Chapter 16
"Love in an Elevator," Aerosmith
Cruz
“Up to an hour?” Victoria’s shriek echoed in the awful metal death trap, but I almost couldn’t hear it over the pounding of my heart.
I caught my reflection in the elevator’s metal walls—walls I regularly scrubbed to remove fingerprints, one foot lodged on the sensor to keep the doors open—and resented the beads of sweat glistening on my forehead.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” a polite voice crackled from the speaker. “I’ve alerted the local fire department, but since nobody present has an urgent medical condition, we used the non-emergency line.”
“I’ll develop a heart condition if you don’t get me out of this elevator,” she said, voice dripping with venom, her sky-high heels clicking against the tile floor as she paced. “Can you call my office to let them know about the delay?”
“Company policy dictates that I can only contact emergency services and the building maintenance department.” Victoria’s anger redirected towards me, silver irises boring into my skull. “The contact person on file is …” Her voice sweetened. “Oh, you’re in Cruz’s building?”
“Hey Tracy, I’m stuck in here too,” I spoke up past the lump in my throat.
Victoria had been so frustrated she’d taken control, not letting me speak.
“My cell isn’t getting service so I’m afraid I'm no help. If I weren’t here, I have Victoria’s business partner as her emergency contact”—which is wild, didn’t she have any family?
—“so I’m unable to support my tenant. Maybe you could make an exception to call her office? ”
“I’m not supposed to, Cruz.” Her voice was tense.
Yeah, after that tongue lashing I wouldn't want to help her either. “Jorge insists nothing’s wrong, but you and I both know these shafts are haunted. My mom sent holy water from Guadeloupe but I haven’t booked the priest yet for an exorcism,” I said, which elicited a chuckle through the speaker.
“Ms. Blackstone is new to our building, she hasn’t made her annual sacrifice to the elevator poltergeist yet. ”
The building itself was built in 1894, and about ten years ago, a historic preservation builder renovated all the luxury apartments to add modern upgrades while keeping the original doors, brick fireplaces, and stained-glass windows.
Residents found it charming … except when the elevator shit the bed.
Which is why Tracy and I had become well acquainted.
She relented. “Fine, give me his number.”
Victoria rattled it off from memory, checking her phone again for the nonexistent signal.
I shifted back and forth, but it wasn’t pacing. It wasn’t! Pacing would imply that I was nervous, and I definitely wasn’t.
Cool gray eyes assessed me. “Don’t tell me you’re claustrophobic.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you,” I said as her lip curved slightly. “Not claustrophobic exactly. I’m ok in small spaces as long as I can get out.”
“What’s the other one? Not being able to escape?” She tapped her forehead twice, then after a moment, snapped her fingers. “Cleithrophobia.”
My mouth dropped open. “How do you know that?”
"Alexander’s brother Nick tutored me one summer. It's from the Greek for 'to latch closed,'” she said like it meant something. Was Nicholas Clarke a famous ancient linguistics scholar?
This was why I usually took the stairs … except for when a sexy redhead steps into the elevator and I want to see her scowl when I wish her good morning. Guess that backfired. “Sounds right, for being trapped in a small metal death trap hanging from a wire that might plummet to our death.”
“New York building code dictates each elevator has six to twelve cables, each able to hold the weight of a full car.” She gestured calmly to the elevator ceiling, her expression oddly affectionate.
I tilted my head in surprise. “It was on the New York brokerage exam. We won’t fall to our death,” she said with such cool confidence that my fear began to subside.
It still prickled at the back of my skull, but her measured rationality eased the tightness in my chest. “The real danger isn’t the fall, it’s heat stroke if the fans don’t circulate air. ”
The fear returned … tinged with a vision of a sweaty redhead as my last sight.
There were worse ways to go.
“Well, if I’m going to suffer heat stroke with anyone in the building, I’m glad it’s you and not Mrs. Samuelson from 406. Her breath smells like fish sticks and bleu cheese.”
She smirked. “Were you locked in a closet as a kid?”
“Close. Spent a few years on a ballistic submarine, which is a windowless metal tube with no contact with the outside world.” I looked around our shiny coffin. “Promised myself that when I got out, I’d never have another day without the sun on my face.”
She checked her phone again then sat down on the cold tile floor, brows lifting higher as she clocked my fidgeting. I gripped the hand rails, forcing myself to stop pacing.
“Can we do something to take my mind off this …” I gestured loosely to the death trap.
“Like what?”
“Truth or Dare?”
“Are we twelve?”
