The Desalinated Siren

A transparent, watery, naked woman no bigger than a finger emerges from the liquid trickling down over the top of the fountain. She dances over the stainless-steel top as if it’s a stage while singing the sweetest burbling song ever heard. David yaws back. At once, his hand releases the tap controlling the bubbler. He yanks the water bottle he was filling away from the spout. The flow is cut off, and she disappears with a splash. All the water running over the top of the metal fountain vanishes down the centre drain. Water droplets land on David’s white business shirt with Mercurial Insurance embroidered above the pocket.

Did I just hallucinate that?

David looks about for confirmation from someone else of the inexplicable spectacle he’s just witnessed, but of course, there’s no one there.

The dim fifth floor of Mercurial Insurance Pty Ltd has been cordoned off for renovations. All the desks and chairs are covered in white painters’ sheets. Pallets of tiles, rolls of carpet, and cans of paint are dotted about the floor. Some tools the workmen forgot to take with them lay on the covered desks. All the blinds are closed to the view of the city. David looks back at the water fountain in front of him.

I’ll video it this time.

His hand reaches for his smartphone inside his pocket, but it’s not there. He’s left it in his desk drawer. David turns the fountain back on. Water arcs out of the bubbler and for a minute David simply stands there watching and listening to the hum of the fountain’s motor as it kicks in to cool the tank.

Maybe it was a trick of light and music from outside.

The water flow is cut off as David releases the tap and starts to walk back towards the lift, water bottle in hand. A melodic chuckle comes from behind him. He spins around to see the tiny water sprite singing and prancing over the water bubbler’s top for a moment before she melts away.

David races to the lift and hammers the button for the third floor. He shakes his shirt with agitation trying to dry the damp spots away.

💧💦💧

Riding down two floors, he recalls the weird events of this Monday morning leading up to seeing that—whatever it was. He’d been going to fill his Mercurial Insurance water bottle from the fountain on the third floor where he works. However, Harry, his co-worker who sits opposite him, said that it was broken. Instead of going to the second or fourth floor where there would be a queue, he decided to go to the fifth guessing that the water cooler was still working despite the refurbishment happening.

Tradies still need to drink.

Standing at the fifth-floor bubbler, he was thinking about how cheap Mercurial Insurance was, installing those school-style water fountains; how infantilizing they were—just like the gold star employee reward system. The only reason he drank from the fountains was that the desalinated ocean water was filtered so many times it was guaranteed to not contain any contaminants other than fluoride.

Ugh, fluoride in drinking water.

He shuddered at the thought. He remembered the argument he’d got into with Sal from marketing months earlier.

💧💦💧

‘Water without any mineral content at all isn’t actually that healthy,’ David countered when she’d been positively gushing about the plant’s opening in the staffroom one lunchtime.

‘David,’ Sal snapped, ‘we’ve been losing our freshwater supply in this state for years now. This is going to save our city.’ Sal slammed the door of the microwave oven shut on her macaroni for one meal and pounded the buttons to set the time. She turned her head towards David, who was sitting at the staff-room table eating his buckwheat, nutspread and sprout sandwich, and continued. ‘And all you can do is complain about some tiny health thing, which isn’t even a health thing—’

—a diet without enough sodium isn’t a small thing, Sal. It can kill you,’ he retorted.

Sal rolled her eyes. ‘Then stop being such a bean sprout and put some sprinkle some salt on your damn food for once. I’m glad we’re not going to die of thirst and that this government has finally done something useful.’

‘What are you doing down here with us plebs, Sal? Shouldn’t you be at the fourth floor with your corporate buddies?’ Harry asked.

‘Some jerk put aluminum foil over his lunch before reheating it in the microwave and disappearing. We’re lucky the whole building didn’t short out.’

‘Eggs with brown shells are better for you than eggs with white shells,’ Harry had interjected before putting a forkful of fatty BBQ pork into his mouth. ‘Read it online. Did you know?’ He asked with his mouth full.

David and Sal both stared at Harry.

‘How does that relate to this conversation?’ Sal asked, shaking her head. Harry had sat back in his chair, opened his hands, palms up, and flung specks of BBQ pork from his fork across the staff room floor. ‘Health.’

