in the blue rug on her way back to Suite 2600 rear door.
Dinner arrived a short time later, and while most of the remaining staff ate together in the conference room, Rachel joined Lauren in Lauren’s office. They talked a little about the day, with the blonde putting the best face on her current predicament, but most of their time was spent laying out their plans for the acquisition contract over the next two days. Given all that had happened, and despite the complete and total nudity of the blonde chomping away on her chicken tikka masala, their conversation was surprisingly mundane.
Dmitri and Mitch Oldenburg took off a bit after nine, leaving just Lauren and a handful of women left in the office. Ginger and Jessica both said goodnight soon after, the secretary and the intern heading home for a quick round of sleep before having to return in the morning. Rachel stopped in just after that to suggest that if Lauren wanted to spread out the conference room, Suite 2600 had pretty much emptied out.
The blonde lugged a few file folders down the hall, surprised to see that both Amy Melrose and Julie Lambourne were still around, and had also set up camp amid empty cartons of Indian food. Amy looked more nervous than Lauren as the girl pushed her way into the room, but Julie just smiled and made a comment about Lauren getting a change of scenery. Rachel followed behind, all four girls settling into their respective places around the conference table for another stretch of work.
Julie Lambourne, a paralegal who’d moved into the city from rural Pennsylvania, was every bit the looker that Rachel and Amy were. She was a blonde, like Lauren, and had a fairly similar build, even if it was hidden away beneath a pair of boot-cut, heather-gray pants and a periwinkle blue blouse. In fact, most of the women who made up the Commercial Transactions group were roughly the same body type — grown-up cheerleader types who looked like they might have been better fits for sales and marketing than compliance and governance. Lorraine Dorsett, who served as Bramley’s assistant, was an exception, but there was a preponderance of attractive women who worked in Suite 2600. Even their intern, Jessica, looked fit enough to be modeling for Eve Intimates instead of filing legal documents. Furthermore, the cumulative attractiveness of the twenty-sixth floor was not an outlier; Evelyn Apparel, as a whole, had been sued on more than one occasion for discrimination in its hiring policy, as many assumed the company based personnel decisions on looks.
“No, they’ve still got them,” Lauren answered Julie’s question about whether or not the hospital had returned her clothes. “Even though the psychiatrist has assured Dermatology that he’s put his finger on the root cause, they’re still running tests on everything just to make sure.” She sighed. “It’s probably a moot point anyways — Adams thinks they’ve probably cut most of my stuff to shreds for the tests themselves.”
“So you’ve got nothing?” Julie asked.
“No, I’ve got my work-out gear,” Lauren explained. “I guess I can wear that home on Friday.”
“You realize that Friday’s your birthday, right?” Rachel asked. “And that, even if we weren’t celebrating that, we’d be celebrating getting this contract off our backs?”
“And even if we weren’t celebrating that, we’d be celebrating the end of your nervous breakdown,” Amy added. If everything went according to plan, and Adams was right about the underlying anxiety that had caused Lauren’s initial breakout, she’d be able to put on a dress once the acquisition contract was finalized, and join her friends for a drink.
“Oh, god,” Lauren sighed. “I’d just settle for going home at that point.”
“No can do,” Rachel shook her head. “I’ll stop by your place tomorrow night and grab you something to wear.”
“Wait, better!” Julie squealed. “I’ve got a guy friend down in marketing, on the third floor. He’s always telling me that he’s got leftover or display stuff from promotions. I’ll call him tonight, and get him to send stuff up in the morning.”
Julie was demonstrably more excited about the prospect than Lauren was, but the naked blonde agreed. Given that she’d just lost her Evelyn Lane pantsuit and Eve Intimates bra and panties, it might be nice to pick up a few new high-end items to replace them. Only, she hoped that by the time that five o’clock rolled around on Friday, she’d be able to wear them without breaking out into hives.
As the clock ticked past eleven, Julie and Amy left together. Rachel wasn’t far behind, leaving the blonde girl naked and alone for her second night in a row. Lauren, though, stayed put in the conference room, her head in her work. She yawned, exhausted both physically and psychologically, but stayed at it, figuring she could get a jump on tomorrow.
***
Lauren blinked once, then twice, taking in her surroundings. Unfortunately, the wicked kink she’d suffered from sleeping on her duffel bag the night before had nothing on aches she was no doubt going to battle that Thursday, owing the position she found herself in. She awoke with a shiver, lifting her head and finding a sheet of printer paper stuck to one cheek. Her files and folders were spread out around her, and she herself was still sitting, slumped over, in the leather office chair.
Apparently, Lauren hadn’t made it out of the conference room. She rubbed her eyes, and glanced down at her watch. Five thirty. Luckily, she hadn’t overslept, and been woken up by one of the early arrivals. She remembered taking a bathroom break — to the women’s room, that time – at about half past twelve, but must have drifted off some time after that.
She gathered her things, and tossed a few empty cartons from someone else’s dinner the night before into the trash. The sun hadn’t yet come up, the room lit by the fluorescent motion-sensor lights that blinked on once Lauren had begun to stir. The lights followed the naked blonde down the hallway, illuminating her path past the reception desk, Fuji’s office, and then Steve Ellison’s beyond that. Her own office brightened as she stepped through the door, and the girl almost tripped over the blanket and pillow Ginger had so considerately brought in for her the previous morning.
Oh well, Lauren told herself. Tonight.
The thought was both comforting and unnerving at the same time. On the one hand, Lauren was looking forward to actually laying her head down on a real pillow, a luxury that had managed to elude her the previous two nights. On the other, she was stuck here at work for one more evening before she’d finally be free.
She missed her apartment in Chelsea. She missed her bed. And she missed her pajamas. She’d been naked since Tuesday afternoon, but there was light around the corner — she had only thirty-six hours to go before she had to hand in the Cortland Menswear acquisition contract. And, hopefully, that meant that she’d be able to put her clothes back on, the psychosomatic affliction dissipating with her stress. Still, it wasn’t the nudity that had Lauren dreading the day — it was looming deadline.
The blonde woke her computer as she pulled together her shower things from inside her duffel bag. Shampoo, soap, conditioner, lotion, and her towel. She picked up her hair dryer, but thought twice about it. The sprinklers in the men’s room would remain on until she shut them off from her office, after all, so drying her hair would have to wait for a follow-up trip. She plopped herself down behind her desk, pulled up Brian Pinova’s interface, and was getting ready to execute when a conversation from the day prior popped into her head.