Elevator Pitch

by Linwood Barclay

  And then, as if by magic, the doors parted. Fanya and the boy stepped back, startled.

  “Well,” Fanya said.

  The woman and the boy were faced with a concrete block wall, and an opening.

  From the floor of the car, and going nearly three feet up, was the gray cement wall of the elevator shaft. Above that, open space. Fanya and Colin were able to stare straight down the seventeenth-floor corridor.

  “Success!” she shouted.

  Fanya felt relieved not only that the doors had opened, but that there were not any men in black suits standing there in the hallway, waiting for her.

  “I’m not going through there,” Colin said nervously, backing away farther.

  Fanya smiled. “We just have to be quick.”

  “No way,” he said.

  She smiled sympathetically. “Think of it as a fraction. The doors are how far open?”

  The boy looked at her. “Half?”

  “Very good. So it is half-open, and half-closed. Half-open is good enough for us to get out. But I will try it first.” She grinned. “I just have to be fast.”

  She set her purse on the elevator floor. “I used to be a gymnast in Russia,” she said. “When I was a girl.” She grimaced. “It was a long time ago. But some things you don’t forget. Climbing up three feet should not be so hard.”

  Fanya put both hands on the grooved metal strip on the hallway level, hoisted herself up enough to get her knee onto it, then moved her entire body through the opening. She was on her knees in the hallway, her feet hanging over the edge inside the car before she stood triumphantly.

  “What are you going to do now?” Colin asked, looking up at her. “Are you going to leave me here?”

  Shit. She really couldn’t do that. She’d freed herself, could head to the university, but how would it look? “Visiting Professor Abandons Child in Stuck Elevator.” Would a callous act like that prompt the State Department to reject her request for asylum?

  “No,” she said. “I will not do that. I will not leave you here.” She glanced down at the elevator floor. How stupid of her. She’d dropped her purse there. It would have made more sense to have tossed it out onto the hallway floor before making her escape.

  “Colin,” she said, pointing. “Toss me my purse. Then we’ll see about getting you out, too.”

  As Colin reached down to get it, Fanya dropped back down to her hands and knees to reach in to take it from him.

  She leaned forward into the car. Colin picked up the purse and held it out for her. Fanya shifted slightly forward on her knees.

  The elevator suddenly moved.

  Down.

  The roof of the car dropped toward Fanya’s neck. She didn’t have to glance upward to see what was coming. She saw the elevator floor dropping away from her. While physics had never been her area of expertise, she could figure this much out. If the car’s floor was heading down, the car’s ceiling would surely follow.

  Without having to think about it, she began to withdraw her head from the elevator. She needed to get her entire body back into the hallway.

  She was not quick enough.

  The elevator continued on its way to ground level at a normal rate of speed. When the doors opened several seconds later, those who had been waiting—and not very patiently, at that—were greeted by the sight of a near catatonic, wide-eyed Colin, huddling in the corner as far away as possible from Fanya Petrov’s arm and hand, still gripping her purse, and the scientist’s decapitated head.

  Twelve

  Barbara got to the Morning Star Café on Second Avenue, just above Fiftieth, before her daughter, Arla, got there. She took a booth near the window, facing the street, and said yes to a cup of coffee when the waiter stopped by. Barbara scanned the menu to pass the time, but knew she’d be getting a Virginia ham and cheddar omelette. Arla, she was betting, would have only coffee.

  Barbara glanced at the photos on the wall. A lot of famous people had dropped by the Morning Star over the years. There were a couple of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who Barbara was pretty sure had lived in the neighborhood before his death in 2007. She’d seen him once, a couple of blocks north of here, but didn’t say anything, even though she was a fan. You were always seeing somebody famous in New York and were expected to be cool about it.

  She’d checked the menu, scanned the walls. Fidgety. Getting out her phone seemed the next logical step. Barbara had mixed feelings about meeting with her daughter this morning. She had reason to believe Arla’d been seeing a therapist lately, although Arla had not come right out and admitted it when Barbara asked. But Barbara knew Arla had a multitude of issues she was struggling to come to terms with. There’d been an eating disorder for a while there, but that seemed to be under control. When Arla was in her midteens, she’d gone through a cutting period, marking her arms with a razor. That one really had Barbara worried, but that, too, had passed.

  Barbara was aware that whatever the issue, Arla was inclined to trace it back to her mother. She was, after all, the root of all of Arla’s problems.

  Well, fuck, Barbara thought. I was never exactly June Cleaver.

  When Barbara found herself pregnant at eighteen, she was already working on a career in journalism. As a kid, inspired by watching reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (she wasn’t old enough to have seen it when it first came on), Barbara wanted to be Mary Richards. She wanted to work in news. And Mary showed how an independent woman could make it, after all.

  When she was barely seventeen, she had landed a reporting gig at the Staten Island Advance, winning over the editors by showing up day after day with unsolicited stories about interesting people in the borough. They were good. They saw that the kid could produce. They took her on despite her young age and lack of a journalism degree.

  Who needed a piece of paper to frame and hang on the wall? You went out, you asked people questions, you observed, you wrote it down. When someone wouldn’t tell you what you wanted to know, you found someone else who would. You kept asking until you got an answer. How tricky was that? You needed to go to school for four years to figure that out?

