Chapter 4 #2
“You’re talking,” he says. “Clearly not dying.”
“Too bad for you,” I say between coughs as he does something unexpected. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a sleek black water bottle, silently extending it to me. My eyes narrow skeptically, but my mouth is too dry to refuse. “Are you poisoning me?”
“Yes,” he says, his face and tone equally deadpan. “I poisoned the water, got you stuck in an elevator, and now I’m trapped here with both the murder weapon and the body. Masterful.” I just shrug and take the bottle, holding it in my hands, considering, still coughing up apple cinnamon muffin.
“I didn’t say it was a good plan.”
“Drink,” he says with a voice deep and impatient.
I take a sip from the bottle, ice cold, like him.
Eventually, the coughing is controlled, and I hand it back to him.
His hand wraps around it so easily it swallows mine in the process, but he just pulls it out of my grip and quickly tucks it away. (No lingering touches here.)
As the minutes tick by, he remains standing.
Maybe it helps him feel hopeful that we haven’t been in here as long as it feels.
I just hope the usuals don’t worry about me.
Ramon will have a bag of cherries waiting, and Howard will be waiting to deliver the headlines.
Not to mention Chan and Toby, who I actually am supposed to meet for my shift.
It’s not that they can’t handle it, I just don’t want them to think anything is wrong.
“We aren’t going anywhere, you might as well sit down.”
“I’m fine,” he says.
“You’ve been standing for like, twenty-five minutes.”
“I’m aware,” he clips.
“But, it’s like you’re waiting for a train or something, it’s making me feel like I should be standing.”
“I’m waiting to leave. If you want to wait like that,” he tilts his head down where I’m sitting, “you can.”
“You can relax, ya know.”
“What makes you so sure,” he says and I wonder if that's humor behind it. Feels optimistic to think so. I’m not sure what compels him to listen to me.
In fact, I’m not sure I would actually call it listening, but he joins me on the ground with his legs outstretched, nearly long enough to encroach in my space, no longer worried about staying on his side of the elevator.
“Next time, put your shoes on before you leave the house.”
“Next time, you do the neighborly thing and hold the door.” I don’t know what it is that makes every interaction with him so tense that I channel some version of a heroine who doesn't actually care what the world around her thinks. And part of me likes it more than I should admit.
We hear the call from outside, some local-accented fireman, promising to come and get us.
“You managed to turn this into a hell of a morning,” Hudson says to me incredulously. He leans head against the wall and forces his eyes closed hoping for peace we both know he won’t get from me.
“You’re seriously blaming me for a bit of bad luck? We should be grateful, we don’t know why the universe needed us to get stuck, or even whose bad luck we borrowed, because maybe they just really needed a break.”
“That’s right, you like bad luck.” He picks his head up slightly to pin me with the darkest stare, one that I try my best not to fall into. But the depth of his eyes is beyond coal, and yet, much like it, there is the smallest ring of fire trying to burn through his irises.
“Where are you going this early anyways? It’s Friday.”
“I know what day it is, Louisa.” He says my name in a way no one else does. Most people opt for Lou, but also because he won’t look anywhere but directly at me as the syllables form on his lips in a way that feels criminal to hear alone with him in a confined space. (I’ve been reading too much.)
He looks like he could be readying himself to say something, but as he does, the elevator door cracks just the smallest amount, letting the outside hallway light into this space my eyes had adjusted to.
The firefighter, whose name I learn is Bill, works as I talk, maybe because we are both trapped.
Me in this elevator, him in this conversation.
He lives outside the city with his wife and four sons.
(I’m serious.) Two of whom are single. (I’m really serious, also not interested.) I hear Hudson huff in reply, probably because Bill doesn’t offer up any daughters.
The doors are cranked open and we’re assured we’ll both be fine, even though I can now clearly see the sixth-floor landing that is just about three feet from the elevator floor.
I look at Hudson, whose face is stone cold with aggravation.
I guess the casual conversation I made as Bill (and the others) worked their magic to pry the door open just annoyed him even more.
