Elevator, The (11 page)

She can’t dwell on those possibilities. She won’t.

“This is scary,” she admits, looking at Isabel. “But I’ve been more frightened.”

Gina’s mouth curves in a smile. “When?”

Words spring to Michelle’s lips:
This morning. When I realized I might be pregnant.

She can’t say that, though, not here. She needs to reserve that discussion for Parker, who will understand the tumult of emotions that gripped her as she held the pregnancy test kit.

But conversation in the elevator is a good thing. Talking will keep their minds occupied and help pass the time until help arrives.

Michelle folds her hands and smiles at the redhead against the opposite wall. “Have you ever felt really hopeless? Before today, I mean.”

Gina almost laughs aloud. In the last few hours she’s been overtaken by so many emotions it’s hard to single one out from the pack.

But she knows hopelessness. Before the betrayal, before the anger, even before this frustration, she stood beneath the cold shadow of despair and felt its breath on her face.

She drops the reins on her thoughts and drifts back to a summer day at the beach. “One summer—it was 1990, I think—Sonny, my husband, and I had decided that I should take a week off and head to the beach with the kids. Sonny kept working, of course, but he’d drive over for dinner and we’d sit and watch the sun set over the gulf. Our daughter was a baby that year. Our son was three.

“One night I was lying on a beach blanket, propped up on my elbows, sort of in a daze. The day had been unbelievably hot and humid—one of those days when you feel like you’re breathing through a wet washcloth. Sonny and Mattie were splashing at the pool while the baby and I watched the sun go down. After being alone all day with two kids, I was drained, almost too tired to think.”

“Anyway, after the sun set, I turned around and saw Sonny coming toward me. I was about to ask what he’d done with Mattie, when suddenly I heard a woman screaming by the pool. That’s when I knew—Sonny didn’t have Mattie at all. The pool had him.”

Even now, the memory has the power to shiver her scalp like the grip of a nightmare. “I ran toward the pool,” she says, a tremor rippling her voice. “I don’t remember it, but later people told me that I screamed with every step. By the time I got there, a man had dived in and pulled Mattie up, but he was as blue as ice. I handed Mandi to someone and tried to perform CPR on Mattie, but nothing I did seemed to help.”

Gina glances at the others. The maid is not looking at her, but a quiver touches Michelle’s chin. “Was he…okay?”

“The rescue squad came and took him away. They let me ride along, and I heard one of them radio ahead and say they were coming in with a DOA. Then the man who was working on Mattie yelled that he’d found a pulse. After that, I hung on to my son’s hand and didn’t let go until they pried me loose at the hospital.”

Relief floods Michelle’s features. “He was fine, then.”

Gina shakes her head. “It was touch and go at the hospital. They didn’t know how long he’d been underwater, so they didn’t know if he’d suffered brain damage. And he’d inhaled water into his lungs, which made him susceptible to pneumonia, so they told me his chances weren’t good. All that night I paced in that ICU corridor and begged God to let me keep my son.”

From the edge of the emergency lamp’s glow, the maid whispers, “Did He answer?”

“Who can say?” Gina can’t stop herself from laughing. “That night I’d have prayed to Santa Claus if I thought it would work. Desperation does strange things to people—makes you want to make promises you know you can’t possibly keep. Anyway, I promised God that I’d stop working and concentrate on my kids, do whatever it took to be the best mom in the world, if he’d heal my boy. The next morning, Mattie woke up and started talking like nothing had happened. But I’ve been unable to go near anything deeper than a bathtub ever since.”

The Hispanic girl stares at her with chilling intentness for a long moment, then crosses her arms. “I believe in God. I pray to Him.”

Gina pushes her hair back, the better to return the girl’s stare. Of course the maid believes in God; she’s Hispanic, which means she’s Catholic. And probably as superstitious as a gypsy.

She smiles at the Mexican girl. “‘And almost everyone when age, disease or sorrows strike him…inclines to think there is a God, or something very like Him.’”

Across the car, the brunette chuckles. “That’s funny. You make that up?”

“No. It’s a verse from Arthur Hugh Clough.”

“Oh.” The brunette straightens, a frown puckering the skin between her eyes into fine wrinkles. “So…you didn’t keep the promise you made that night?”

“I did—not because of some bargain with the Almighty, but because I realized how precious my kids were. By then it was an easy decision, because the business was doing well. Sonny didn’t need me at the office and I was glad to be out of the picture. We decided our kids were the most important thing in our lives, so I was happy to make them my priority.”

A tiny flicker widens Michelle’s eyes. “Seems to me your kids would be better off watching you make something of yourself.”

