There had to be some means of dealing with the way the man looked, and with the way he looked at her. She would have sworn his eyes were green on the video, but they were blue, as clear and deep and bright as a summer sky. Wherever his gaze touched her, she felt bathed in a heat that would normally require a sunscreen. And, alas, she had none. She was vulnerable and unprotected.
“We planned this really well,” she said, making a poor effort at sounding detached. “I was just finishing up when I heard you.”
“This is the big corporation you were telling me about? The one you’re going to audit on Monday?” he asked as he followed her into the room, enjoying the subtle sway of her hips.
“Well, they’re not all that big, just complicated. A mortuary chain with a list of charitable contributions longer than my arm, to a company-controlled trust fund. Automatically, the IRS gets suspicious.” She chuckled at her thoughts and spoke them out loud. “Actually, I have to admit it does look a little suspicious. It looks as if they’re either laundering money or burying people for free.”
“And who ever heard of that, huh?” he asked, humor in his voice. “Dying’s expensive.”
“It is,” she said in all seriousness, acutely uncomfortable with the subject. “And I could see one or two freebies a year for tax write-offs, but they do so many that if the rest of the enterprise wasn’t doing well, they’d go out of business.” In a whisper she added, “Which is why I think they’re laundering money.”
“And why they’re going to get stiffed by the IRS?” he added in the same tone of voice, with a twinkle in his eyes.
Sydney groaned at his pun, but liked his quick, sharp humor. She gathered up her purse and was about to turn off the lamp at her desk when she heard him ask, “Do you like puns? I saw this great sign at a tire store on the way over here.”
“What’d it say?” she asked, glad to have something other than tax codes to talk about.
“Underneath their low, low prices it said, We Skid You Not.” He waved her through the door in front of him.
She chuckled and smiled. “I have a terrible time remembering punch lines. Do you like knock-knock jokes?” she asked, knowing that humor was a great way to break the ice with strangers, but wishing she had a more cultured selection of witticisms to choose from.
“Do frogs have tongues?” he answered. He was itching for a good excuse to touch her again. Indulgently, he placed a gentle guiding hand to the small of her back, deciding that the limits of acceptable social behavior were too narrow and a royal pain in the rear.
She was trying to remember if frogs did have tongues.
“I love knock-knock jokes,” he said helpfully, fascinated by the rapid changes in her expression, eager to know the cause and meaning of her every move.
“Okay. Knock-knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Crunch.”
“Crunch who.”
“God bless you.”
The last three words hung in the air like a rain cloud about to burst. She looked at Tom, who was already staring down his nose at her. She shrugged, wishing she could hide under the wall-to-wall carpeting. “It was the only one I could remember. My nephew told it to me.”
“Knock-knock,” he said, his gaze wandering over her face.
“Who’s there?” The question was real. She wanted to know who the man beside her was, with eyes so keen and clear they seemed to look straight into the heart of her.
“Mrs. Highwater.”
“Mrs. Highwater who?”
“Mrs. Helen Highwater,” he said, and then he grinned. “I have a nephew too.”
“How old?” she asked, relaxing a little. Tom Ghorman was a nice man, she decided instantly. He’d had the chance to make her feel like a jerk and had let it slip by.
“Seven. He takes any chance he gets to use a forbidden word or say something dirty. The grosser the better.”
“Like the book titles?” These were her nephew’s favorites.
“Like Under the Bandstands by Seymour Butts?”
She groaned as the elevator doors opened. Sydney greeted a maintenance man by his first name as she stepped in beside Tom and pushed the button for the main floor. “What about Mister Completely?” Tom said. “He wrote—”
He stopped short when a loud squeaking noise came from above the elevator, and looked up at the lights over the door.
“Uh-oh,” he said, struggling to appear calmer than he felt as he started pushing all the buttons on the selection panel one at a time.
“It’s stuck.” It was only a seven-story building, but Sydney had visions of them plummeting for miles to a horrible and gruesome death at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Panic rose up within her like a monster from a slimy green lagoon. “It’s stuck. We can’t get out. There’s been another earthquake. The power’s failed. We’ll die in here before anyone finds us,” she said all in one breath, as she reached over and hit the red alarm by reflex.
Tom took her by the shoulders and turned her toward him. He recognized the trapped and helpless fear in her, but knew better than to give it any latitude.
“Hear that,” he yelled at her over the alarm. “It wouldn’t work if there’d been a power failure. No earthquake either, or we’d have felt it before the elevator stopped. And we’re not going to die in here, because somebody’s bound to hear that noise.”
“Right.” She flashed him a smile for his brilliant logic and opened the little metal door on the panel that concealed the emergency telephone. She pulled the red knob to a stop position and into the silence spoke as if she hadn’t been a raving lunatic moments before. “I’ll just call maintenance and have someone come up and get us out.”
“No need to do that,” came a voice from the back of the elevator.
Both Tom and Sydney turned to look. The maintenance man stood with his hands on his belt full of tools, bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet.
“Can’t answer the phone right now. Things are a little up in the air,” he said, and then he guffawed at his own humor.
“Can you fix the elevator?” Sydney asked, deceptively unruffled.
