The last person Lacy wants to see when she steps into the elevator is Natalie from shipping, whose ridiculous rhinestone glasses hang from a string and perch on her bosom shelf, who frosts her hair in a way that looks unapologetically fake, and who is one of those idiots who, in adherence to corporate policies, goes outside for cigarette breaks even when it's raining or below zero. Lacy delivers a brief, disinterested smile, and presses the button for the 7th floor. Doors close. She isn't the type to foster a friendship with someone she's pretty sure she would hate, so she engages in no small talk as she consults the jeweled watch her fiancé gave her recently. She has half an hour before her 9:00 meeting, during which time she intends to make an objection-proof case for firing one of her secretaries, an older woman whose arthritis has compromised her typing skills.
     When Lacy realizes the elevator isn't moving, she presses the 7th floor button again; this time holding it down, the light shining through her expensively-manicured nail. Still nothing. She presses the Open button, but the doors remain shut. A stab of panic as she presses the Open button again and again. Nothing.
     “Don't do no good to keep pressing it,” Natalie says. “They had trouble with this elevator last year. Remember?”
     “No.” Lacy, suddenly feeling hot, presses the button for the 1st floor, then the 2nd floor.
     “Yeah. Katherine from sales was trapped for five hours. When they finally rescued her, she was completely freaked out.”
     Lacy, still pressing buttons, feels the nausea of anxiety; that's not going to be her, there's no way she's going to be trapped in this elevator. “I'll call someone,” she says, suddenly remembering the cell phone in her purse.
     Natalie laughs without smiling. “Good luck getting a signal.”
     Hands shaking, Lacy checks, and sure enough, no bars. “Damn!”
     “Told ya. Lemme try this.” Natalie takes the emergency phone off the wall, and as she waits for someone to answer, says, “I mean Katherine completely freaked out. They hadda call an ambulance. She never came back to work after that, she never... hello?”
     Relieved, Lacy listens in on Natalie's end of the conversation: “Elevator's stuck again... yeah, that's the one. Well, I'm fine, but the lady I'm with is really scared.”
     “No, I'm not!” Lacy protests loud enough for the person on the other end to hear. “But you need to get us out of here now!”
     “See what I mean?” Natalie says. “She's completely freaking out!”
     Lacy grabs the phone—she makes about twelve times what Natalie makes—and says in her ferociously-efficient voice to whoever is on the other end that they better get their fat ass out of their chair pronto and fix this lousy piece of shit elevator! To her horror, there is no reply, only the silence of dead air.
     “Gotcha!” Natalie says. “That phone don't work. S'why it took five hours to get us out.”
     Lacy stares. “Us?”
     “Me and Katherine.”
     Lacy recalls that Katherine's inflexible adherence to the rules regarding time off had resulted in four firings in one week. “You were with her?”
     “Uh huh. Plus, same thing happened to Isabella in personnel. You ever try calling her Izzie?”
     Lacy shakes her head.
     “I called her Izzie the whole time we were in here, she hated it.” Natalie takes the phone from Lacy and replaces it on the hook. “She fired my friend Wally because he was late a few times. Even after he told her it was because his wife was in the hospital with her cancer and he had to get the kids to school. Good ol' Izzie still fired him.” Natalie shakes her head. “Man, shoulda heard her cry! Turns out, she was claustrophobic. Completely freaked out!”
     It takes a moment to register in Lacy's brain that Natalie's presence in the elevator all three times it has gotten stuck can't be a coincidence, and then panic hits her full force. She raises her fist and begins pounding on the door. “Help! Help!”
     But Natalie yanks her almost off her feet and throws her against the wall. “Shut up! You keep screaming, you'll use up all our oxygen and we'll suffocate!”
     Trembling, Lacy slides to the floor and tries not to breathe.
