by Penny Reid
I held it with one arm while I jabbed a finger at the call button. I thought I could feel his attention on my profile but I made no attempt to meet it. Instead, I watched the boxes with red numbers announcing the floor status of each elevator.
“Do you want me to carry that?” His gravelly almost whisper sounded from my right.
I shook my head, slid my eyes to the side without turning; there were about four other people waiting for the elevator besides us.
“No, thank you. It’s not heavy; they must’ve taken the pencils.” I was relieved by the flat, toneless sound of my voice.
Several silent moments ticked by giving my brain dangerous unleashed time to wander; my ability to focus was waning. This was a frequent problem for me. Time with my thoughts, especially when I’m anxious, doesn’t work to my advantage.
Most people in stressful situations, I’ve been told, have the tendency to obsess about their current circumstances, how they arrived at their present fate, what they could do to avoid it or situations like it in the future. However, the more stressful my situation the less I think about it or anything related to it.
At present, I thought about how the elevators were like mechanical horses and wondered if anyone loved them or named them. I thought about what steps I could take to remove the word ‘moisture’ or even ‘moist’ from the English language; I really hated the way it sounded and always went out of my way to avoid saying it out loud. I also really didn’t like the word ‘slacks’ but felt vindicated when recently Mensa came out against the word ‘slacks’ in an official statement, proposing that it be removed from the vernacular.
Sir McHotpants cleared his throat again interrupting my preoccupation with odious sounding words. One of the herd of elevators was open, its red arrow pointing downward, and I continued to stand still, lost in my thoughts, completely unaware. No one else had yet entered the elevator and I could feel them watching me.
I shook myself a little, attempting to re-entrench in the present. I felt McHotpants place his hand on my back to guide me forward with gentle pressure; the warmth of his palm was soothing yet it sent a disconcerting electric shock down my spine; he lifted his other hand to where the door slid into the wall, effectively holding the elevator for me.
I quickly broke contact and settled into one of the lift’s corners; Sir Handsome followed me in but loitered near the front of the elevator, blocking the entrance, and pressed the ‘close door’ button before anyone else could enter. The partitions slid together and we were alone. He pulled a key on a retractable cord at his belt and fit it into a slot at the top of the button pad; I watched as he pressed a circle labeled BB.
I lifted an eyebrow in question and asked, “Are we going to the basement?”
He made no sign of affirmation as he turned to me, regarding me openly; we were in opposite corners. I imagined for a moment that we were two prize fighters and the spacious elevator was our ring, the brass rails around the perimeter the ropes. My eyes moved over him in equally plain assessment; he would definitely win if it came to blows.
I was tall for a girl but he was easily six foot three or four. I also hadn’t worked out with any seriousness or intensity since my college soccer days. He, judging by the large expanse of his shoulders, looked like he never missed a day at the gym and could bench press me as well as the box I was holding, even if it had contained the confiscated pencils.
His eyes weren’t finished with their appraisal, lingering around my neck, and the tugging beneath my left rib was back; I felt myself starting to blush again.
I tried for conversation, “I didn’t mean to be imprecise, I imagine this building has more than one basement although I’ve never seen the blueprints. Are we going to one of the basements and, if so, why are we going to one of the basements?”
He met my gaze abruptly, his own unreadable.
“Standard procedure.” he murmured.
“Oh.” I sighed and started tearing again at my lip; of course there would be a standard procedure. This was likely fairly common for him. I wondered if I were the only one he would be escorting out today.
“How many times have you done this?” I asked.
“This?”
“You know, escort people out of the building after they’ve been ‘downsized’. Does this happen every day of the week? Layoffs typically happen on Fridays, the last day of the week, on Friday afternoons, in order to keep the crazies from coming back later in the same week. Today is Tuesday so you can imagine how surprised I was. Based on the international standard adopted in most western countries Tuesday is the second day of the week. In countries that use the Sunday-first convention Tuesday is defined as the third day of the week.”
Shutupshutupshutup!
I drew in a deep breath, clamped my mouth shut, and clenched my jaw to keep from talking. I watched him watch me, his eyes narrowing slightly, and my heart started to pound with loud sincerity against my chest in, what I recognized as, embarrassment.
I knew what I sounded like. My true friends softened the label by insisting I was merely well-read; everyone else called it coocoo for co-co-puffs. Although I’d been repeatedly urged to audition for Jeopardy and was an ideal and proven partner in games of Trivial Pursuit, my pursuit of trivial knowledge and the avalanche of verbal nonsense which spewed forth unchecked did little to endear me to men.
A quiet moment ticked by; for the first time in recent memory I didn’t have to try to focus my attention on the present. His blue eyes were piercing mine with an unnerving intensity, arresting the usual wanderlust of my brain. I thought I perceived one corner of his mouth lift although the movement was barely perceptible.
Finally he broke the silence, “International standard?”
“ISO 8601, data elements and interchange formats. It allows seamless intercourse between different bodies, governments, agencies... corporations.” I couldn’t help myself as the words tumbled out. It was a sickness.