“Not from in here, Ms. Wiesman. Got to get to the circuit box, check the cables, stuff like that. Want a drink?” He pulled a shiny metal flask from his rear pocket and offered it to her.
“Ah ... no, thank you. You’re ... um ... ,” she was afraid to say the words. “You’re not the only maintenance man on duty tonight, are you?”
He offered the flask to Tom as he shook his head in dismay. “Weekends and nights, there’s only one of us. Well, one of us and the girls who clean up.”
“Can they do any anything to help us?”
“They could dust and vacuum in here, I guess,” he said, dragging his index finger across the elevator wall before he took a swig from his flask, his eyes sparkling with good spirit.
Sydney took a menacing step toward him, fully prepared to do serious damage to the man’s head and neck, when Tom caught her by the arm. Again he took note of the anger and desperation in her eyes, but he didn’t address them. Instead, he looked back at the maintenance man and asked, “When’s your shift over?”
“Midnight, but ...”
“Midnight? But that’s four hours from now. We’ll suffocate,” Sydney said, fear creeping into her voice again. Small spaces never bothered her. It was the locked-in part that was undermining her sanity. Being unable to get out of any space, large or small, played games with her mind and encouraged her hysteria.
“Nah. There’s plenty of air in here,” the man said.
“Can you call outside the building on this phone?” Tom asked, still holding on to Sydney’s arm. “Or could we call one of the cleaning ladies and have her call out for help?”
“Nope. It’s a direct line to our office in the basement, and they don’t clean down there.”
“What would happen if we left the alarm on?”
“We’d probably go deaf,” the man said, as he lowered himself to th
e floor. “But it wouldn’t get us outta here any quicker.”
Sydney watched as he again removed the flask from his back pocket and began to loosen the top. Then she turned to look at Tom, who, to her complete exasperation, was loosening his tie and removing his jacket. He folded it neatly over the handrail on the wall and then joined the maintenance man on the floor.
“Do you know any good, fairly clean jokes?” Tom asked the man.
“This is insane!” she shouted, hands on her hips, her mind replaying the plummeting pictures. Didn’t they know that there was no way out? How could they act so calm? Didn’t they know the danger they were in? Hadn’t they ever seen movies where the heroine hung by a single thread of wire for an indeterminate amount of time before she ... plummeted. Addressing them both, she asked, “Aren’t you going to do something?”
Tom looked up at her and smiled. “The elevator’s stuck. What would you like us to do?”
“Get us out of here.” The elevator seemed suddenly smaller than it had been when she’d first walked into it.
“Sydney,” Tom said as if talking to a fearful child. “Are you all right? You look a little pale.”
“Pale? Me? I can’t get out of here. I’m going to be plummeting to my death any second now, with a maintenance man and a date from a television game show, who don’t seem to realize the danger we’re in. And I’m pale? Why should I be pale?” She turned back to the telephone and dialed 911 with a prayer on her lips.
“Sydney?” Tom’s voice was as quiet and composed as an undertaker’s. His arm circled her waist. His other hand covered hers over the receiver of the phone and helped her to replace it on the wall. “No one is going to answer the phone, but you don’t need to worry. We’re perfectly safe here. This man says ...”
“Jerry,” she said, her voice sounding dull in her ears. “His name is Jerry.”
“Jerry says it’s an electrical problem. He says this thing was inspected three weeks ago, and it’s as strong and safe as it was the day they installed it. Isn’t that right, Jerry?”
“Hell if I know. I wasn’t here when they installed—”
“Isn’t that right, Jerry?” Tom said, sending a quelling expression over his shoulder.
“Sure. You bet.”
She trembled in his arms, which under any other circumstances would have pleased him. As it was, it stimulated his concern for her.
“See, Sydney? Now why don’t you sit down here beside me and we’ll talk and get to know each other better.” He chuckled. “Actually, I was hoping we could be alone for a while tonight. Restaurants are always so crowded, and you have to be careful not to talk with your mouth full of food.” With his hands on her elbows, he picked her up and turned her around as if she were a mannequin. “This’ll be great. We can talk and have an extremely late dinner when ... when we’re finished,” he said, choosing his words carefully.
“Want that drink now?” Jerry asked, extending the flask out to her.
Sydney managed to hold up a hand in refusal as she concentrated on lowering herself to the floor. Alcohol was the last thing she needed. She didn’t handle it well, and she had her hands full already trying not to lose her mind.
Something in her realized that Tom was right, that there wasn’t anything to do but wait. But the greater part of her was so filled with fear, she could hardly breathe.
“Maybe just a tiny sip?” she heard Tom saying in a soothing voice. He was seated next to her with one arm holding her close. He held Jerry’s flask to her lips.
“Makes me silly,” she said, shaking her head.
“That’s okay. You could use a little silly right now,” he said, as hot liquid scorched the back of her throat and burned its way to her abdomen. “You’re so tense, I’m afraid you’ll snap in two.”
Coughing and sputtering, she placed her hands over his and pulled the flask away from her face. After the initial shock of the liquor, she simply sat there for several long minutes trying to gather her thoughts and some of her dignity.