💧💦💧

It was while David was standing at the fountain ruminating about this debate, eggshells, and waiting for his water bottle to fill that he heard it. The sound of a female voice so pure in tone, so feminine, so delightful that his mouth dropped when it graced his ears. He looked down and saw it: the tiny naked female figure carved as if from living, moving, sinuous ice, dancing and singing across the top of the water fountain.

He shakes his head and himself out of the reverie. Bossa Nova crackles through the lift speakers. He’s nearly arrived on the third floor. The lift is so damn slow and out-of-date, like everything at Mercurial Insurance’s offices. David pops the top of his water bottle up and starts to drink from it absent-mindedly.

‘Woah!’ The water that he’s just had is the sweetest, most thirst-quenching liquid to ever pass over his tongue. He brings his fingers to his lips.

The lift doors open to bright fluorescent lights and the third floor. In an open maze of workstations, each equipped with a monitor and office chair, sit around fifty or so depressed sacks of human beings, emptied of hopes and dreams and filled with takeaway and online media instead.

He looks around to see if his supervisor, Nel, is on the floor. She isn’t. David scurries over to his desk, leans down like a wild animal hiding from a hunter, and pulls open his drawer. His phone’s gone flat. The battery’s been pettering out over the last month, lasting shorter and shorter periods with each recharge. David slowly rises up, cautious as a rabbit, and hisses over the partition to Harry.

‘Psst. Hey, Harry.’

Harry has earbuds in and is nodding along to a beat. Between the movement and his massive mottled brown beard, it looks like some hedgehog is humping his face. ‘Mmmm. Yep. What Dave?’

‘Come and take a look at something with me.’

‘I need to finish these claims.’

It’s unlike Harry to be conscientious. He barely even launders his clothes judging from the tomato sauce stain crusted on that shirt since last Thursday. His clothes have more wrinkles than a nursing home. In fact, David has never seen anyone else make the Mercurial Insurance navy slacks and tie, and white business shirt look so much like a bum’s outfit. No. ‘Need to finish these claims’ was code for I’m hungover and can’t be fucked getting out of this chair.

‘No. Come now. Come on. Bring your phone,’ David insists.

‘Dave, can’t it wait half an hour?’

‘Now, Harry.’

One of Harry’s eyebrows cocks as he pulls out an earbud, places his hands on rotund belly and regards the usually relaxed David.

‘Okaaay,’ Harry drawls. ‘Is it gonna take long?’

‘Nah. A couple of minutes. Tops.’

Harry sets his calls to pause and with a dramatic groan lifts his massive bulk off his chair, phone in hand. He waddles behind David to the lift. They both look about to make sure hawkish Nel isn’t scanning the place for absenteeism.

Safe inside the lift, David presses the button for the fifth floor.

‘Why’re we going to the fifth floor? Aren’t they still doing renos up there?’

‘There’s…something you need to see.’

‘Dave, are you ok? You seem, I dunno, more high strung than usual.’

‘Yes. Fine. What? Highly strung? Who said—I don’t know. I need you to look at something. It’s kind of private though. Has to be just between us.’

The only sounds are from the motor of the lift and the Bossa Nova soundtrack.

‘Dave, you know I’m not gay, don’t you?’

‘What? Why would you even ask me that?’

‘Well. I’m very attractive to men and women. They’re always checking me out, you know. And there’s talk in the office too. You seem like the type.’

‘The type? In what way?’

‘Oh, you know neat around the edges. You’re a veggie.

‘You mean, vegan—’

‘Yeah, that’s what I said. A veggie-an—whatever. What’s more, it’s the whole Buddhist thing. The Yoda, yoga, meditation thing. The mission you went on trying to get the company to make the new uniforms out of that mushed up pineapple and zebra poo fabric—’

‘Huh? I just wanted cotton not polyester blend ‘cause it makes me sweat. You’re talking about the manure mud huts in Kenya conversation. Why do things get twisted around here?’

‘Yeah, yeah, but your ideas about using natural personal products too. Mate, I’ve never moisturised. People add these things up, you know.’

David looks at his reflection in the glassy wall of the elevator. Hair: short front, back and sides; pressed shirt and trousers, clean shaven. Harry looks like he cuts his own hair every few years and hasn’t been able to see his shoes over his gut for a decade. How Harry ended up with the most gold stars and employee of the month every month mystified David. Never a day passed when Harry wasn’t out having cigarette break or putting his feet up on the staffroom lunch table eating a packet of Cheatoz at least three or four times. Nor did the man seem to have an IQ over 90.