Gina smiles, simultaneously amused and annoyed by the brunette’s naiveté. “I didn’t have anything to prove. I’d already graduated magna cum laude from Brown, married and helped my husband start a business. I wanted an opportunity to help make something of my children.”

“Interesting perspective.”

Gina tilts a brow. “Why do you say that?”

Michelle shrugs. “The women I knew growing up hardly ever left the house—especially my mother,” she says, slipping out of her raincoat. “She’d get up, have a cigarette and drink gin for breakfast. A steady diet of soaps in the afternoon, crackers and soup for dinner if we were lucky, reruns and more booze at night. By the time I hit high school, my mother’s rear had worn a hole into our sofa cushion.”

Gina shifts her gaze to the elevator panel, sensing the younger woman’s embarrassment. Michelle Tilson might be inexperienced in some areas, but apparently she had learned other lessons the hard way.

“You felt hopeless the night your son almost drowned,” the brunette continues, folding her coat. “I lived with hopelessness for nineteen years. There weren’t many jobs available in my little town, but I picked wild blueberries when I could and sold quilt squares cut from old dresses I bought at a church thrift shop. As soon as I had enough money to leave home, I packed a bag and hightailed it out of town. I swore I’d do anything to make it on my own, but I’d never live with hopelessness again.”

Gina lets her head fall back to the wall. “Where was this place?”

“Bald Knob, West Virginia.” Michelle snorts softly. “The kind of place you’re always glad to say you’re from.”

Gina tilts her head, suddenly seeing Michelle Tilson in a new light. Perhaps this situation has a silver lining—this woman is someone who might become a friend. Once this sordid mess with Sonny is straightened out, she can see herself playing golf or having tea with Michelle Tilson, perhaps sharing a three-day weekend at the Saddlebrook resort….

“I would never have guessed you were from the mountains. You seem quite…cosmopolitan.”

“Oh. Well.” Michelle’s obvious resentment evaporates as she laughs. “I had TV, you see. Nothing else to do in the trailer at night. So I worked on my speech, forcing myself to talk and behave like the characters on
Home Improvement
and
The Cosby Show.
” Her mouth quirks with humor. “Claire Huxtable did more to mold me than my own mother.”

Gina closes her eyes, grateful that neither of her daughters will ever be able to make such a statement. “I doubt that. Our mothers affect us more than we know.”

“Maybe. But I feel like I’ve spent more time undoing my momma’s influence than—well, never mind. I don’t like to dwell on the past. That sort of thinking is unproductive.”

In that reply, Gina catches the cadence of a southern accent. Michelle might have removed herself from the mountains, but she hasn’t completely removed the mountains from her speech.

She is about to compliment Michelle on her accomplishments, but at that moment the overhead lights come on, an unseen engine hums and the elevator begins to rise.

M
ichelle blinks in the sudden brightness, then glances at her watch. Ten-thirty. Could Parker still be in his office? The fire alarm would have rattled any ordinary human being, but Parker isn’t ordinary when it comes to business. Plus, he said he’d wait for her.

She exhales a long sigh. “You see?” She hugs her raincoat to her chest and smiles at the housekeeper. “I told you the power would come back on.”

She looks at the elevator panel, where the button for the twenty-fifth floor finally lights. Now they have moved out of the concrete shaft into an area with landings and doors she will never again take for granted.

Maybe her plan is still feasible. She can go to her office, grab Greg Owens’s fake file and hurry to Parker’s suite. From the sound of the wind she can tell the weather has worsened, but it won’t be so bad she and Parker can’t drive to her condo and talk about the future.

Twenty-six, twenty-seven. Only nine floors to go.

She pushes herself up. “This is good,” she says, her eyes fixed on the elevator buttons. “We’re almost home free, though we should definitely take the stairs down. I wonder if we can reach that repair guy and tell him not to come—”

Her breath catches in her throat as the lights dim and go out. The car shimmies to a halt, darkness closes in, and the bright square on the panel fades into blackness. After a moment, the emergency light above the telephone speaker begins to glow again.

Michelle groans. Fresh misery extinguishes her hope as she slides back to the floor and lowers her head. To her left, Isabel presses her hand over her mouth as if she might otherwise cry out.

Across the car, Gina lifts her chin.
“Nil desperandum,”
she says, her voice filled with a surprising calm.

Michelle crinkles a brow. “I beg your pardon?”

“Horace. It means
never despair.
” Gina folds her arms across her lap. “You’re the one who said we should expect the power to cut in and out.”

“Yes, but I was hoping—”

“Better keep a tight rein on that hope,” Gina says. “And don’t forget about Murphy’s law. If something can go wrong—”

“Why can’t something go
right
for a change?” Michelle’s misery vanishes, replaced by a rising rage. “And don’t give me some two-thousand-year-old guy’s opinion, because I don’t care what Horace or Plato or Socrates had to say. They aren’t in this elevator. They don’t know what we’re going through.”