“Nah, by then I’d moved onto Seven Minutes in Heaven,” I grinned and folded my arms across my chest, looked at my reflection, realized how nervous I looked, unfolded them, but it didn’t help so I refolded them.
She sighed. “Fine, truth or dare?”
“I asked you first.” I said. She glared at me, always in control. “Fine, truth.”
It’s always easier to start with truth, to set someone at ease … but I started brainstorming dares, depending on how long we were stuck.
Her pointy heels tapped. I lowered myself against the opposite wall, my straight legs mirroring hers.
“How does one begin a career as a …” she held up her fingers to count, “building superintendent, personal trainer, self-defense instructor … am I missing any?”
I chuckled. ‘Career’ might be a stretch.
I matched her three fingers then kept counting: “Back-up musician and reluctant tattoo model.” When I flipped my wrists in a half shrug, her gaze lingered on my forearm.
“Say yes, then figure it out. When somebody sees your workout and asks for advice, say yes, then get your certification. When somebody who trained you as a nuclear mechanic offers you a job, say yes and apply it to a building. When your talented artist friend has a stroke of genius, say yes and take off your shirt.” Her gaze lingering on my neck, where a tattoo peaked above my collar.
“And a friend's bandmate breaks his arm and asks you to fill in, say yes and practice their set list until your fingers bleed.” I held up the calloused fingertips of my left hand.
“So you actually play guitar? You're not a pretentious douchebag who uses it as decoration?”
She remembered that detail from my apartment.
I tried not to let that mean something. “I learned to drum first, as a kid.
Then Pike—I was out for his going away party at Donnelly's the night we met—on the boat he showed me the basic chords. I spent hours laying on my rack tinkering with his borrowed guitar. One of the only good things to come out of six years of misery.” I nudged her thigh with my toe. “Truth or dare.”
“Truth.”
I tapped my chin dramatically. She reacted with a faint eye roll.
“Do you play a musical instrument? Or sing?” After realizing she was the source of that raspy voice, I’d been hoping for an opportunity to hear her again …
short of hanging out at Rodriguez’s with my ear to his vent like a total fucking creeper.
“Piano.”
“You any good?”
“I used to be incredible,” she said, her answer confident but wistful. Her fingers wriggled on her lap, playing the ghost of a keyboard.
“Why’d you stop?” I asked, matching her soft tone.
Her gaze held a hint of sadness, a silent request to drop it. “Truth or dare.”
“Truth.”
“How do you choose your tattoos?”
“I don’t.”
Her eyebrows rose in disbelief. “You don’t choose how to permanently deface your body?”
I lifted my left leg, pointing to a humpback whale. “I got this in Seattle with a few guys from the boat after I saw one through the periscope. Fucking majestic. But most of them, I just trust Kate.”
I reached behind my back to grip my shirt and pull it over my head. Her lips parted and pupils dilated as her gaze traveled over my colorful skin. I held out my arms, twisting to show off the stained glass inspired designs that covered my forearms, biceps and pec.
“During one of Paul’s boring lectures during an incubator meeting, I convinced Kate that her doodles were too good to stay in a sketchbook. Rafael was there too—he owns the tattoo parlor over on West Ave. He was looking for a project to work on his shading, so …”
I pointed to a cross on my shoulder. “It started here. She said since I went by Cruz, I needed a cross like San Juan de la Cruz, some famous Catholic mystic.”
“John of the Cross,” she murmured. “He wrote 'Dark Night of the Soul.'”
I don’t know why I kept being surprised that she knew everything. I was raised Catholic, but it was more cultural than religious. Kate was always teaching me new shit about saints and prayers.
I tapped the dove on my right pec. “That reminded her of a stained glass window … and it sort of went from there. And then she worked in a bunch of musical ones—tattoos from my favorite bands,” I tapped the Led Zeppelin Zoso tattoo up my forearm, the Beatles silhouettes crossing Abbey Road on my ribs, the Foo Fighters symbol on my neck, "And a few for my family too.
" I tapped the three birds over my heart.
Her eyes scanned all of them, biting her lip … then she realized I’d stopped talking. “If you hated the Navy, why did you join?”
When I couldn’t hide a grimace, her nostrils flared like a shark scenting blood. “Didn’t have a choice. It was that or Juvie.”
Her reply was laced with unexpected concern. “What did you do?”
God, I didn’t want to tell that old sob story. I steadied my hand on the floor next to her ankle. “Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
“Any brothers or sisters?” I asked to lighten the mood.