‘For a start,’ David says, ‘the word is pronounced vegan. Taking care of your appearance and having spiritual beliefs does not make you gay, Harry. And what—what would it matter if I were?

‘Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with being gay. I want you to know I like women. That’s all.’

‘Yeah, your comparisons between our colleagues and porn actresses you see on Red Tube gave me that impression. Anyway, this thing there’s nothing sexual about it—well, actually, maybe a little bit.’

‘If there’s something wrong with your dick, you gotta get looked at by a doctor. We’re not close enough for that. I’m your co-worker. I just wanna make that clear and set some boundaries. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t diagnose you with a bit of help from the internet, of course.’

‘Harry! No! I saw a little watery naked woman up there.’

The lift doors open.

‘For real?’ Harry’s eyes light up. ‘One of the pocket rockets from the office getting out of the shower or something?’

‘Not quite. Just follow me. And get your phone ready to record.’

‘You devil.’

David charges across the shadowy floor toward the wall where the

fountain sits. Harry trots behind. They stopped at the fountain.

‘Where’s the naked woman?’ Harry holds his phone upright, camera on.

‘Shhh!’ David twists the tap of the bubbler and stares at the water that begins to fountain up.

Harry watches what David’s doing, and then starts looking around with the excitement of a child about to receive candy.

Harry whispers, ‘So, I get this whole ‘let’s just pretend we’re getting a drink’ thing, but wouldn’t it be better if we hid under one of the desks and waited for her. Are you sure she’s still up here? But, like, wouldn’t she get changed in the women’s room? Did you go in there? I mean, I know women can take a really long time to get dressed and all, but—’

‘—I dunno, man. Yeah, she’s probably gone by now. Sorry. Hey, does this water fountain look ok to you?’

‘What?’ Harry drops his smartphone down to his side and looks at David with confusion on his face.

‘Do you think it’s ok to drink from this water fountain? Can you hear any strange sounds? Does the water look normal?’

Harry stares at the water fountain. Then his eyes shift with concentration. He strains to hear anything out of the ordinary. ‘I can’t hear anything weird. Water looks ok to me. Right, spill the beans. Who’d you see? Jane? She rides her bike in and takes a shower in the ladies’ before work.’

David sighs, drops his grip on the tap, and starts walking back to the lift. ‘I don’t know what I saw.’

‘No face then. Whaddya mean you don’t know what you saw? Boobs? Bum? Hoohaa? How can you not tell the difference between those?’

💧💦💧

Back on the third floor, David doodles at his desk all afternoon mentally circling through the possibilities.

Could it be some sort of psychosis brought on by stress? There’s a company psychologist I could talk to about it. Admitting any kind of hallucination will kill my chance of promotion though.

💧💦💧

At 6pm, David returns to his riverside studio apartment on the bus. The water creature’s melody is an earworm that burrows through his dreams all night long. He wakes the next morning in his organic hemp pajamas, hums her song before having a cold shower, eating a grapefruit, and getting dressed for work.

💧💦💧

‘It’s Tuesday!’ Nel announces to the third floor of Mercurial Insurance with enthusiasm normally only reserved for your football team winning the final. ‘Let’s see if we can beat our personal best on rejected claims today: remember to let the customer hear the smile in your voice. With regard to our inter-floor competition, our second-floor rivals only have 2000 customer complaints this month, so we have to make sure we keep ours under that. Your target is 3 minutes and 30 seconds service time per customer so go, go, go and be accurate. Keep in mind, I’ll be listening in randomly to your phone calls as staff evaluations are coming up. Finally, here’s a bit of inspiration for you. Let this be your mantra: the only thing holding me back is my attitude.’

Nel punctuates her pep speech with a giant fake smile bordering on a snarl.

Harry smiles. ‘Inspirational, Nel. And I have to say it must be working for you. You’re positively glowing today.’

‘Oh, thank you, Harry,’ Nel smiles back at him before striding off into her office at the end of the floor and slamming the door behind her.

‘Glowing like plutonium. Yes, that’s right. Fuck off,’ Harry says under his breath loudly enough for only David to hear. ‘The only thing holding me back from throwing her out that window is that there’d be too many witnesses.’

David raises his eyebrows at Harry and then sets to work. He tries to focus on each customer phone call coming through. Despite the stream of work, he cannot get her melody out of his head. In fact, it’s got louder throughout the morning to the point which he no longer knows whether it’s coming from inside his head or outside it.