Then, he smiled. It was a small, closed lipped, quickly suppressed smile. If I blinked I might have missed it; but, an expression of interest remained. He leaned his long form against the wall of the elevator behind him and crossed his arms over his chest. The wrist length, blue sleeves of his guard uniform pulled in taut lines over his shoulders.
“Tell me about this seamless intercourse.” His eyes traveled slowly downward, then, in the same leisured pace, up to mine again.
I opened my mouth to respond but then quickly snapped it shut. I suddenly felt hot.
His secretive and amused appearing surveillance of my features, the openness with which he stared was beginning to make me think he was just as strange as I was. He was making me extremely uncomfortable; his attention was a blinding spotlight from which I couldn’t escape.
I shifted the box to my other hip and looked away from his searching gaze. I knew now I’d been wise in avoiding direct eye contact. The customs and acceptability of eye contact vary greatly depending on the culture; as an example, in Japan, school aged children-
The elevator stopped, the doors opened, rousing me from my recollection of Japanese cultural norms. I straightened immediately and bolted for the exit before I realized I didn’t know where I was going. I turned dumbly and briefly peered at Sir Handsome from beneath my lashes.
Once again he placed his hand on the small of my back and steered me; I felt the same charged shock as before. We walked along a hallway with low hanging florescent lights and walls painted nondescript beige gray.
The smack smack smack of the flip flops echoed along the vacant hall. When I quickened my step to escape the electricity of his touch he hastened stride and the firm pressure remained. I wondered if he thought I was a flight risk or one of the afore-mentioned crazies.
We approached a series of windowed rooms and I stiffened as his hand moved to my bare arm just above the elbow. I swallowed thickly, feeling that my reaction to the simple contact was truly ridiculous. It was, after all, just his hand on my arm.
He pull
ed me into one of the rooms and guided me to a brown wooden chair, authoritatively taking the box from my hands and placing it on the chair to my left. There were people in the room, in cubicles and offices around the perimeter; there was also a long reception desk with a women dressed in the same blue guard uniform that McHotpants wore. I met her eyes; she blinked once then frowned at me.
“Don’t move. Wait for me.” he ordered.
I watched him leave and their subsequent exchange with interest: he approached the woman, she stiffened and stood. He leaned over the desk and pointed to something on her computer screen. She nodded, looked at me again, her brow rising in what I read as confusion, then sat down and started typing.
He turned and I made the mistake of looking directly at him. For a moment he paused, the same disquieting steadiness in his gaze causing the same heat to rise to my cheeks. I felt like pressing my hands to my face to cover the blush. He began to cross the distance toward me but was intercepted by another, older, man in a well-tailored suit holding a clip board. I watched their exchange with interest as well.
It was the woman who finally approached me after pulling a series of papers off the printer. She gave me a closed mouth smile which reached her eyes as she crossed the room.
She extended her hand as I stood, “I’m Joy. You must be Ms. Morris.”
I nodded once, tucking a restive curl behind my ear, “Yes, call me Janie. Nice to meet you.”
“I guess you’ve had a hard day?” Joy took the empty seat next to mine as I also sat; she didn’t wait for me to answer. “Don’t worry about it, hun. It happens to the best of us. I just have these papers for you to sign. I’ll need your badge and your key then we’ll pull the car around for you.”
“Uh... car?”
“Yes, it has been arranged and will take you wherever you need to go.”
“Oh, ok.” I was surprised by the arrangement of a car but didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.
I took the pen she was offering and skimmed over the papers. They looked benign enough. I hazarded a glance toward Sir Handsome, found him peering at me while he seemed to be listening to the man in the suit. Without really reading the text I signed and initialed in the places she indicated, pulled my badge from around my neck along with my key and handed it to her. She took the documents from me and initialed next to my name in several places.
She paused in once place. “Is this your current address and home phone number?”
I saw Jon’s address and I grimaced, “No, no- it isn’t. Why?”
“They need a place to send your last paycheck. Also, we need a current address in case they need to send you anything that might have been left behind. I’ll need you to write out your current address next to it.”
I hesitated. I didn’t know what to write. “I’m sorry, I-” I swallowed with effort and studied the page. “I just, uh, I am actually between apartments. Is there any way I could call back with the information?”
“What about a cell phone number?”
I gritted my teeth, “I don’t have a cell phone; I don’t believe in them.”
Joy raised her eyebrows, “You don’t believe in them?”
I wanted to tell her how I truly loathed cell phones. I hated feeling like I was reachable twenty four hours a day; it was akin to having a chip implanted in your brain which tracked your location, told you what to think and do until, finally, you would become completely obsessed with the tiny touch screen as the sole interface between your existence and the real world. Did the real world actually exist if everyone only interacted via cell phones? Would Angry Birds one day become my reality? Was I the unsuspecting pig or the exploding bird? These Descartes-based musings rarely made me popular at parties. Maybe I read too much science fiction and too many comic books but cell phones reminded me of the brain implants in the novel Neuromancer. As further evidence I wanted to tell her about the recent article published in the journal of Accident Analysis & Prevention about risky driving behaviors.
Instead, I just said: “I don’t believe in them.”
