Elevator
I don’t suppose it was fate.
At least, I doubt it. I never liked the idea of fate, the idea that the things I do were up to some mystical power clouding around my life like a haggle of women crowding around woman’s new engagement ring.
The fate, then, was something else: luck. It may be not to far off in terms of pure definition but when it comes to the way we term the events in our life, luck is a whole different ballgame.
So it was luck, big deal, right? Doesn’t matter what caused it, it happened.
Nope.
Well, yes, it happened, but it was a big deal how it happened. Yanno why? Because its the type of event that happens in your life that you remember forever. The story follows you like a crown follows the king. It’s your prime rib of stories, your number one gotta-tell-save-it-for-the-end-of-the-party-because-it’s-going-to-wow-everyone.
Yup. And it all circled around an
elevator. That’s right, an elevator. The happenstance setting that could only
result from a luck driven encounter like mine. It was one of those things that
you always dream up of, the thing you want to happen to you more than anything.
It’s like that kind of story where you’re walking down the street and some
And it happened to me. It might not be your dream, but it was one of those for me. Now, it takes a lot for me to admit that fact, although you won’t appreciate that until I actually tell the story. To make it more clearly, let me admit this:
I’m a romantic.
A hopeless romantic in fact. I know you probably don’t believe it with all the terse retorts and jumpy writing, the sarcasm surrounding some of the phrases, and the chauvinist joke about women and the engagement ring (which, chauvinist or not, is incredibly true).
But nonetheless I am, deep down, someone who just wanted something like this to happen to me.
It was a poppy-fresh spring time day. A scent of petals
permeated the air, mostly because the windswept flowers were completely
stripped of their pretty little adornments from scathing winds and a thunderous
downfall of water and sleet. Who says pretty things happen on pretty days? I
mean, it’s April in
So trudging through the wall of water, my umbrella lambasted
by the hurricane wind, I reached what seemed like the American embassy in a
war-torn
It might be the first time in recorded history that someone was enjoyed to enter the confines of a Government Agency. I was there to do what you might think, renew my driver’s license. I was finally turning 21 and with great joy my old vertical standing card was going to be replaced by a shiny new horizontally standing license showing to the world that I am now apart of the elite club of American peoples who can drink legally.
Never being to the downtown office before, I hopped over to the floor listing on the left of the building, my coat and shoes leaving behind a trail of drizzling water. I scanned the listing of offices and their floors before I saw my floor:
LICENSE ISSUING AND RENEWAL ----- 6
It really was quite the behemoth of a BMV building. I remember the small little cubby hole back home where I took my field test. This was a few more cubby holes stacked into one vertical mess of red-tape and fluorescent lighting. Like I am so keen to say, the 60s and 70s weren’t good to architecture.
My destination in tow, I looked down to the lake that was forming around me. The umbrella in my left hand was in a sorry shape, deformed, lopsided, and very much soaked. I grabbed it, feeling the cold water run down my fingers to the floor, and twisted it to wring it out some. It dried out some and I proceeded to wrap the strap around its midsection, getting those extra droplets of water to drop downwards.
The lake beneath me now a sufficiently sized salt-less ocean, I turned to the right and went towards the elevators, briefly glancing at the analog clock on the wall displaying 3:24.
Arriving at the elevator, I quickly pressed the up button. Not depressing the plastic circle in the correct fashion, it refused to light up. I mashed it again with some more force and longevity and it happily lit up. Stepping back I witnessed the numerals above the door slowly fall, one by one, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and finally with a classic tonal ding, G.
Strafing to the left, I moved out of the way of the outgoing passengers then stepped in. Remembering my mistake from last time, I gave the 6 button a good jolt. It promptly became luminous and a few other people stepped on the elevator, pressing their respective buttons.
The doors shut and we all collectively climbed upwards. The first stop was on floor 2, the floor for testing and examinations. All but one other person exited her. The doors shut, and our duo continued up.
The person remaining was a girl, about the same age as myself, fairly attractive with shoulder length brown hair, worn down today. She was wearing a simple women’s cut t-shirt and a pear of jeans, finished off by a pair of running shoes. Her umbrella was in the same state as mine, plastered and depressingly wet. Her hair was a little damp but apparently gale-force winds didn’t have an affect on her, as it looked quite calm and relaxed, as far as hair goes.
When you’re in these kind of situations you can one of two things: One, you can give a passing polite smile, stand awkwardly, and pretend you’re avidly reading the certificate of operation on the Elevator’s panel or two, you can strike up a thrilling conversation about the crazed weather outside.
Fortunately for me, I did not have to make any such decisions. With a Viking fury, the elevator ceased to ascend, jolting to a haste stop. I heard a quick compression sound above us and the lights gave a quick bow out and dim, then back to full brightness, then off. An emergency light replaced it and both of us grabbed the railings to stop ourselves from embarrassingly falling to the floor.
I felt it might be a good time to acknowledge my presence in the elevator so I academically yelped out, “Holy shit!”
She turned to me and said, “You’re goddamned right with that, what a scare. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m alright, you?”
“Just dandy, aside from the whole elevator not moving thing”
I let out a brief smile and, reaching out my hand, invitingly offered, “Hi, my name’s Tom, I guess we’re going to be stranded elevator partners.”