He pauses the calls coming through on his computer and sticks his head over the partition between his and Harry’s desk.

‘Haz, can you hear music?’ David asks.

Harry removes an earpod and holds it out to show David with contempt all over his face. ‘Ah, yeah.’

‘No, not the music you’re playing. Music from like…’ David points his finger in a circular motion around the room.

Harry turns his shaggy head left and right. ‘If you mean anything other than this instrumental jazz we’re tortured with every day, then the answer would be no.’

‘Oh.’ David’s face morphs into a mask of such anguish that even Harry can’t help noticing.

‘You alright? You’re being a bit...weird. First, dragging me upstairs to see some naked chick that wasn’t even there, and now this. You a bit under the weather, mate?’

‘Maybe? Yeah, maybe I’m a bit unwell.’ David rubs his temple. ‘Nothing contagious.’

‘Take the afternoon off.’

‘I took all my sick leave when I got the flu. Can’t afford any more time off. I’ll just pause my calls and take ten minutes out for a breather.’

‘Nah, you don’t wanna do that. It’ll come up as too much after call processing time in your stats. Here—’ Harry gives him a little conspiratorial nod and lowers his voice ‘—This is my trick. Now keep it between us. I’m only telling you because I’ve got another job lined up with the State Government and I’ll be out of here in a few weeks.’

‘Yep. Secret squirrels,’ Dave replies.

Here’s what I do to drop my average call stats.’ Harry licks his lips. ‘I just hang up on twenty or thirty calls in a row. That lowers my average talk time. Then I just leave the last one to come through and walk off. Bam! I’ve got half an hour or so up my sleeve and I still come out with a better than average talk time every shift.’

‘Don’t you get customer complaints?’ David is shocked.

‘If I don’t say my name, they don’t know who they’re talking to.’

‘What about Nel? What if she monitors your call?’

‘Nel Schmel. Haven’t ya noticed what she does before she’s gonna listen and do your evaluation? She’ll come in and circle your desk three times. Like a bird of prey ready to swoop.’

David considers what Harry’s saying.

'Yes, she does do that. And, yes, it's before the calls she monitors.'

‘Yeah,’ Harry nods. ‘She goes down her checklist in exactly the same way each time. First item, desk tidiness. And if I’m still uncertain, I just wander past her office and if she’s doing some online shopping or watching some drama series, I know I’m good for at least thirty minutes.’

Cheating fucker. He scams his way to the top of the employee of the month chart every month and now he’s being rewarded with a far better job. Of course he would’ve told the government interviewers about his regular work awards.

David burns with fury. ‘Huh. Interesting to know.’ He pauses his calls coming through as he’s supposed to.

I work with integrity.

With contempt seeping from his voice, David mutters, ‘I’ll be back in a bit.’ David takes his smartphone, leaves his desk and storms off to the lift. Alone inside, his finger floats above the ground-floor button for a moment, before whisking across the control pad to press the one for the fifth floor.

💧💦💧

Amidst the fifth-floor renovation chaos, David turns on the tap with one hand and holds his phone ready to record with the other. He waits.

No matter what happens I won’t move.

The water runs down the drain. Nothing out of the ordinary happens.

I was tripping yesterday. Maybe I ate something bad. Maybe Harry put some magic mushrooms in my lunch. Wouldn’t surprise me, sneaky jerk.

As he continues to stare into the water however, David sees a bump emerge on the rivulet between the bubbler and drain. Her figure grows up from it and she stretches herself out and spins on the surface, laughing and cooing. She begins to sing a wonderful, terrible song that reaches deep inside David and catalyses such longing that feels he will—he must—stay here beside this fountain forever.

Mesmerised by her inimitable song, he stares at her dancing around on the water’s surface. She is perfect in every way. From her tiny breasts and waist, to her hips and legs and flowing hair. Holding his smartphone, his hand grows sweaty. The device slips from his grasp and clatters into the shallow pool of water flowing around the fountain top. The sound of it and discomfort from holding the tap on causes David to emerge from his hypnotic state. He looks at his dead, wet phone as if he has no idea what it is.

How long have I been standing here? I must take her with me. I’ll swallow her whole. She’ll be inside me forever.

David leans down to drink, but as his lips reach her, she dissolves back into the flow of water only to reappear somewhere else. His lips clutch at nothing but air.

