That heat

I was sitting next to Andy on the steps that go from our floor at work to the one above, talking unserious stuff when one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen came down. We had to get up to let her pass; I watched her go. When she was gone I told Andy that she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen and he replied that she had no sex appeal. As if it was a fact.
"What do you mean, she's got no sex appeal?"
"She's got no sex appeal. Too fake."
"It's subjective. Sex appeal is subjective. To me she couldn't have more sex appeal. She has so much sex appeal to me that I can hardly believe that it is a subjective quality, and I'd be convinced that she has sex appeal for you too if you hadn't just said that she doesn't."
"She looks like a hairdresser," Andy droned. I flushed with anger.
"Fuck you!"
We decided it would be better not to sit there blocking the stairs any longer. Until that short break in the afternoon I'd been working hard and without stop, relentlessly trying to get things done. You can imagine that I felt the need for the break so I went to Andy's office at the far end of the corridor and sat down in front of his desk. I told him I couldn't think of anything to say. In response, he offered me some muesli from a box on his desk and I ate a handful of it dry. Then he suggested we play table football. I said that would be a good idea, but I didn't want to play against him, so couldn't we tape up one of the goals and team up against it?
"You only think in black and white," he admonished me. I didn't know what he meant. We went upstairs to the table football.

Just next to the table football table was another table, one that wasn't usually there and it had seated around its edges several serious looking people. We backed off and down the stairs again and decided to sit there on a step because there didn't seem anything better to do. I had asked Andy on the way down whether he didn't want to go to the bar around the corner for a beer.
"It's too cold," he replied.

There we were, sitting on our step when we heard someone come down them and we turned around and I saw that girl I'd noticed before in the cafeteria and I swear that she is one of the most beautiful girls there is. I can't describe her properly: when I look at her I see though a fogged up window. No sharp edges. Everything's been smoothed out. I can't get the picture of her descending those stairs out of my mind.

***

It's evening now and it's deadly quiet in the thermal bath complex. The walls are white and the ceiling high and corridors long. My girlfriend is at my side. We walk on and on until I start thinking that we are in fact dead and stuck in an afterlife of infinite sterility, and then the steps appear. We climb them and emerge into the changing rooms. We share a booth; as always my girlfriend is ready long before I am, and so I rush. Soon we are out in the quiet sauna area: the few people restrict themselves to whispers. And the occasional heavy panting. A sign on a windowed wooden door says ninety degrees, dry.
"Should we go in?" asks my girlfriend.
"Why not."
Here we are alone. There are wooden steps and wooden walls and wooden ceilings and the two of us. All empty space, so we spread out our towels on a chosen spot each and lie down. My girlfriend spots the hourglass (or fifteen minute glass?) on the wall, gets up and turns it, then goes back to her lying position. Her eyes close and very soon a jerk in her arm and a jerk in her leg tell me she's entering sleep. Now she's only breathing. In the silent heat I start to sweat. My mind empties. All is wood.

The door opens and I raise my head to look. In a rising surge of hot blood I recognise her: the girl from the staircase at work today, the beautiful girl. Her towel she holds in one hand down at her right side; her open body flows in unblemished smoothness. She scans the room slowly, then fixes her gaze on my eyes. She's recognised me, I think as I look back. But no, her face stays still, no sign of change. How odd though: she doesn't look away, she's simply staring straight at me without any discernable thought on her face. And now she starts moving again, towards me. Staring and stepping slowly and deliberately. Taking up more and more of my field of vision. I sit up to face her; still she advances, up the step my feet now rest on, and there she stops, for an instant, stares, opens her hand to let her towel drop, and then, in a flash she mounts my lap. My mind explodes. All that I see now are whirling blurs of skin and wood.

"Wake up!"
My head jerks up automatically and my eyes open to the sight of my girlfriend covering my lap with her towel.
"Jesus, you fall asleep and all of a sudden you're as hard as a rock!" It's her scolding tone again.
"I was dreaming of you, my love."
"Sure you were." Scathing sarcasm. "But we're in public. Get a grip!"
The heat was soon gone.