Chapter 124

Garrison met you at the elevators and the three of you rode down to the basement levels together. You’d only been down there a couple of times so far during your internship and the little warren network of storage rooms and cold concrete corridors was a bit of a maze.

Your boss led you in what felt like a circle but ended up leading to a simple steel door. He fished out a keyring from his pockets and opened the deadbolt, then flicked it back closed once he had the door open so the deadbolt would act as a doorstop. “Alright. You two know the filing system. Get all this mess cleaned up and organized, and get the boxes back in order. Looks like they had to take some meals down here too, so make sure you empty the garbage.”

“Sounds good, sir,” you said.

“Good,” he nodded. “Don’t get yourselves locked out. If you slam this door and it’s unlocked, the lock has a tendency to slip just enough to jam it and you’ll need to come all the way back up to get me. And I won’t be happy coming back down here. Got it?”

“Absolutely, Mr Garrison,” Sabrina said. “Don’t get ourselves locked out.”

“Good. I’ll leave you to it,” he nodded and strode off confidently back towards the elevators.

The interior of the storage room was carpeted but had bare concrete walls. It looked like about two-thirds of it was sturdy steel shelving units filled with banker’s boxes of files, while the nearer third of the room had a couple of big working tables, an old photocopier and a beat-up old couch in one corner. The lights overhead were horrible halogen affairs that you knew would give you a headache if you spent too long down there.

“You think Torez and Miller fucked on the couch?” Sabrina asked, shooting you a smirk as she stepped further into the room.

“I think Torez has an 80% chance of being gay, but Miller is definitely a Chad who used to say ‘no homo’ unironically,” you said, following her in. You couldn’t help but check her out from behind, the way her slim waist and cute bum looked in her professional skirt.

“Oh boy,” Sabrina sighed, turning and catching you looking but just shooting you a naughty look. “First you can’t talk with secretaries, and now your Gaydar is way off. Miller is guaranteed gay. Just because he was a frat boy during his undergrad doesn’t mean he’s straight. Torez is the one who would be in the closet.”

“I had no idea,” you laughed. You went to the first work table, which had at least a dozen files scattered across it, along with some Legal volumes that the two associates must have been using to try and find precedents or something. There were also crusty boxes of takeout that had to have covered more than one meal.

“You know, we’re all alone down here,” Sabrina said, stepping up next to you and beginning to shuffle papers away from the dirtier mess you were dealing with.

“Sabrina,” you said, “We’re following the rules. Not when we’re at work.”

“I know. And with the new bitch upstairs, we’re going to need to be even more cautious,” Sabrina sighed. “But, and I’m just pitching this, was the rule not fooling around at work, or in the office? Because technically we’re not in the office, we’re in the basement.”