He tries again. And again. And again.

After each failure, he hears her giggling. He’s like a fish in its death throes, mouth gaping, splashing about all over the fountain. David decides the only way to do it will be to be really quick—so fast she won’t have time to vanish.

She sits on top of the bubbler, continuing to sing, throwing droplets in the air around her.

Now.

David thrusts his face down towards her, mouth open.

Smash.

His face collides with the metal bubbler and he rebounds up with a cry of agony. His whole face is numb and throbbing at the same time.

The wee nymph points at him and chortles before continuing her merry song and dance.

Pain is starting burn through David’s face. He puts his hand over his mouth and pulls it away to see blood dripping down his fingers.

Jesus.

The shock has broken her spell. She slides down the drain, continuing to hum from the interior of the white metal box: her secret grotto.

David recoils from the water fountain and heads toward the men’s restroom on the floor. He pushes the door to enter, but upon it opening a crack, he hears the clattering of things tumbling. Through the gap, David can see a ladder has fallen behind the door and if he forces the door anymore, he risks knocking over a can of paint.

‘Ugh.’ David is catching the blood dripping from his chin in his hand. He shoulders his way into the adjacent ladies’ restroom.

Most of the floor is exposed concrete where the tiles have been jackhammered away. Wires hang down from the celing where new lighting will be installed when Mercurial Insurance decides it has the budget to continue the refurbishment. If one of the senior executives hadn’t been using corporate funds to invest in racehorses, the job would’ve been finished by now. David hurries over the basin and juts his jaw out over it.

He turns the tap on and thankfully finds the water is still connected. Blood washes down the drain from his hands. As he cleans around his lower face, he can see a red line where he’s split his now fat and purple bottom lip.

‘Golly.’ As he speaks, he notices his tooth in the mirror.

'Have—have I…?' He pulls his lips away to expose his teeth. ‘I’ve chipped my front tooth.’

He stares at his bloodied and bruised face in the mirror. Well, at least the bleeding has stopped, but what continues is her song coursing through his mind. Her delicate, delightful, delicious, intoxicating song.

‘Yes, I’ll go back and see if she’ll come out again. I can catch her this time.’

David pulls the door of the ladies’ restroom open to go back to the water fountain only to see Harry’s huge frame silhouetted in front of him.

‘Holy hell! What happened to you? And why are you in the ladies’...?

Ah. Ahhh.’ Harry taps the side of his head. ‘I see. You came for a little tête-à-tête with the naked lady and she smacked you in the face, did she? Are we having a little workplace dalliance, are we?’

‘No, I just dropped something on the floor. It was dark, and I bent down to get it, and whacked my face of some of the broken concrete over there in the cubicles. I couldn’t get into the mens’ room. This place is a death trap.’

‘I thought you were going outside for some fresh air,’ Harry says.

‘Why are you here? Look what I’ve done to my tooth.’ David pulls his lips back and shows Harry.

‘Nel noticed your extended absence.’

‘I’ve only been gone 10 minutes.’

‘You’ve been gone for almost two hours! Look, don’t worry. I’ll just tell Nel that I found you out cold out on the street ‘cause someone punched you in the face.’

Harry shepherds David out of the ladies’ room.

‘I just have to have a little drink from the water fountain there before we go, Harry.’

‘No, son. I’ve been sent up here with a job to do. You can have a drink downstairs. Nel will skin us both if we’re here much longer.’ Harry grips David firmly by the shoulders and walks him to the elevator. David keeps looking back at the water fountain until they are both shut in the Bossa Nova playing lift from hell.

💧💦💧

On the third floor, Nel inspects David’s injury while Harry explains what happened. David is pained by her bespectacled face being only inches from his and the smell of her coffee and onion breath.

Just focus on a single point.

He zones in on one flake of dried snot swinging like a trapdoor from a hair inside Nel’s cavernous nostril above his face.

Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

Harry’s shaking his head. ‘Can you believe someone punched David after he said he didn’t have a cigarette? He fell and hit his head on the concrete paving. He was out cold when I found him.’

‘Really? Harry, you’re a hero. I can’t believe it. What’s this city coming to? David, you need to go home. Can we call someone to come and pick you up?’

‘No, Nel. I’m fine really. I’ve got a heap of paperwork to still do.’

