I was too far away to hear anything, so I can only imagine - she swore under her breath, as I’ve seen her to do, clicking the mouse rapidly, her index finger furiously tapping away under the clicking that quickly blended into one continuous note. Her arm and wrist move in circles, the cursor on the screen unresponsive to the wild motions of the mouse scurrying across the desk. She sighed, I think, and placed her hands in front of her, the palms of her hands on the edge of the desk, pushing her chair and herself away, wheels moving softly over industrial carpet.

She slid off the chair, more or less, her knees held together, bare skin touching, her skirt (short and tight) only curling up a slight bit; it was a moment later that she was now kneeling, the heels of her feet separated from the soles of her pointy-toed-high-heeled shoes. Her back had arched, her grip now on the arms of the chair, the buttons of her blouse strained against the threads. From the right angle, you could have seen the white bra beneath the blouse. From the right angle you could have seen the pale skin peeking out from fabric pulled apart and barely held together.

A puff of breath out of the corner of her mouth hit the wisps of hair infringing on the corners of her face. The hair rode upwards and danced, lithe and curling atop the air until it floated its way back down. A futile exercise. She bent over now, hands and knees on the carpet, crawling towards the back, trying to reach the computer lying in the dust-bunnies and crumbs in the underworld forgotten by the light of the fluorescent bulbs above. She held her breath, the dust thickly caked in the furthest corners threatening her idly.

She straightened out her arm, now balancing only on her left hand and her knees. Then, stretching further, she reached out as far as she could, mindful of the dust and grime, her opposite knee lifting off the carpet. It was a precarious balancing act. Her back straightened and then hyper-extended, arching away underneath the fabric of her blouse. Her leg lifted higher and higher, skirt pulled apart, open, wide.

The power button was in reach, and her fingertip barely reached it as she was stretching as far as she could. She bit her lip. And stretched some more.

The screens went black, stunned almost by the sudden loss of power. They flickered only once more in the dying throes of pixels gone quiet. The computer itself stopped humming, if only for a moment, then lurching back to life. The fans whirring again. The harddrive noisily clicking and humming, droning away under the startup routines. “Windows XP,” the screen announced in a black background.

And her foot hit my leg. The shoe jostled off her hanging leg, the sigh of relief she had just expelled suddenly held in mid-air.

Slowly she crawled backwards, her butt wiggling its way out first, her head coming out from under the desk, her weight now on her knees as her feet nestled themselves under her butt; one foot naked, one foot heeled.

“Save me,” she said, looking up behind her wire-framed glasses, her lips parted just enough, my eyes continuing to roll off her face and bury themselves in the darkness of her cleavage. From here, I could see all the way down her shirt, to the white lace that hugged the curves of her breasts. “Save me from these spreadsheets.”

I kind of cocked my head to the side, and I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m not an Excel expert,” I said, as I reached down to help her up and onto her feet. The shoe lay off to the side, and I knelt down, picking it up, and offering it to her foot.

“My prince,” I could barely hear her whisper.

“This isn’t a fairy tale,” I said, her foot now fully in the shoe, placed gently back on the carpet. I stood up, and nodded my head to the screen. “There you go,” the login prompt cheerfully reminding us that all communications and actions were being monitored and access was granted only to the appropriate individuals. I turned around and left her to her spreadsheets, the familiar grid of lines horizontal and vertical, the cells small and rectangular, capturing as much data as they could possibly hold.