Gina stares back, her eyes bright with speculation, her smile sly with superiority. “They went through worse than this, I’m sure.”

“I don’t care. All I know is that I came down here for something important, but now I’m stuck and it’s not only my day that might be ruined, but my entire career.”

No longer caring what the other women think, Michelle slides her fingers between the elevator doors and pries them apart. They open as before, creating a space of about four inches, but this time that space reveals light and carpet and landings above and below a concrete divider.

“Helloooo! Help!” she shouts, her lips inches away from the opening, then slips her arm through the gap. Her flapping hand is only a few inches above the carpet on the upper level, but it should be visible to anyone passing by. “Can you help us?”

She waits, listening, but apart from the caterwauling wind, both levels are heavy with after-hours quiet. Through the gap on the upper floor she sees a leather chair, a potted palm and a tasteful trash bin. She crouches to shout into the lower landing. “Hellooooo? Anyone there?”

“Save your voice,” Gina says. A glaze comes down over her eyes as she props her elbow on a bent knee. “I’m sure all of us have important reasons for being here, but we’re alone and we’ll stay alone until after the storm passes. We have to wait. We have to be calm. And it might be helpful if we can focus on other things.”

Michelle waits another moment, then pulls her arm in and watches the doors slide back together. She is on the verge of arguing out of sheer stubbornness when a small dose of common sense dribbles into her brain. As much as she hates to admit it, Gina is right about one thing: frustration is not a helpful emotion, and could be as crippling as panic.

She glances at Isabel, whose upper lip is adorned with pearls of perspiration. The sight reminds Michelle of a corresponding dampness under her own arms. No wonder—the air-conditioning isn’t working and there’s no outside ventilation. In an hour or two, maybe less, they’ll be sweating like marathon runners.

She has to get a grip on her emotions. They all do.

Michelle turns to face the others. “You’re right. I’m sorry I lost it.”

“Now we’re even.” The redhead rests her chin on her hand as a smile curves her lips. “Now—back to your story. Obviously, you learned something from your childhood misery. You came down from the mountain and made something of your life. How’d you manage college?”

“A scholarship,” Michelle answers automatically. She glances toward the door, unhappy with the sudden change of subject. In another moment this woman will be asking questions about where, when and what Michelle studied. Though she has lied about those things a thousand times, it doesn’t seem prudent to lie when her life is hanging by a cable.

No sense in tempting God…or whoever is controlling the universe today.

“I wish,” she says, lifting her gaze toward the shadowy ceiling, “we knew what was happening outside. If we knew how the storm was progressing, maybe we could guess when they’ll send rescue teams into the area.”

Isabel lifts her head with a sudden snap. “Oh!”

Gina’s eyes flick at the girl. “Don’t be shy, speak up.”

With a pained grimace, Isabel pulls something from her pocket, then pushes an object into the light: her pink CD player.

Michelle looks at the cleaning woman. How on earth is that supposed to help them?

Gina’s mouth twists in bitter amusement. “Don’t tell me—all this time, you’ve had a radio.”

“I forgot.” Isabel ducks as though she fears Gina will slap her. “I always listen to music while I vacuum. I never listen to
la radio.
But I have it.”

When the redhead reaches for the player, Michelle blocks Gina’s reach. “Why don’t you listen,” she says, nodding at Isabel. “See what you can tell us about the storm.”

Gina withdraws her hand, annoyance struggling with humor on her face as she stares across the car. Michelle leans into the corner, not caring that she’s nipped the older woman’s pride. The redhead carries herself like a perfect lady, but a mile-wide bullying streak lies beneath that polished veneer. There’s something about the way she avoids looking at Isabel unless she absolutely has to….

Isabel slips the earbuds into her ears, then clicks the power button and twirls the dial. She listens, her brows lowering, then bites her lip and looks at Michelle.

“Well?” Michelle brings her hands together. “What’s happening?”

Isabel switches the machine off. “Winds are one hundred forty-three miles per hour,” she says, speaking slowly, “and it is raining hard. The radio man is worried about flooding.”

“Flooding where?” Gina asks. “Along the Gulf?”

Isabel’s gaze flicks at the older woman. “
Sí.
And the bridges and downtown Tampa.”

“Rain.” Gina lifts her gaze to the ceiling. “I thought that’s what I was hearing.”

She’s been hearing rain? Michelle blinks, then closes her eyes to concentrate. At first she hears only the shriek of the wind, then her ears catch a susurrant whisper that seems to come from far away. So that’s what the shushing sound is—the heavy rains serving as Felix’s opening act.