How on earth did I get into this mess? she asked herself, trying hard to remember the exact reason why she’d done such an uncharacteristic thing as agreeing to be a game show contestant.
Six weeks earlier, Sydney had come home from a date drained and listless. Her roommate had glanced up from the late night game show she was watching on television and had commented frankly, “You look like hell.”
“I feel like hell,” Sydney had said, flopping down on the couch beside her. “There ought to be a law against CPAs dating each other. It breeds monotony and contempt, and it’s mentally and spiritually retarding. It ought to be right up there with incest and ... and ... is marrying your first cousin the same as incest?”
“Yeah. I think so,” Judy said, amazing Sydney with her ability to follow two conversations at once. She’d never looked away from the program. “This is what you should do, pal.” She motioned to the TV. “I haven’t seen one contestant that was a CPA in all the times I’ve watched it.”
Sydney sat up and took interest.
“Great,” she said after several minutes of watching the show, chewing on popcorn taken from Judy’s bowl. “He’s a musician and she’s a mud wrestler. Who would they set me up with? A bull breeder?”
“They have yuppie types too. Architects, bank executives, lawyers. And where is it written that a bull breeder can’t be a great date? It’s not what they do that counts, you know, it’s who they are. Accountants are born dull and sort of ... linear. That’s why they’re good at what they do.”
“Thank you so much,” Sydney muttered, never having considered herself dull or linear. She reached for more popcorn.
“Well, what could it hurt? To go on this program, I mean.” Judy took a fistful of popcorn and dropped it into her mouth a piece at a time. “You work late hours. On the rare occasions you do go out, you go to IRS seminars. The only men you ever meet are CPAs. You need some variety in your life.”
This was no great revelation to Sydney. She knew she needed variety. But who had time for variety? And if one had the time, who felt like hanging out in singles bars and nightclubs filtering through the assortment to find just one man who was tolerable?
After a few days of deep deliberation Sydney had decided to try it. She’d called the studio, gone in for the interview, filled out the questionnaire, and within two weeks she’d gone to watch three computer-selected videotapes of men she could choose from before the taping of the game show.
Sydney had found the choice to be quite easy, actually, and only briefly wondered if it had been set up that way by the people at the studio. She’d picked the most handsome man of the three and the only one who had used complete sentences when he’d spoken. Tom Ghorman.
Sitting beside him—so near calamity—she refused to regret her actions. The game show was perhaps the greatest risk she’d ever taken in her life, and Tom Ghorman excited her more than any man she’d ever met. If she were about to die, it was good to know that in her brief existence she had taken at least one risk and that she was capable of feeling great excitement and arousal. She was thankful for that.
“I’m really sorry,” she said at last, feeling weak all over. “I’m not claustrophobic. I just ...”
“Hey. Don’t worry about it,” Tom said, smiling as she looked at him. “It’s over. And if I didn’t have you to impress with my male bravado, I’d be screaming and beating on ol’ Jerry here. So, you see, we’re helping each other.”
Her tiny smile of gratitude seemed stingy in contrast to all he’d done for her. He was being very kind and extremely understanding. What must he think of her? Sydney wondered as she raised his hand and the flask to her lips once more.
“So, you two don’t even know each other, huh?” Jerry commented as if it had finally sunk into his head. “Kind of a weird way to spend a first date.”
Tom assisted Sydney with another sip from the flask as he answered, “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll bet if you gave ten men the choice of getting stu
ck in an elevator with a beautiful woman or going to the movies or a restaurant with her on a first date, nine of them would choose the elevator and the other one would be gay. I couldn’t have planned this any better.”
“You got a point there,” Jerry agreed, watching his flask with a possessive eye. “Did I hear that you met on TV?”
While Tom explained the circumstances of their date, Sydney was busy taking note of her present situation. For instance, she decided the floor of the elevator was very comfortable. She especially liked leaning against Tom’s broad chest and the way his hand brushed up and down her arm in a soothing, reassuring manner. He smelled good too.
When she kicked her shoes off and pulled her legs up under her, she found that if she scooted up just a bit, she could lay her head on his shoulder and watch his thick dark hair move against the collar of his shirt as he talked to Jerry. She wondered what it felt like, and what shampoo he used.
She started to wonder a lot about him, actually. He was in human services, according to his videotape. Did he control crazy women in defective elevators for a living? He looked good in blue too. Was it his favorite color? Should she have worn her blue satin dress instead of the pink linen? She’d asked her cat the night before, and after some hemming and hawing they’d finally decided on the pink, but what if he hated cats and would have preferred her in blue? He had nice hands, she noted, her mind shifting quickly, her attention span atypically short. Had he gone to college? Did he play a sport? He has such nice teeth, she thought, just before she speculated as to whether or not he’d worn braces. He was kind of funny too. ...
“What did Mister Completely write?” she asked, coming suddenly to the party, her voice a little louder than usual though she was feeling amazingly relaxed and jolly.
Jerry and Tom looked at her as if she’d just returned after a long absence. Tom glanced at the flask still clutched in their hands and then back at Sydney, assessing her carefully.
“The joke, remember? When we first got on the elevator? What book did Mister Completely write?”
Asking for Trouble Page 2