She grabbed my hand and smiled, “I guess so, my name’s Molly, nice to meet you.”
“So then,” I opened, “What now?”
“Well, I believe we push that emergency calling button down there,” she pointed to the ever forbidden emergency button at the bottom of the panel that said CALL FOR HELP. She chuckled for a second, “Actually, I hate to admit this, but I’ve always wanted to press that.”
I emitted a slight laugh, “Hah, me too, there’s just something dangerously appealing about it.”
We both laughed, and I, being the one closest to the button, reached down and pressed it. The speaker below the button emitted a small beep, like a higher pitched dialing tone and the button itself lit up a crimson red. Down below us, somewhere at the base of the elevator shaft, we heard a mechanical bell ring two times in quick succession and then silence.
“That’s it?!” we both yelled conjunctly.
“I was expecting something a little bit more dramatic than that,” I said.
“Me too. That was powerfully weak,” Molly replied.
It was in those two moments of elevator expectations that I experienced the first sense of connection with this girl. I mean, I know its something small, but it’s those little things that can bring two people together, at least for me. The same way we both reacted to the same events, gave a small tinge of excitement throughout my body, and not the kind of excitement you dirty minds out there will take it for. More like a sense of, “Hey, this could be interesting.”
Out of pure let down and the swift realization that we might be in this steel rectangle for a while, we both sat down on opposite ends of elevator, letting our umbrellas fall to the side and drip in peace.
A couple of seconds passed when a voice crackled over the speaker. It sounded like a fireman of some sorts, a higher rank officer that spoke with confidence and a good tone for public relations. He said, “Hey there folks, is everyone okay up there?”
Molly replied, “Yeah, we’re just fine.”
“Great, how many of you are there in the elevator?”
“Just two.”
“Okay. I want you guys to continue to stay calm and relaxed. We’re working hard to get the motor running again. I just want you to know that you’re not in any danger, the cables are perfectly stable and you’ll be out of there in a jiff,” he finished off.
We both sort of looked at each other with a mirrored look of sarcasm, “Yeah, a jiff,” I said.
We both laughed then slumped further into the steel sidings of the elevator car. I learned over time that Molly was 20 and a student just like I was studying Linguistics. She was here to look up some new custom license plates for her new Mini-Cooper.
The conversation continued for an hour or two. Every once in a while Deputy Forrester would break in and say how great we were doing and how quickly it would be before we got out.
To be honest, I didn’t want the elevator to come back. It was one of those rare moments like when the power goes out and a whole community is forced to spend some time together and really just talk. It just so happened this community was particularly small and one I particularly liked so far.
By the end of the first hour, our umbrellas were on one end of the elevator, finally starting to dry up. We, naturally, were on the other side. I was still sitting on the elevator with my legs extended and she was laying down, her head on my legs looking up.
The conversation just flowed and thrilled over the hours. There’s something about elevators that is just absolutely conducive to telling stories and sharing secrets. It’s like there is no sense of time. You’re cut off from the sun and moon and the rest of the world. Time only exists in one plain: the present. The walls, too, for some reason are like a blank canvas to create images over. They are so blank you can just paint pictures and images of the memories and stories you share with the world.
I don’t know why, but that elevator was a magical portal to a new place. Maybe it was the present company, maybe it was my wild imagination, maybe it was my daring habit of painting dramatic scores of ordinary things, or maybe it was the carbon-dioxide building up in the car. For some reason it all fell into place. I knew a lot of people before then, but I don’t quite think I knew them anywhere as well as I did Molly after a few hours.
It was weird, overstated, embellished, maybe completely insane and too fast, but it still felt great.
I tell this story to a lot of people and they don’t believe me. They tell me that it takes time for you to get to know someone like that, that it takes years and decades. There’s some truth to that I think, but I still think there are people that you just connect with in quick bright flash. You know them, they know you, and you can anticipate what they’re going to do next.
Maybe it’s just infatuation and the coincidence of an elevator, maybe, but that’s how it felt.
Eventually, though, the elevator snapped to life. The lights flashed back on and the elevator rose to floor 6, just like we told it to. By then it was about 6:30. The offices had closed and there were just empty teller-windows, faded lights, and the distant sound of a vacuum somewhere on the floor.
Deputy Forrester was there to greet us on the floor and escorted us down to the ground floor on the staircase, congratulating us and apologizing for the inconvenience to our day. We walked to the revolving door and he gave us one last apology, shaking our hands firmly. We stepped outside and Molly and I lived happily ever after.
Okay, no, that’s even a bit too Disney for me. I could tell what happened with us but I’m not, because that’s not the end of this story. The end of this story was us leaving the revolving door, forgetting that we left our finally dry umbrellas in the elevator.
It ends there because that’s all I wanted to tell you about for now. How maybe sometimes a small little event can become a strong memory vaulted in the back of our minds. The conditions that create these stories are small, trivial, and insignificant at best, but oh so monumental. It’s just like that person that sits next to you on the first day of class. It’s a small little choice that can bring smiles, joy, or whatever other things that life chooses to throw your way.