“I’m surprised we can hear anything,” Gina says, “dangling in the center of the building like this.”

“But we’re dangling in a shaft that opens to the roof,” Michelle points out. “It’s hollow, and you know how sound travels through open spaces, so maybe that explains it.” She glances at Isabel, whose eyes are growing wider by the moment. “You made a good point a minute ago,” she says, not wanting to panic the housekeeper. “We should talk about something to pass the time. Something positive.”

“Like how you’re
positive
that mechanic is going to get us out of here?” The curves of Gina’s mouth go flat as she slips out of her trench coat. “I can’t see how he’s going to do that without help, and I don’t know where he’s going to get help when nearly everyone in the county has evacuated.”

The cleaning woman leans forward, her eyes searching Michelle’s. “The man you called…he is coming,
no?
”

“You heard him.” Michelle drops her gaze before Gina’s skeptical stare. “He said he was on his way.”

With uncommon care, Gina folds her coat into a square, then props it between her back and the wall. “I wouldn’t get my hopes up. The weather’s worse than it was an hour ago, so he may not be able to cross the bridge. We may have to ride out the storm in this elevator—in fact, maybe we should count on it.”

The housekeeper looks at Michelle, her dark eyes brimming with threatening tears. “My son needs me. Do you…do you have kids?”

“Not yet.”

Isabel dashes wetness from her lower lashes. “My son, Rafael, is only eighteen months old. A baby.”

The redhead snorts softly. “Enjoy him while you can. Babies grow up and turn into toddlers, and toddlers turn into teens. My kids are well behaved because I’ve never tolerated foolishness, but even my kids are occasionally challenging.”

When the wind unexpectedly ceases for a moment, silence settles around them, an absence of sound that has an almost tangible density. Michelle inhales that silence, then finds herself about to choke on the strangely thickened air.

This won’t do. If they stop talking, they’ll begin to think of their loved ones, and when they think, they worry…

“Well,” she says, her voice strangled, “we can’t sit here and stare at the walls or we’ll go crazy. We could…I don’t know. Talk about our men?”

Gina arches her brows into triangles. “You like to play games at parties, don’t you?”

“What’s wrong with games?”

“Nothing, if you’re fourteen.”

Michelle meets the older woman’s gaze. “I like ice breakers. They help people forget how miserable they are when they’re forced into unfamiliar group situations. I could take a roomful of type-A personalities, assign them a social task, and have them interacting like old friends in ten minutes.”

Gina snorts. “Interacting like competitors, you mean. My husband likes games, too, but he doesn’t play for fun. He plays to win.”

“What’s the difference?”

The redhead draws a quick breath, then smiles slowly and turns to the cleaning woman. “You said you had a son. Want to tell us about him?”

Despite the stuffy warmth of the elevator, Michelle feels her cheeks flush with heat. Gina has purposely changed the subject in order to avoid an argument, and with that simple, graceful gesture, she has taken control of the conversation.

The woman is a master manipulator, but Michelle is no novice.

Obviously uncomfortable under Gina’s directive, the housekeeper swipes at a hank of hair clinging to her damp forehead. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Come on.” Michelle swings around to face Isabel. “You can take your time to think of something, but make it a happy story, okay? Maybe your happiest moment. After all—” her mouth twists in a confident smile “—we’re not going anywhere until Eddie arrives.”

Isabel swipes at her nose with a tattered tissue and wonders what she can say. A happy story? These
gringas
barely talk to her, then they ask for
una historia feliz?
Is she supposed to clean their building
and
entertain them?

Still…maybe it wouldn’t be bad to remember a time before the trouble started. Before Ernesto.

She thrusts the tissue back into her pocket and breathes deeply, forcing herself to move past a cloud of raw memories. She had a happy childhood, but these women would not appreciate the simplicity of life in Monterrey or understand how food in the belly equaled happiness in the heart. They might not value the care her mother took slicing homegrown peppers or grilling tortillas on the griddle. Yet while they might not be familiar with hand-prepared foods or poverty, they might understand love.

She dabs again at her wet nose and searches for the right words. Hard as it is to remember happiness, it’s even harder to translate the feeling into English.

She looks at the younger woman. “I grew up in Monterrey, where almost everyone worked in the cotton mills,” she says. “My
mamá, papá, y hermano
—my brother—worked there, too, so I started at the mill when I was fourteen. I was too young, but my mother said nothing when I told the boss I was older. We needed the money, but I also wanted to be with my family. Everything was good until my
papá
caught his arm in one of the machines. He died.”

The brunette holds one hand up and places the other across it. “Time out,” she says, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “We want to hear about good things, not industrial accidents.”