     “That's better,” Natalie says. “Might's well stay calm. We got a lotta time to kill.” She sits, too-manlike, with legs bent and elbows resting on knees—and lets out a deep sigh. “Jesus, I wish I was allowed to smoke in here.”

     While I await biopsy results I decide that no matter what the news is, I am, from this moment on, going to enjoy every sunrise, every trip to the beach, every licking puppy. The doctor comes in and smiles. Negative. Giddy with relief, I call a few people and tell them the good news. It's Friday and I'm in a hurry to get home and start celebrating, but the traffic is horrendous. When someone ahead of me doesn't move after the light changes, I honk my horn. What are you waiting for, asshole, an invitation?

Sparrow in the Mall      Small and mild, with brown eyes and gray head and a briefly pointed nose, James Sparrow worked five days of every week in the paint department of a hardware store, ever hovering in polite, silent attendance while busy housewives chatted and chose between subtly-varying shades of aqua or rose or pearl. He had a tuna fish sandwich for lunch every day with a can of Coke and a bag of chips, and called his mother every other evening. He lived in a room at a boarding house, venturing out on weekends when he needed toothpaste, shaving cream, batteries, or pens. He had never married, but came close once with a woman he met in a supermarket, a woman who told him during their second date that they were just too different. Not only that, she’d met someone else.      One day a customer made a comment about James’ scuffed shoes, and after she left, he tried to remember if he’d bought them or if they’d been among his father’s belongings, his mother allowing nothing to be thrown out. Take his ties, too. He said he would never wear them, his job didn’t require him to, and he never went any place fancy. Take them anyway, you never know. He did know, but took them anyway, and sixteen years later they still sat, rolled like uninteresting cinnamon buns in a box in the closet.      So the following Saturday he got on a bus and was driven past the colorful wash of purposeful city folks striding to important destinations while they talked on their cell phones. At the mall he went into a shoe store and told the salesman who approached that he was looking for something in brown.      “Loafers or lace up?” asked the salesman, a bored lanky boy with an angry constellation of acne on his chin.      “Lace up,” answered a woman appearing at James’ side. “Loafers are so lazy. Don’t you think? They seem so sloppy and sad.”      “It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other,” James said.      She shook her head. “Oh, honey. Shoes are so important! Let me ask you something: are they for a formal event, or for every day?”      “Every day.”      “She doesn’t work here,” the salesman told James. “I don’t know who she is.”      She laughed, and James saw that she had a pretty mouth that looked like it talked a lot and giggled a lot, with lips the color of fuchsia paint. “Oh I’m just a busybody,” she said to the salesman. “I used to work in a shoe store. Before he was born. 'eh?” She tipped her head at James, concession that she, like him, was in her 50s; an invitation to feel connected to her. And then she touched him on the arm. “I just really dislike loafers. I think a good looking man like you should wear nice shoes.”      James was startled, awkward, delighted. She laughed again. Her eyes were an unusual shade of hazel with flecks of white; a combination of Seafoam and Simmering Dew, two popular colors of paint. “Well,” he said, unused to the dynamics that suddenly thrust him into the role of her peer. Or maybe more? “Thanks, it’s really nice of you to…”      “There you are!” said the woman.      But she was no longer addressing James, her attention was on a tall man hurrying toward them; a man who kissed fuchsia lips and said, “I told you to wait outside!”      “Too hot.”      The man spoke to James as if they were old friends, “I knew I’d find her here. She loves shoe stores.”      “She should work here,” said the salesman. “It was like, I didn’t even have to do my job.”      The woman flipped her hand at her three admirers. “Just making myself useful.”      “Come on, let's go to lunch,” the man said as he took her arm.      “Good luck with your shoes,” she said to James. “Please think about what I told you.”      James nodded and watched them leave the store, the man’s arm around her waist. “I'm going to look around some more,” he said to the salesman who had already turned away to wait on someone else. Then he fluttered back into the sun-drenched atrium, and with his wings battering the window, watched the pair walk to their car. Back to Top