Blog Noir: Private Elevator Detective
It was 4pm. Quitting time. I got on the elevator at the third floor, like I do everyday. My destination–the lower parking level . I’d done it a hundred times, but this time, this time something was different.
When the light dinged and the doors glided open, She was standing there. A petite, asian dame. I nodded, entered and reached out the old elevator button pushing finger to choose my floor. And then I realized, something was odd, not right.
All of the buttons for all of the floors were lit up. I can only assume that she had pushed them all. Why? I’ll never know. In these crazy times, in this mixed-up world, who can say why anyone does the desperate things they do. So maybe you like pushing buttons. Maybe you like pushing them too much. Maybe the only thing we do anyway–all day, every day–is push button after button, while this damned world spins and we just wait for the end.
After stopping at every floor, the Asian dame finally took off. Not a word, no explanation. I descended one more floor, walked out through the parking garage and into the gloomy, fading sunshine on the south side of town. The wrong side of the tracks in the kind of town where men come to die, come to forget, come to disappear. A town full of broads consoling themselves by pushing all the elevator buttons they can find.
April 29th, 2006 at 7:28 am
dude… you should’ve punched her in the stomach, press the call cancel button then choose your floor… and when you get to your floor (she’ll still be doubled over in pain) you press all the buttons for her or just turn the elevator from run to stop!
April 29th, 2006 at 11:34 am
Probably what any self-respecting person should’ve done in my situation. Want a job, flatfoot?
April 29th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
It was a cry for help, a cry for attention… in a desperate time… a lonely time, she was reaching out for someone to show the slightest indication of care. The world had done her in, the elevator her last trip, her last test, her last outstretched hand. If only someone would reach back. But no. There is no one reaching. There is no one caring. There is nothing left for her in this world. There is nothing left for HER. But maybe…. there is a place for someone else. A place for a woman, no a super woman, who will make them care, who will make them see, who will make them reach out to those in need. DING. A super woman known simply as….
That’s all I got.
May 1st, 2006 at 10:15 am
How strange! But beautifully written. You could be the next Dorothy L. Sayers! What new adventure will the Private Elevator Detective find? An expired certificate in the library elevator? Graffitti in the Payton elevator? New crimes…new cases! All in a days work. Crazy people riding crazy contraptions.
May 1st, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Is that a stereotype about asians that I am unfamiliar with? They can’t drive, and they push all the buttons on the elevator? :p