  Barbara threw herself into her work from the very beginning. The proverbial printer’s ink ran through her veins. She was covering murders and gang wars and plane crashes and political scandals when she was no older than first-year journalism students.

  She was having the time of her life.

  Until she found out she was pregnant.

  Getting knocked up was definitely not part of the plan. At first, she was in denial. She couldn’t believe that it had happened. The home pregnancy test had to be wrong. So she did nothing, told no one.

  But there comes a point when what you refuse to believe becomes painfully obvious.

  So when her tummy began to ever so slightly bulge, she found the courage to find the man who’d gotten her pregnant. He deserved to know, right? Barbara figured there was a chance he’d even want to know. Okay, maybe that was being too hopeful. The guy was going to be shocked, no doubt about it. Especially considering that they hadn’t even known each other until they’d had sex, and hadn’t exactly been a couple since.

  They hadn’t even seen each other since.

  It had been, Barbara was willing to concede, a night of very bad decisions.

  Starting with going to a party at NYU given by a former high school friend who, unlike Barbara, had pursued higher education. More bad decisions followed. She smoked a little too much weed, drank a little too much gin. And then, going over to chat up that older guy in the corner. That was the big one.

  He was no longer a student, having gotten his MBA a few years earlier. He’d tagged along with some girl who knew the host of the party.

  So why was he all alone in the corner?

  A shrug. Some guy was going on about having to leave because he played in a band and they had a late-night gig in SoHo. She left with him.

  “The bitch,” Barbara said.

  Later, she wasn’t entirely clear how events had
progressed. They’d had more to drink. It was possible there’d been a walk. And then they’d ended up in someone’s dorm. On a bed. Barbara remembered some fumbling with a condom, but hadn’t paid all that much attention when the guy said, “Uh-oh.”

  In a few weeks, she’d have an idea what had alarmed him.

  While some of the events from that night were foggy, Barbara knew there was no one else up for the role of father of her child. Sure, she’d gone to bed with other guys. But the last time she’d had sex before that evening had been a good (or bad, depending on how you looked at it) six months.

  Other things she was sure of? What he looked like, and a first name. She asked the friend who’d thrown the party if she knew the guy’s surname. No special reason, she said. Just, you know, wondering.

  She found him.

  Broke the news.

  He said, “I have no idea who you are.”

  The way he said it, it almost sounded like he was telling the truth. Barbara refreshed his memory with every detail she could remember.

  “Sorry,” the guy said. “Honest to God, I don’t ever remember meeting you. How long ago was this? I don’t even remember being at that party.”

  “Yeah, well, we were both kind of flying.”

  “Maybe you were,” he said. “Not me.”

  Barbara couldn’t decide what to do. Go after him? Demand a blood test?

  And of course, there was one other option.

  But again, Barbara was paralyzed with indecision, and did nothing. By the time she found the strength to tell her parents, it was too late to end the pregnancy. Barbara’s mother and father—fucking saints, that’s what they were—didn’t judge. Oh sure, they wanted to know about this man, and Barbara told them she’d talked to him, that he refused to accept responsibility, and had moved to Colorado or Wyoming and gone into real estate. It wasn’t worth the time to pursue him, she said.

  Okay, they said. These things happen, they said. No sense ranting and raving. What’s done is done. Let’s figure out what to do.

  Give the baby up for adoption, Barbara decided. I’m not cut out to be a parent.

  Well, okay, sure, that’s a possibility, her mother said. But that is my future grandchild you’re talking about. If you’re absolutely determined that you do not want to raise this child, well, your father and I have still got a few good years left, and we’ve been talking about this, and we’ve agreed that if you’re okay with it, we’ll do it.

  At first Barbara thought, no way. But as that child grew inside her, she started to come around to her mother’s way of thinking. This could work. The world was changing. Alternative parenting options were in vogue. Sure, some people might look down their collective noses at Barbara, but when had she ever cared what anybody else thought?

  She knew her mother was betting that when the baby arrived, Barbara would have a change of heart. She’d see that infant and decide to raise the child herself, even if there was no father’s name to put on the birth certificate.

  That whole mother-child bond would kick in.

  Arla arrived.

  The bond did not kick in.

  Barbara was tormented that it did not. She was consumed with guilt that she did not want to raise this little girl. Did she love her? Of course, without question. But if there was a mothering gene, Barbara feared she did not have it.

  So Barbara’s parents honored their pledge and took Arla into their home. Barbara remained conflicted about how things had turned out. She felt less guilty that she had not given Arla up to strangers, that she was with family. But every time Barbara went home and saw her mother and father so fully engaged with Arla, the guilt bubbled back to the surface. It was an ache that never went away.

  Every time she saw Arla, she was reminded of her abdication of responsibility. In those moments, she wondered whether adoption would have been the better choice. Out of sight, out of mind.

  She hated herself for even thinking it.

  Every week, Barbara sent a good chunk of her paycheck to her parents. She visited most weeks. She did love Arla. She loved her more than anyone or anything else in the world. No one pretended Barbara was not her mother. Arla was not raised to believe Barbara was the aunt who dropped by. No, Barbara was Mom. Barbara’s parents were Grampa and Gramma.

