Melissa is either going over the cut list or thinking about the doorknob, about the exact way it might nudge her cunt.

The offices are dark now, all but mine and hers, this last day, these last hours before Christmas break. I've been enjoying the unusual peace of these quiet offices as I prepare for next week's reviews. Mostly I've been thinking about Melissa, about her long, slim legs squeezing together rhythmically as she stares at her PC screen saver.

We're on the seventh floor of central division headquarters. The corporation wants our space eliminated—they want us downsized drastically. Melissa was brought in from the outside to do the job.

It's been a long day for her. She's had to interview everybody. She's tired. She has her legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles under her desk. She leans back in her chair, puts her hands behind her head, and arches her back. She can feel it most especially just below her ribs, her slim tummy, but also the tips of her breasts pressing the soft cups of her silky little bra. And this is when she squeezes her legs together, those muscles of her inner thighs, and an instant later she clenches her cunt, and then her asshole, a little rock and roll between them, so that her pelvis lifts almost imperceptibly.

It's not clear that she can come this way, or that she even wants to. Her PC screen saver shows white gulls swooping across a slow sunset on the shimmery sea. Now and then a fish jumps—you only see the ripples really, hear the little splash—and sometimes a swooping gull seizes the jumping fish, pinches it firmly in its beak, then swallows as it soars away. It is these jumping fish that get to Melissa—she associates them with the twitching of her clit. It wouldn't be fair to move her hand there, would it? Sometimes two fish jump, one right after the other, and plop plop they fall back into the screen saver sea. That's especially sexy, that little plop plop. "Oh," she wishes with a sigh, "someone to suck my little clit just so." She doesn't use those words, of course. It's all in the internal flow of the screen saver.

When everything goes black, the moon comes up. It goes through a complete cycle in one slow curve across the screen, crescent at the edge, full at the apex, final crescent just before going off the end. During the lunar journey, night clouds cross the screen, sometimes covering the moon, and black waves lap slender silver light. Screen-saver sunset requires almost eleven minutes. Night is over in three. Sand glistens in the dawn sun. The tide is out, and two children, a boy and a girl, stroll the dunes holding hands. They play tag. They spread suntan lotion over each other. As the sun follows the moon, as sandpipers twitter and peck, the children age into teens, their bodies fill gently, slightly, and in the in-house edition these young sweethearts gracefully remove each other's swimsuits before splashing thigh-high into the surf. My private version of the in-house edition goes one step further: with luscious shades of pink and purple spreading across the sky, the boy and the girl share a tender kiss. That's not quite all—just as the sea engulfs the last of the sun, at that last instant, with the slimmest band of bright gold light lining the horizon, the girl slides her face slowly down the boy's body. That's what I do with my spare time—enhance these mildly erotic screen savers.

Melissa has her numbers, her targets, but it's not clear she has my screen saver. Maybe she has my office mate's—those fat penguins riding antique bicycles on ice. One penguin at first, then more and more. Lots of narrowly missed collisions. Occasionally a bike spills, and the penguin slides across the screen, off the edge. When enough penguins get on the screen, the ice begins to crack. It tips up, big blue-white sheets of ice, and the penguins and bicycles slide swiftly into the sea. That's been a big seller this year—penguins on bikes. I gave Craig the idea, but Craig got most of the credit.

Or maybe Melissa is just looking at names and numbers. She sighs. Maybe she's looking at my name now, my numbers. She links her fingers and presses her clasped hands down her trim tummy, smoothing the upper lap of her trousers to just above her mons veneris. She really could come now—the pressure is too delicious, so she takes her hands away, takes a deep breath.