‘No, no, David. No more work right now. You’ll probably have concussion and you need to rest. If you can’t get someone to collect you, go to the sick room. I’ll come and check on you shortly.’

David participated in Harry’s lie. Following Nel’s instruction is now his only choice. He wanders off to the sick room: a storeroom with a single white pipeline bed shoved inside.

Nel and Harry watch him walk off.

‘I don’t want a worker’s compensation claim on my shift,’ Nel says. ‘Glad that it happened on the street. That might help a bit. Harry, keep a close eye on him, will you? Stand watch at the door. I don’t want David doing anything dangerous because he’s concussed. I would take care of him. However, I just have far too much to do in the office.’

‘Sure thing, Nel.’

‘You’re an excellent employee, Harry. I’ll stick three more gold stars on the chart for you.’

‘Great,’ Harry drawls. ‘Thanks, Nel. You’re the best.’

Nel returns to her office.

‘Best at being a cunt,’ Harry expounds.

💧💦💧

Meanwhile, David is standing outside the storage-cum-sick room humming the tune of his siren’s song.

As soon as Nel’s gone, I’ll take the lift up to level five.

He looks down the corridor. Harry strides towards him peering back over his shoulder anxiously.

‘Okay.’ Harry whispers to him when they’re close enough. ‘You’ve just gotta go in and lie down for a bit. Nel’s watching, so we have to keep up appearances for a little while. When the coast is clear, you can come out.’

‘No, I don’t want to lie down,’ David says. ‘I have some business to finish up there.’ David points towards the ceiling.

Harry cranes his neck back down the corridor back towards the big open plan office. ‘Oh no. Nel’s coming. Quick! Quick!’ He takes David by the shoulders, opens the door, pushes him into the sick room. ‘Quick—get on the bed!’

David throws himself on the bed. The green sheets and duvet smell as if they haven’t been laundered in over a decade. He’s flipping himself over when the door bangs shut and everything goes black. Keys rattle in the handle.

‘It’s for your own good, Davo.’ Harry’s muffled voice sounds through the door. ‘You’re not well, mate, and I’m gonna get to the bottom of it.’

In the complete dark, David feels about for the door handle which he grabs and tries to twist open. He pounds the door. ‘Harry! Let me out now! Now!’

Down the corridor, Harry twiddles with the knobs on the floor’s control panel. Next to the air-conditioning control is the volume knob for the speakers wired across the ceiling of the floor. He turns up the Best of Bossa Nova beats ever so gradually until it completely drowns out David’s muted cries from the storage room at the end of the corridor. Harry looks around and rushes off to the lift.

💧💦💧

After about half an hour of hollering and smacking the door, David lies on the bed in the sick room enduring the musty smell of rotting fabric and cardboard boxes. His throat is hoarse and he’s so damn thirsty—not for any water though—for the divine sweet liquid from her fountain. Her song plays over and over in his mind. He tries to block it out with a Buddhist mantra.

‘Nam-myo-renge-kyo. Nam-myo-renge-kyo, Nam-myo-rengekyo—’ His chanting is interrupted by a distant, but sharp, whining sound that reminds him of concrete being drilled. It doesn’t last more than a minute before falling away to be overtaken by her enslaving refrain.

David gives in and hums along to the music in his head, imagining her petite crystal-clear body dancing.

Time becomes unrecognisable in the darkness. However, finally, he hears a key turn in the lock, and when the door opens a crack, it’s as if light from heaven itself pours in. Then Harry’s ugly hairy face appears.

‘It’s five o’clock,’ Harry says. ‘You can go home now.’

David sits upright. ‘You fucker. You locked me in here.’

‘It was for your own good. We couldn’t have you wandering off and getting lost amidst all those dangerous renovations up on the fifth floor now, could we?’

Harry’s eyes twinkle with mischief and knowing. ‘Do you need someone to drive you home as you are,’ Harry draws some inverted commas in the air with his fingers, ‘concussed?’

‘No, asshole. Just let me out.’

‘Fine,’ Harry stands back allowing David to exit the sick room.

‘Anyway, I’m off,’ Harry says with nonchalance. ‘See you tomorrow.’

He saunters away to the lift, leaving David to steam behind him.

All of the day staff, including Nel, have left and a handful of evening staff are spread out around the floor of the call centre.

David grabs his man bag from his desk and marches off to the lift. He needs to see her. To drink from her fountain.

