LIFT

August 5th, 2009 |

FICTION posted by Rica

The lift was empty when I got in it on the ground floor. There was a lift man, but he never asked me what floor I’d be getting off.

Up, up, up. Stop.

A girl with pigtails got on when we reached the fifth floor. she turned and smiled at me, and I smiled back. She wasn’t any taller than I was but it seemed that she’d been riding the lift far longer that I’d been.

Another woman stepped inside when we got to the seventh floor. She had a small bun on top of her head, and had glasses, and wore high-heeled leather shoes. She only looked at either of us girls once when she stepped in, and never bothered to nod the lift man’s way.

“Sixteenth,” she said. The man pressed sixteen. The doors opened again after a level, and a man in a straight jacket got in. He didn’t look a bit crazy even in white overall and with his arms locked tightly around him.

“Wherever you’re going, miss,” I almost heard him say as he smiled at the lady’s direction. She smiled back, and then started talking to him about how her boss didn’t appreciate her hard work. She stayed late after work hours, prepared coffee for her boss every morning, and even shined his and his family’s shoes whenever she had free time. The man in the white straitjacket seemed to sympathize with her, and she looked thrilled.

“I’m getting off here,” he suddenly said as he turned to the lift man.

“Tenth floor,” the operator said. The man got out without even turning to look at the woman who poured her heart out to him.

Maybe the lady in high heels blushed in anger or embarrassment, but she never turned her head even by a bit so neither I nor the girl with pigtails saw it.

“This is good enough,” the lady said as she waved at the operator.

“Twelfth floor,” he mumbled. Maybe he was thinking it was bothersome now to go to the sixteenth floor; he had already pressed sixteen for the lady.

The girl in pigtails said she was concerned about the lady.

“She might do something terrible,” she said.

I asked her what made her think the lady would do something bad.

“Wouldn’t you?” she said.

I wouldn’t, I told her. At the moment, I wouldn’t.

She asked me how old I was, and before I said anything she mentioned that I was a lot younger than I seemed. I could see the lift operator agreeing with her, though he never really looked at any of us who stepped inside the elevator.

“We should get together sometime,” the girl with pigtails said when she learned I frequented the building for research. She got off the seventeenth floor but never looked back or stopped to get my number.

“Sure,” I said.

A boy got in the lift on the same floor she got off, and although he didn’t smile at my direction, I felt he’d be talking to me the way the other girl did.

“Twenty-three,” he told the operator. “Thanks.”

On the twentieth floor a couple came in, and both were dressed in summer clothes. They mouthed a number to the operator and gave him a fifty-peso bill, and then the guy gave a thumbs up to the people inside the lift. He was smiling broadly.

He reminded me of the man who got off on the tenth floor.

“Give me your number,” whispered the boy beside me. He was too close all of sudden. “So we can talk about that couple later.”