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So a niece and a sister. I want to ask him more questions, but I’m annoyed by the offer—and the way I want to take him up on it. So I glower at him as I balance on the crutches and reach out and press the button, enjoying the tactile feel of it.
“How many times have you ridden on this thing, anyway?” I ask.
“Dozens. Maybe hundreds.” He nods as if he’s agreeing with himself. “It’s perfectly safe.”
“Perfect. So it justlookslike it’s going to break down at any minute.”
“Precisely,” he says, adjusting the bridge of the glasses. “The way it’s engineered is actually sturdier and longer-lasting than many of the elevators that are made today. People have been riding on it for over a hundred years.”
“Your mansplaining isn’t making me feel any better about this,” I tell him as I listen to the squeak of the elevator descending to us.
“I wasn’t…” He gives a pained sigh, then scuffs the floor with his shoe and says, “My sister Ruthie accuses me of that all the time.”
I shoot him a look. “So stop doing it. Problem solved for meandfor Ruthie. She sounds like a very smart woman, by the way.”
“She is, but that’s not…it’s just…I did some research on the elevator after your accident. I was trying to make you feel better. I’m not the best at expressing myself.”
“Oh,” I say, at a loss. There’s a gooey feeling inside of me that’s trying to make itself known, like that time in third grade when I ended up eating half of the brownies before they made it into the pan. That didn’t end well for my stomach, and this won’t end well for the rest of me if I let it take over. “Thank you.”
The elevator arrives, and Danny pulls back the heavy door. The sight of it makes me shudder. It’s so heavy and large, it’s easy to imagine being stuck in here. When I was a little kid, I watched a wildly inappropriate horror movie about being buried alive, and I had nightmares about it for weeks. It was my worst nightmare, being cooped up in a small space, unable to move, stuck.
Of course, that’s about to be my life for the next several weeks, more or less, but at least the apartment is bigger than this box.
“It’s okay,” Danny says. “It—”
He clearly wants to mention something else about the engineering, but he swallows it, so he’s a man who can listen. Good to know.
I step into it slowly, still thinking about backing out, and he follows me inside. It’s a small space for the two of us, and I realize he’s bigger than I’d thought. Probably six-two or six-three, and not skin and bones. He’s rangy but fit. I’m standing perpendicular to the doors, and he stops opposite me.
I swallow, then roll my eyes as he nods toward the button pad. “I’m really not five.”
“Never said you were,” he says. “But I figured you’d appreciate feeling in control of something right now. Even something small. That’s how I feel when I’m scared.”
It’s another nice thing, so I don’t comment. I just reach out and press the button, my stomach lurching as the elevator starts to move.
“Kind of cool, isn’t it?” he asks, his eyes glimmering as he watches me.
“Yeah,” I say, because it actuallyiskind of cool. I like the accordion door on the inside, and there’s an antique light in a brass fixture above our heads. But then there’s a lurching motion that sways me right off my one foot and crutches. “Fuck!” I scream as I start to fall.
ChapterFive
Mira
One of my crutches goes flying—the one I need less, thankfully—and Danny catches me, his hands sturdy against my arms. For the second time this week, I find myself being held to his chest. It’s a nice chest, warm and hard, but I don’t particularly want to be there. Because I was promised this elevator would reach its destination, and after that awful lurching feeling, it stopped moving. Something tells me it’s not because we’re on our floor.
Jesus, what is with my life lately? Did someone curse me? Maybe Byron did it because I put lemon juice in his milk. Or that dude I told off at the bar the other night.
“What’s going on?”
For a man who seems to have a logical explanation for everything, he’s temporarily speechless, but his lips open, so hopefully an explanation will be forthcoming.
I figured the situation was dire enough, but then the light flickers out, instantly making things two hundred times worse.
I lift my head up to look at him, although I’m not sure why, because it’s impossible to see. Panic twists my guts into knots. “Danny.”
“It’s okay,” he says in an even voice, then surprises me by running a hand over my hair. “We’ll figure this out.”
He helps me balance on the crutch and my one good foot, but my heart is racing, and I’m not sure I can stay upright. I plant a palm on his chest and am surprised to feel his heart is racing too, so maybe he’s not as immune to threat of possible death-by-elevator as he seems.