💧💦💧

Through the semi-transparent blinds covering the fifth-floor windows, the sky blushes as night turns to day. It dawns on David in a drunken, foggy epiphany that he’s been standing at the fountain drinking all night long. In spite of numerous trips to the men’s room, during which the thought that he really should go home would drift through his mind, he was lured back, over and over, by that song. He’d drunk litres upon litres of water, yet somehow his thirst was still not quenched.

David lowers his head to drink from the bubbler again and when he does the little fairy sings straight into his ear and fills his soul with rapture.

He lifts his head to swallow and breathe.

'My head’s been thudding for hours.'

Sweet relief only comes from being next to her, drinking, drinking, drinking. His heart is pained.

‘Oh, my love,’ David whispers through his chipped teeth and split, swollen purple lip, ‘Just jump into my mouth, trickle down my throat, and become part of me. Live in my heart forever.’

A spasm of pain shoots through David’s left arm. He grimaces and grips it with his right hand. The overwhelming urge to vomit descends over him, releasing saliva into his mouth. Water geysers straight out of the back of David’s throat across the grey carpet on the floor. He spasms, bent over at the waist, retching up gush after gush of liquid.

He pulls himself upright and the little elven creatures giggles and kicks splashes of water at him.

David smiles as widely as he can at her, trying not to crack his lip any further.

‘Ouch.’ He touches the split softly with his fingers.

Some water will fix that and wash away the taste of stomach acid in my mouth.

He turns the tap and gulps at the metal spring.

She sings on, babbling in her incomprehensible language. The burbling sound is making him want to close his eyes.

‘I’m so tired.’

His face gets lower and lower until his nose is pressed into the metal and his weight is supported only by the fountain. His hand drops off the tap.

💧💦💧

‘David! Oi! Dave!’

David’s eyelids flutter.

They’re so hard to open.

‘Davo!’

When he finally pulls his eyelids apart, he sees a very blurry outline of Harry’s bulky form.

‘Hazza!’ David croaks.

‘Have you been here all night?’ Harry puts his hands on his hips.

‘Umm...I—I dunno,’ David tries to lift his head. ‘Ow!’ He winces with every movement. He’s slumped on the floor next to the water fountain.

‘I can’t get up. I’m too weak.’

‘Come ‘ere. Up you get.’

David grabs hold of Harry’s outstretched hand and allows himself to be dragged to standing.

‘Let’s go to level three,’ Harry says. ‘Nel’s wondering where you are; why you haven’t called in sick.’

‘Level three,’ David parrots. Cramps grip his legs. It’s near impossible to move them.

‘C’mon,’ Harry drags him atowards the lift. The siren’s song continues to play in David’s head, warbled and scrambled like the music from a toy with dying batteries.

‘Harry, take me back to the fountain. I just need to—’

‘I know, buddy.’ Harry pulls him into the lift. ’You’re dehydrated: thirsty. I get that too after a night on the grog. Pwah, you smell of puke.’ He pushes the button for level three. ‘We’ll just go down and see Nel first. We don’t want you losing your job. I found out what you’ve been doing up here, you kinky dog.’

‘You have?’ A frail sense of relief washes over David. ‘I was beginning to think I was the only one who’d seen it.’

Harry grins with a glint in his eye.

‘Well, I had to drill away at the floor first. I couldn’t quite see what was beneath—you must have better eyes than me to see through that hairline crack, but—hahaha—I saw marketing Sal taking a slash in the cubicle beneath your little peep hole.’

‘What?’ David doesn’t have a clue what Harry’s on about.

‘Your little peephole. Where the crack in the concrete flooring of the women’s restrooms is. They’ve been replacing the plumbing for the toilets and the tiles. The crack is right over the ladies’ room on the fourth floor. Every floor of this building has the same layout. C’mon, Dave. You don’t have to play dumb. You told me you’d smashed your face on some concrete on the floor.’

David simply looks at Harry, music in his head fading out momentarily. Slowly, he makes the connection between the drilling sounds he heard while locked in the sick room yesterday and what Harry’s saying now.

Harry guwaffs. ‘I saw the fourth-floor receptionist getting changed into her gym gear. Nice rack. Don’t worry. I’ve got this whole situation under control. For a start, I’ve made sure everyone downstairs now knows you’re straight as an arrow. And Mercurial Insurance will have to fix that hole upstairs properly now. It isn’t right that us weak-willed men be lured by such temptations in the workplace.’

