obvious.
Let it be said that a fish will strive to find the highest point available in order to fall from it in an attempt to land somewhere else. They’re noble explorers limited only by water, an atmosphere that always settles to the lowest spots, and though their souls strain toward the heights, it’s for those low elevations that their bodies yearn. They are fearless adventurers caged by aquariums or restrained in bowls. They are repressed free spirits in search of the edge of the world, in pursuit of the unknown, and are predisposed to falling from great heights at much personal peril in order to find new territories.
In the hairbreadth of time it takes him to span the gap between the twenty-fourth and twentieth floors, Ian knows this. Even as the memory of Troy and the pink plastic castle and his fishbowl fade, this one certainty remains embedded and true. His basic desire to explore, the very reason for his existence, has hung him in the sky.
Let boredom be to the snails!
And so Ian plummets toward the pavement.
11
In Which Katie Demands Satisfaction from the Elevator Button
The foyer door closes quietly behind Katie. The little hydraulic arm flexes, and the noise from cars passing by on the street outside becomes muted by a layer of glass and steel. As Katie crosses the lobby, she doesn’t notice that the wilted brown potted plants have been replaced by a lush silk terrarium, nor does she notice how well the new silk plants have been watered. She doesn’t notice how the tile has been polished to a high, reflective gloss and how there’s not a scuff mark to be seen. However, the lingering smell of lemons, bleach, and vinegar in the air can’t be missed.
Katie arrives at the elevators and presses the button with the arrow that once pointed at the ceiling but now misses it because, over time, it has become skewed about thirty degrees from vertical. The button now points to a sconce to the top right of the elevator door, and it clicks audibly when Katie pokes it. Katie waits in a silence that should be filled by the distant mechanical hum of the elevator moving. She glares at the button and then pokes it again. Waits. Then pokes it vigorously and repeatedly, the button sounding like an agitated cricket in the calm of the lobby.
The first press is to summon the elevator, wherever it hangs in the twenty-seven-story blackness of the shaft that vaults from here into the sky. The second press is because the button failed to illuminate from the first. It’s a finicky thing. The opaque plastic lights up with a creamy glow from that second push. The last presses are frustration-induced jabs, violent pokings that eventually cause fingertip numbness.
Katie’s emotions are all backed up, and she wants to get this over with. While the severe poking she subjects the button to does little to speed up the elevator’s descent, it does vent a tiny toot of malcontentedness. She wants to be standing in front of Connor. She’s impatient to confront him, have her resolution, and then move on with life. The afternoon has taken its time, slow seconds passing by to make up a minute and those minutes dripping by even more painfully to make an hour. All of them building to an end of her shift at the grocery store where she works, and each of them marking her passage from there to here. She didn’t have the frame of mind to marvel how each second, on its own, was a useless freeze frame, but all of them compiled made something much more coherent.
Her finger jabs.
The first joint flexes backward, and the pink skin under her fingernail flashes white with each stab. It’s a pacifying action, one that gives the same false sense of command over a helpless situation that floating seat cushions do on passenger jets crossing the frigid Atlantic at forty thousand feet. Those cushions won’t do much in a five-hundred-mile-per-hour nosedive into the roiling ocean water. Even if, by some miracle, anyone survives, those cushions
Let it be said that a fish will strive to find the highest point available in order to fall from it in an attempt to land somewhere else. They’re noble explorers limited only by water, an atmosphere that always settles to the lowest spots, and though their souls strain toward the heights, it’s for those low elevations that their bodies yearn. They are fearless adventurers caged by aquariums or restrained in bowls. They are repressed free spirits in search of the edge of the world, in pursuit of the unknown, and are predisposed to falling from great heights at much personal peril in order to find new territories.
In the hairbreadth of time it takes him to span the gap between the twenty-fourth and twentieth floors, Ian knows this. Even as the memory of Troy and the pink plastic castle and his fishbowl fade, this one certainty remains embedded and true. His basic desire to explore, the very reason for his existence, has hung him in the sky.
Let boredom be to the snails!
And so Ian plummets toward the pavement.
11
In Which Katie Demands Satisfaction from the Elevator Button
The foyer door closes quietly behind Katie. The little hydraulic arm flexes, and the noise from cars passing by on the street outside becomes muted by a layer of glass and steel. As Katie crosses the lobby, she doesn’t notice that the wilted brown potted plants have been replaced by a lush silk terrarium, nor does she notice how well the new silk plants have been watered. She doesn’t notice how the tile has been polished to a high, reflective gloss and how there’s not a scuff mark to be seen. However, the lingering smell of lemons, bleach, and vinegar in the air can’t be missed.
Katie arrives at the elevators and presses the button with the arrow that once pointed at the ceiling but now misses it because, over time, it has become skewed about thirty degrees from vertical. The button now points to a sconce to the top right of the elevator door, and it clicks audibly when Katie pokes it. Katie waits in a silence that should be filled by the distant mechanical hum of the elevator moving. She glares at the button and then pokes it again. Waits. Then pokes it vigorously and repeatedly, the button sounding like an agitated cricket in the calm of the lobby.
The first press is to summon the elevator, wherever it hangs in the twenty-seven-story blackness of the shaft that vaults from here into the sky. The second press is because the button failed to illuminate from the first. It’s a finicky thing. The opaque plastic lights up with a creamy glow from that second push. The last presses are frustration-induced jabs, violent pokings that eventually cause fingertip numbness.
Katie’s emotions are all backed up, and she wants to get this over with. While the severe poking she subjects the button to does little to speed up the elevator’s descent, it does vent a tiny toot of malcontentedness. She wants to be standing in front of Connor. She’s impatient to confront him, have her resolution, and then move on with life. The afternoon has taken its time, slow seconds passing by to make up a minute and those minutes dripping by even more painfully to make an hour. All of them building to an end of her shift at the grocery store where she works, and each of them marking her passage from there to here. She didn’t have the frame of mind to marvel how each second, on its own, was a useless freeze frame, but all of them compiled made something much more coherent.
Her finger jabs.
The first joint flexes backward, and the pink skin under her fingernail flashes white with each stab. It’s a pacifying action, one that gives the same false sense of command over a helpless situation that floating seat cushions do on passenger jets crossing the frigid Atlantic at forty thousand feet. Those cushions won’t do much in a five-hundred-mile-per-hour nosedive into the roiling ocean water. Even if, by some miracle, anyone survives, those cushions
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