MONDAY

I tap my foot nervously on the shiny marble floor as I watch the numbers descend. I’m going to be late… again. It really wasn’t my fault. I’d had my hours swapped with George this week, so he could leavtwenty-seconde to pick his kids up from school, while his wife recuperated from surgery. I now needed to be in the office by 10.00 instead of 8.30. You’d think that would make me early. However, since I was finishing later, I’d tried to get to the gym in the morning. Well that was a mistake. It was either shower and be late, or skip the shower and arrive stinky and sweaty. I figure that my coworkers would prefer a late me, than a pungent me.

The brisk tap of heels alerts me to the fact that I am not the only one running late today. A side glance shows her pushing her wind swept hair behind her ears as she juggles a fully loaded satchel bag and a briefcase with one hand, while she reaches for the call button on the wall. I’d already pressed it, it was already lit, and pressing it again will not make the elevator move any faster.

The numbers stop at ground floor and the doors open. I gesture for the woman to precede me into the space and she uses her elbow to press floor 23, one floor above my own. I press 22 and stand back. It is just the two of us, and without trying to be obvious, I check her out. Tiny, with short black hair that curls about her ears, which sport a pair of Air Pods, and a killer figure enhanced by shiny black heels. I am a sucker for heels, but how the hell did women walk in them?

Hi, I’m Adrian. I don’t say, but wish I could. 

She smiles at me, a little half smile to acknowledge my presence accompanied by a fractional nod of the head.

I’m… well I don’t know her name, perhaps it’s Jane or Alice. What about Elizabeth? Sarah? I think I will call her Eleanor. You know like the Beatles song. We’re all lonely people here. I’m Eleanor.

So Eleanor, how long have you worked… I run through my memory of the building’s occupants. Floor 23 is a legal firm, I think. Jackson and Fuller is on the official gold name plate in the foyer. How long have you worked at Jackson and Fuller?

It’s my first day. Well I haven’t seen her around so it could very well be her first day, but she has a lot of papers stuffed in that briefcase. 

Actually I have worked for them for six years. There is no way this girl can be old enough to have worked for them for six years. She looks about twenty five.

I’m doing my Internship and have been here two months now. That is better. And you? She would ask me, she would be as interested in me as I am in her. 

I’m an Assistant Accountant at SP and Associates on the twenty second floor. I would tell her, just so she would know where to find me, should she be interested. I have worked there for the past three years.

Do you enjoy your work? Would she really ask such an inane question? Maybe it was small talk. What else do two people trapped alone in an elevator ask one another? 

I wonder if she is single, and I cast my eyes sideways, trying to get a look at her fingers. I can’t see, but I’m going out on a limb here… She’s single.

I can see her head moving slightly, nodding to the beat of music that only she can hear. It’s entrancing as if she were in her own private world and I was viewing her through a window.

What music are you listening to? I would ask. She’s so cute, that she would be listening to something cool and hip. Perhaps an artist I’d never heard of, or something jazzy, or classical. 

Miles Davis, she’d say. Of course I’m a big Miles Davis fan and I ask which album. Kind of Blue. Yep, she would be listening to my favourite album.

The ding of the elevator hitting my floor, halts the conversation we’re not having and I smile at her as I exit. 

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