The lift stops at the third floor. Before the doors open, Harry pulls David upright.

‘Now, you have to keep it together for a few minutes.’

As they walk out of the lift, the clatter of fingers hitting keys stops, and every eye within gazing distance turns to David.

Even though the warped siren’s song is still playing in his head, David is lucid enough to register he is the centre of what seems to be every staff member on the floor’s attention. The women are giving him tight-lipped scowls with death stares.

‘What did you tell them, Harry?’ David hisses. His face starts to burn with heat.

Nel marches across the length of the floor in her navy pencil skirt uniform and sensible block heels. Staff sitting at their desks turn back to their monitors as she passes.

‘Okay, bud,’ Harry whispers to him. ‘I’ve done all I can. You’re on your own now.’ Harry drops David and heads for his own desk. He passes Nel on the way and mouths the word drunk to her.

‘Excuse me?’ Nel pulls her head back towards her neck doubling her chin.

‘He’s intoxicated,’ Harry says loudly.

Nel closes her eyes, sighs, and shakes her head.

Meanwhile, David sways about, a fragile reed in a flowing river. His muscles are barely able to support his weight.

Nel approaches David and standing before him with her fists planted on her hips says, ‘David, we need to talk about your fifth-floor activities. Come and have a little chat with me in my office, please.’

She turns on her heel and walks away.

‘Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-myohorenge-kyo’ David mutters under his breath. A volcano of anger burns in his gut. Pressure builds. Breathing is difficult. David takes a deep, effortful breath. ‘Harry!’ David yells across the room.

All fifty or so faces of their co-workers appear from behind heir computers like a mob of meerkats.

‘Harry, I have not been watching women use the toilets through the little hole in the floor. You have been doing that. Not me. You!’

Behind the overgrown beard, Harry’s mouth drops.

David can hear strains of her singing floating through the ether to him. None of this matters anymore.

‘You’re all toxic!’ David spits. ‘She’s the only one who’s pure.’ David makes a sudden dash for the lift, a burst of adrenaline possessing his body.

He presses number 5 and falls to the floor. As the doors are closing, Harry cries out, ‘He’s mentally ill! It’s a psychotic break everyone!’

Harry thrusts himself from his chair and jogs for the lift.

David reaches up and presses the button to close the door. They shut right before Harry can put his hand in to block them. David ascends to the Bossa Nova soundtrack.

A ding signals the arrival of the lift to the fifth floor. David crawls out and reaches for a crowbar next to a wooden pallet of ceramic tiles. After pulling himself completely out, he puts the crowbar in the closing space between the lift doors. The doors keep chewing on it, sticking the lift to the level.

David drags himself towards the fountain over the grey nylon carpet. His legs are too cramped to move. The buttons on his business shirt pop off and the carpet burns his stomach. He’s so close. The sound of her singing within the water fountain increases in pitch as she approaches.

'David, drink from me. Drink from me.'

Banging comes from the emergency stairwell as some of his colleagues try to open the door. ‘David! David! Open the door.’

'Ha! Thwarted, jerks. The door doesn’t open from the stairwell side. Haha!'

Despite his weakness, David pulls himself up the metal shell of the fountain and turns the tap handle. Water streams up and out. David quaffs at the flow greedily. A tiny watery figure emerges next to his ear and begins to sing to him.

‘Ah,’ comes his sigh of satisfaction.

💧💦💧

It takes more than an hour for a locksmith to arrive and for the emergency door to the fifth floor to be opened. The keys were misplaced by administration. In the meantime, all Mercurial Insurance staff have stayed on their floors.

When the rescue team locate David, he’s slumped over the water fountain, poly-cotton business shirt drenched, and sweat stains under his armpits. The coroner later concludes his death was caused by a severe case of hyponatremia: too little salt in his body from excess consumption of water.

Talk of the peep hole in the fifth floor of the ladies’ restroom dies too—much to Harry’s relief. Nobody mentions it at the funeral. ‘David just really liked pure filtered water,’ everyone says.

Eventually, the police tape sealing off the fifth floor is removed.

Management at Mercurial Insurance suddenly produce the funds to finish the renovations. The tradies get the green light to continue work. The plumbing and lights in the restrooms are replaced and floors retiled. Walls are painted, new carpets fitted, and new office furniture brought in, but the water fountain stays where it is—humming away quietly.