He’s never been one for small talk. (Obviously.) Being forced into it while trapped in a hanging metal box with me?
That might actually be his worst nightmare.
“Lou, honey,” Bill says. The sweetness of adding ‘honey’ has more to do with whatever they teach firefighters to help calm people down than any real term of endearment.
But I like it all the same. “You ready to slip on out?” he asks.
And for the first time, I’m staring at the opening, we’re between two floors, and will need to quite literally slide out of the elevator (that is still suspended), and I am unable to imagine anything other than my body getting sliced in half.
“Wait, actually, I—I don’t think I’m ready,” I say nervously. As Hudson, even from a seated position, looks down at me.
“It’ll be fine, honey, now come on, feet first, and I’ll catch you on this side,” Bill says. But now, the honey is not doing what I need to sweeten the fear I am overcome with. A fear I didn’t even realize I had.
“It’s just a little too Final Destination for me.
I think, maybe, I should just stay here until the elevator gets fixed.
I mean, we bonded, it would be rude to leave her while she’s stuck like this!
” I am spouting absolute gibberish, and I know it when out of the corner of my eye, I chance a look at Hudson, whose face is dripping in judgement.
Maybe it’s satisfaction that this could be my payback.
Being split in half by the elevator that made him late for… whatever it is.
“What if we start with your friend, you’ll see it’s nothing to be worried about.
” I let out a laugh that came from somewhere deep within me, I would feel bad except a similar sound also escaped from him, knowing, like I do, for all the things we are—neighbors, enemies, coffee patron and barista, narrator and complete noisemaking asshole. (We are not friends.)
“That’s a great idea, he should totally go first!” I say with an enthusiasm at the idea that one, I don’t need to go, and two, he would be the one to get sliced first.
Hudson’s face is on mine as he shakes his head an infinitesimal amount.
Lips pursed together, he drops his bag to Fireman Bill and slides his body between the opening.
Landing with a thud on his own two feet, not needing anyone to help him down.
The length of his legs doing all the hard work.
I crook my head to see what’s going on, he’s just shaking hands with the firemen.
Bill tries coaxing me again, but this fear I didn’t know I had is keeping me stuck in place. (Just like the elevator.)
And then I hear it, the tone that has no patience, and no interest in prolonging this experience.
“Louisa,” Hudson says, as if that should be enough of a summons.
We can see each other through the forced-open doors.
His eyes narrow, and maybe it’s the recent (one-sided) trauma bond, but it doesn't look like anger. I hear the exhale, the one that every time tells me the depth of his lungs in a way I didn’t expect to care about.
He steps up closer to the elevator floor, he’s tall enough where he can see in, about a head higher, giving him a full view of me. He does something surprising then, reaches an arm in, lays it on the elevator floor.
“How about this, if you get sliced in half, you can die knowing I lost a limb.” I scoot towards the opening, not sure in what twisted world that’s a good deal, but the tone in which he said it was stripped of anger, and just offered the smallest flash of decency I didn’t know he possessed.
So much so it has me inching closer. “Come on,” he reinforces.
As soon as I slip my feet through the gap between the elevator and the seventh floor, he wraps his other arm around my legs, the bait arm, that was meant to be the offering to the elevator gods, grabs my waist. “Duck” is all he says with sharp direction as he feeds my body quickly through.
I close my eyes for a split second of movement, and when I open them, I’m held in his arms, surrounded by firemen.
It happened so fast, but we aren't moving quickly now. Both just a little bit frozen as the only thing suspending me in the air is him. And while I’m held against his hard body, the hold he has on me is cradling in a way I don’t have the time or health insurance to fully unpack.
I can feel the rise and fall of his chest, and he’s looking at me with a momentary sense of tenderness that I wish I could bottle for the next time he does something to make me hate him.
He smells like peppermint and subtle cologne, not in a trying-too-hard kind of way.
More like he has good dental hygiene and a signature scent.
As I take a deep breath of him, his arm releases and my feet swing to the ground.
He clears his throat and walks down the sixth floor hallway to the staircase, without another word, to escape me and this morning for good.