  No lies. No attempts to deceive. At least not on that score.

  It all seemed to work out.

  And when Arla was twelve, Grampa died. Liver cancer. Barbara’s mother carried on alone. Barbara still came by, but as Arla moved into her teens and became the kind of hellion so many teenage girls turned into for a period of time, Barbara had to admit, deep down, that she was relieved to be spared the daily turmoil.

  Thirteen months ago, Barbara’s mother passed on. Heart attack.

  “This is how I see it,” Arla had told Barbara the last time they’d sat down together. “You leaving me with them is what drove them to an early grave. I was a bitch and a half, no doubt about it, but I should have been your bitch and a half, not theirs.”

  “I can’t rewrite history,” Barbara had said.

  “Yeah, but you don’t have a problem writing about others who’ve made a mess of theirs,” she’d countered. “Bad things people have done, mistakes they’ve made, that’s your whole shtick. But looking in the mirror, that’s not so easy.”

  Barbara hadn’t known what to say. The truth was always difficult to argue.

  They’d had a serious argument six months earlier. Arla wanted to go out west, try to find her father. Barbara did everything to discourage her, and offered no clues that would help her track him down. “The man’s not worth finding,” she said. Arla was furious.

  Barbara said something she wished she hadn’t. “Maybe you’d have been happier if I’d given you up for adoption and you’d been raised by strangers.”

  “You’re the stranger,” Arla shot back. “Always have been.”

  And then Arla had gone in for the kill. “I have this friend who’s getting married, and she says her mother’s driving her crazy, wanting to be involved in every single detail about the wedding, and my friend’s like, God, I can’t take it anymore, and I said to her, hey, at least she’s interested.”

  So there was every reason to feel unsettled about meeting with Arla this morning. What was Barbara to blame for now? What repressed maternal memory—or lack thereof—had Arla gone over with her therapist this week?

  She’d said she had news.

  Jesus, maybe it’s about her father.

  So far as Barbara knew, Arla had abandoned her idea of heading out west to look for him. Maybe she’d changed her mind.

  Arla still was not here—being habitually late to meetings with her was, Barbara figured, a minor act of vengeance—so Barbara scrolled through her Twitter feed. Barbara was almost never without the phone in her hand. The advent of technology had made it nearly impossible for Barbara to be alone with her own thoughts. If she wasn’t writing, or reading, or having a conversation with someone, she was on the phone.

  She followed political leaders and countless pundits and various media outlets and even bulletins from the NYPD. And no one had to know that she also followed someone who tweeted, every single day, cute puppy pics.

  So shoot me.

  She continued to scroll, caught a glimpse of something, then thumbed her way back up the feed. It was a post from the NYPD.

  There’d been an elevator accident in an apartment building up on York Avenue. The story was just breaking and details were few.

  “Fuck,” she whispered.

  “I take it you’re not talking to me.”

  Barbara looked up to find Arla standing there.

  “Oh, hey, hi,” she said, slipping out of the booth to give her daughter a hug. No matter how angry Arla might be with her, she’d still allow her mother to do that. And Arla would slip her arms around Barbara in return, even if she didn’t pull her in for the big squeeze.

  “You look good,” Barbara said as they slipped into the
booth, sitting across from each other.

  And it was true. The thing was, Arla always looked good. She was tall and slender, with straight black hair that hung below her shoulders. She wore a black, clingy dress with a broad, black, patent leather belt. A lank of hair hung over one eye and she brushed it back, tucking it behind her ear.

  “Thanks,” Arla said. “Have you ordered?”

  “Only coffee. I was going to get an omelette. What do you want?”

  “Coffee’s good.”

  “Go on, have something. I’m buying.”

  Arla shook her head. “That’s okay.”

  The waiter came. Just because Arla didn’t want to eat wasn’t going to stop Barbara. She ordered two coffees and an omelette for herself.

  “So how’s it going?” Arla asked.

  “Fine,” Barbara said, then frowned. She told her daughter, briefly, about the incident the day before involving the young woman who’d interned at Manhattan Today. Even as she told Arla the story, she wondered why. Was she hoping to garner some advance sympathy, maybe ward off the latest grievance Arla wanted to air?

  “That’s awful,” Arla said with what seemed genuine concern. “Are her parents down here yet?”

  “Probably,” Barbara said. “And now,” she said, raising her phone, “there’s another one.”

  “Another elevator thing?”

  Barbara nodded.

  “I get totally creeped out in them,” Arla said. “It’s not that I think they’re going to crash or anything. It’s just, when that door closes, there’s no place you can go, and if you’re trapped in there with someone weird, you can’t wait to get to your floor.” She shook her head. “Two in two days. They say things come in threes.”

  Barbara smiled. “I think that’s celebrity deaths. So,” she said slowly, “what’s your news?”

  Arla inhaled deeply through her nose. The arrival of her coffee gave her a moment to exhale and prepare for what looked to Barbara like a major announcement. She took a packet of Splenda, ripped it open, and sprinkled half of it into the cup.