9:08. Every day. That’s when she gets on the lift. She’s never the one calling the lift and waiting. I hold the doors open for her and smile.
“Morning,” she says.
“Morning,” I say back.
I never tell her I dream about her. I dream about her arriving at another time. In my dreams she’s taller. We see eye to eye and we don’t talk. We just watch each other. It doesn’t matter where we are because I never remember. All I remember is the watching. There’s a comfort there. In some dreams we kiss but usually we are just standing there. Waiting. Waiting for the other person to make the first move.
I find comfort in the reality where she is shorter. It’s my silent pinch to remind me that I’m awake. I do not find comfort, however, in the reality where we have even less to talk about than in my quiet dreams.
“I like tea.” I find those words escaping my lips but not escaping my mind.
“Hmm?”
“Umm. Tea. I like tea.”
“Oh. I don’t really know anything about tea.”
“Yeah, me either, I just like the smell.”
“Right.”
Now is the part where we stand in silence till we reach the correct level. She’s always on twelve. I go to press the twelve but she stops me.
“Not today. Eleven,” she says with a frown on her face.
“Oh?” My noise.
“Yes.”
“Ok.”
I press eleven.
She hums approval and stares back towards the front of the doors as they start to close.
“Wait!” yells a short, tubby man. A moustache secretes grease underneath his nose and his brow sports uneven speckles of hair. I lunge out to stop the doors from closing. Damn my courteousness.
“Thanks! Thanks! Thank you very much. This damned weather, the weather, damn it! So hot! The heat in this place. So hot!” His accent is as strong as his odour.
“No worries.” I laugh.
“You are a good sir!”
“Only on weekdays.”
“A ha! A joke from sir! Please press the number for me, good sir. Press the number twelve.” When he says twelve I watch her pony tail bob.
“You?” She turns to the man and I can see her face now. “You are my replacement?” Anger is not a flattering look on her. Wrinkles appear on her forehead and bags start to show under her eyes, escaping from behind crackled make up.
Before I can calm the situation she slaps him. A hard slap. It leaves a mark and some of his sweat flies into the now closed elevator doors.
I decide now I can’t wait till the doors open and she exits on 11. I hope to never see her again, her brash aggression unattractive and off-putting. I try my hardest to undream the dreams of the past but I can’t remove my former attraction. It’s historical fact.
Unfortunately the lift travels slowly today, slower than it has ever travelled before.
“I worked hard to get to 12!” she screams at him. I now notice all her imperfections. Her prominent regrowth showing the colour she tries to hide. The line on her neck where the colour of her makeup meets the colour of her skin. The red in her eyes from lack of sleep. The cracks in her dry fingers from all the beds made. My eyes follow those imperfections and I imagine her naked. I wonder if she has ill-placed moles or in-grown hairs in all sorts of places. I wonder if her breasts aren’t as perfect as her bra lets them be, if they sag low or are small and insignificant.
I wonder all these things in the time it takes us to get from the lobby to the third floor.
“But miss I am only new! I only do what I was ask to do!” The man’s eyebrows would touch his fringe if there was one. He ignores the pulsating red hand mark on his face and pleads with his eyes for forgiveness from her. “Miss please. I am only do my job!” His broken English only helps me pity him.
She grunts and looks away.
We pass the fifth floor. I think back to a time where I found her beautiful and unattainable. I wish back to the ground floor, to the lobby, where I was besotted and she was a dream. Now that I know she is real I feel nothing but disgust. Now that I know she can cause pain I feel nothing but fear. Fear and disgust. I look into a hypothetical future with her and fear for our children. I’m disgusted with how she handles my child.
Seventh floor.
With the eighth floor comes luck. She turns back to the man.
“I’m sorry I hit you,” she says, a sincerity creeps from her tongue, “I’ve had a bad morning.”
“Miss this is no problem, my wife hit me every night for sexual pleasure! You see sir I can make joke too!”
She and I both laugh at this. She is instantly more attractive when she smiles, her teeth naturally straight and white enough not to glow. I’ve fallen in again.
The eleventh floor comes and I watch her leave, pulling her cart with her.
I wave good bye. “Another day, another room, another bed,” she says to me.
“Another mini bar.”
Toilet rolls fall out of her cart as she scampers onto the eleventh floor. “Another mess,” she says, gathering them and putting them back on the cart.
The doors close and we continue up one level. I wave again.
“How’s your face?” I ask.
“Oh it is sore sir but I will live.” He smiles.
“Tough enough life for a cleaner without having to have that.”
He laughs. “Tough enough life for a liftman without having to see that.”
“Ups and downs. Ups and downs.”
© Richard Hunt 2009