“Oooo-k. No problem.” Joy reached into her breast pocket, standing, and withdrew a white paper rectangle, “Here is my card; just give me a call when you’re settled and I’ll enter you into the system.”
I stood with her, taking the card, letting the crisp points dig into the pads of my thumbs and forefingers. “Thank you. I’ll do that.”
Joy reached around me and picked up my box, motioning with her shoulder that I should follow, “Come on, I’ll take you to the car.”
I started to follow her but then, like a self-indulgent child, allowed a lingering glance over my shoulder at Sir Handsome McHotpants. He was turned in profile, no longer peering at me with that discombobulating gaze; his attention was wholly fixed on the man in the suit. I was dually relieved and disappointed. Likely, this was the last time I would see him. I was pleased to be able to admire him one last time without the blinding intensity of his blue eyes. But part of me missed the heated twisting in my chest and the saturating tangible awareness when his eyes met mine.
CHAPTER 2
The ‘car’ was a limo.
I’d never been in a limo before so of course I spent the first several minutes in shock, the next several minutes playing with buttons, then the subsequent several minutes after that trying to clean up the mess made by an exploding water bottle. It tumbled out of my hands when the driver hit the brakes behind a yellow cab.
The driver asked me where I wanted to go; I wanted to say Las Vegas but I didn’t think that would go over very well. In the end he’d graciously consented to drive me around while I made some calls using the car’s phone. One of the nice things, or not nice things depending on your perspective, about not having a cell phone was that you had to know people’s phone numbers.
Additionally, it kept you from making meaningless acquaintances.
It was nearly impossible for most individuals to remember a phone number unless it was used with some frequency. Cell phones, like the other social media constructs of our time, encouraged the collecting of ‘friends’ and contacts like my grandmother used to collect tea cups and put them on display in her china cabinet.
Only now the tea cups were people and the china cabinet was Facebook.
My first call was to my dad; I left a message asking him not to call or send mail to Jon’s apartment, explaining very briefly that we’d broken up. Calling my dad, in retrospect, was more cursory than critical. He never called, he didn’t write except to send me email forwards, but it was important to me that he knew where I was and that I was safe.
The next call was to Elizabeth. Thankfully she was on break when I called; this was a stroke of luck as she was a surgery resident at Chicago General. I was able to communicate the salient facts: Jon cheated on me, I was now homeless, I needed to buy some conditioner for my hair, I lost my job. She was outraged about Jon, generously offered her apartment and hair conditioner, then stunned and sympathetic about my job. She had a nice studio apartment in north Chicago; too small for long term but large enough that I wouldn’t smell like fish after three days.
I was relieved when she quickly asserted that I could stay at her place as I didn’t actually have a Plan B; Elizabeth also noted that she frequently was forced by necessity to sleep at the hospital so I would likely be there more than she would. We decided on a course of action: I would stop by Jon’s, quickly box up the essentials, then head to her place. I would go back over to Jon’s the next week to pack up everything else as it wasn’t like the construct of work hours held much meaning at present.
I hesitated asking the driver to wait for me while I packed a bag; but, in the end I didn’t have to. He’d been eavesdropping on my conversation and offered to circle back in two hours.
When I finally arrived at Elizabeth’s place several hours later, the limo driver- his name was Vincent, he had fourteen grandchildren, and he was originally from Queens- helped me carry basically all my belongings up the two fli
ghts of stairs to her apartment. As I packed I was stunned by my lack of material possessions. Three boxes and three suitcases was all it took to assemble the entirety of my worldly goods. One suitcase, the largest one, was full of shoes. One box, the largest one, was full of comic books. This plus my brown and white box from work was the sum total of my life.
Elizabeth greeted us at the door and helped Vincent with the suitcases. She was all smiles and profanity.
When we unloaded the last box Vincent surprised me by taking my hand and placing a kiss on my knuckles. His deep chocolate eyes gazed into mine as he spoke with an air of knowing wisdom, “If I ever cheated on my wife I think she’d have cut my balls off. If you don’t want to castrate this guy after what he’s done then he’s not the one for you.” he nodded as though affirming the truth of his words and turned precipitously to the driver’s side door.
Then, like the end of a B-movie, he left us standing on the street watching the limo depart into the sunset.
Elizabeth told the story several times that night to our knitting group; it was her turn to host so I helped her procure snacks and red wine. With each retelling Vincent became younger, taller, more muscular, thicker hair; his Queens accent was replaced by a sultry Sicilian brogue, his black coat was removed leaving only a gauzy white shirt open to mid-chest. The very last time she told it he gazed longingly into my eyes and asked me to run away with him. I, of course, replied that he would be of no use to me castrated.
I didn’t mind that Elizabeth was so open with the ladies about my day; I thought of them as our knitting group even though I knew not one stitch about knitting. I felt a great deal closer to each of them than I did to my own sisters: none of the ladies were felons, to my knowledge, and I thoroughly enjoyed their company. I loved how open and supportive and non-judgmental they were. There was just something about women who spent hours and hours knitting a sweater, with mind-blowingly expensive yarn, when they could just buy a sweater for a fraction of the price let alone the time saved, which lent itself to exceptional acceptance and patience of the human condition.