Seeing Red

I was just getting off the elevator when it spoke to me. “Going down!” it said. Which was fine, except I wanted to get off, and the doors wouldn’t open. I laughed. What a silly predicament—alone in a talking elevator, the doors don’t open.

So I used that telephone thingy, and no one answered. I had always wondered if someone would answer that huge thing hanging there with enough plastic to kill several fish. When something isn’t used much, does no one check it?

Where’s the tag they hang from fire extinguishers that tells you when they were last checked? I looked for one. Nope, it's not happening. So, I pushed the bright red “Emergency Stop” button. I tried it because my whole life, I’ve wanted to push or pull on red things that hang around and never get used.

There’s got to be a knack for this sort of thing, really. I mean, think about it. How many people want to tug on a fire alarm and break that little glass bar that shoots out ink to stain your hand so they can find you later, give you a dressing down, and tell you that “you shouldn’t do that!” Duh, like I know already.

But now my problems got worse. At 4:00 a.m., I pushed the alarm—another big red button—in my apartment building, which caused a racket. It never stopped. I tried it again, and nothing happened. I couldn’t make it stop. I could hear people hollering inside their apartments, but they weren’t hollering nice things.

But they also didn’t leave their apartments. No one came to the elevators. They started banging on walls. So I got my cell phone, which hasn’t killed any fish, and I think seriously like. Should I call 911? Or shouldn’t I?

I remembered that friendly police officer in grade school who told me in grade 3 that police officers don’t want to be bothered with silly 911 calls. No cat in the tree calls. No, you slipped in the bathtub calls. No elevator calls. No elevator calls? Did he really say that? I wasn’t sure. But with all these people hollering and banging on walls, would that count?

So I decided to phone 911 because people were hollering at me. No elevator stuff. I'll tell her if she asks me, but she already knows where I am, right? They have GPS, tracking, or something else to help them find me.

I start dialing, but my phone is almost out of juice. It’s 4 o’clock in the morning, for crying out loud! That thing has shown me cat videos, Beyonce videos, and more videos about videos. It’s seriously depleted. I dial anyway.

“911 What is the nature of your emergency?”

“People are hollering at me.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m…” and my phone goes dead.

But the police come anyway. You know they know everything so finding me is not a problem. They start banging on the elevator doors.

“Anybody there?”

“I’m here. Who are you?”

“The police. Open the door.”

“I can’t, it won’t open.”

I could hear them talking, and they asked the one person who had left their apartment. I recognized her voice, Ms. Stetson, where the super was. She says he’s on vacation. Then she says she wants to file a complaint because of all the racket. She wants the officers' names and badge numbers because when she can’t sleep, she goes crazy at work from all the stress.

The police bang on the elevator door again. “What’s the manufacturer of the elevator?” they ask. “Is there a telephone number somewhere?”

“How the hell do I know?” I answer.

“We need to know who to call so we can get you out!”

By now, other people are leaving their apartments, and there are voices I don’t recognize. This upsets me because, since I am partially blind, I’m really good at listening. I could even hear one of the police officers cursing under his breath about how they now had a “situation.”

Which bothered the heck out of me. Maybe I couldn’t see the right button to push to open the doors? But those doors are supposed to open automatically! It’s not up to me to make them open.

Then the phone rang—not my cell, but the enormous plastic fish-killing phone. I went to answer it, but I had never used a phone like that before. There was a little red button on it. Nobody told me that, though I wanted to push it. The phone kept ringing and ringing.

Another police officer cursed. “Dang it! More noise! Answer the phone lady!” he yelled,

“Should I push another red button?” I asked, but the elevator doors muffled my voice, so he must have misunderstood me. By then, there was so much noise, and many people were talking. Some were even yelling at the officers.

“Don’t you push no more buttons!” joked a man who had just arrived. He seemed really happy, bringing coffee for the other officers. I could smell it. I wanted some so bad.

By this point, I was getting really uncomfortable. It felt like I had been in there for an hour or more, but it had only been twenty minutes.

“I need to pee!” I yelled.

One of the officers who had been there from the beginning tapped on the door.

“We’re working on it,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“Can’t you just hold it?”

“I was out having a few, and I need to pee!”

But by then, someone really important was up close to the elevator. I only knew his first name: Ebenezer. Everyone called him Ebenezer, though I think his real name was Jim or John or something. He was in charge of the condo board that had jurisdiction over our subsidized rental apartments. Many people hated him because he was renovicting, trying to turn our apartments into more condos.

“What seems to be the problem here, officer?” he said. People started booing and throwing things. I heard one officer use his radio to call for “backup.” As far as I could tell, five officers were already around the elevator. Maybe they would need to backup to make room for more!

But by then, the phone stopped ringing. And I never pushed the button. A little guy in dirty black jumpers, dirty because they were gray in places, opened the elevator doors in no time. And he silenced the alarm. People started going back to their apartments.

“I could have done that with a crowbar!” one of the officers said.

This made Ebenezer angry. He probably was mad because everyone was insulting and calling him names, and he just took it out on the officers.

“I have a mind to remind you,” he started. "Operating these elevators costs a lot, and a crowbar would damage the doors. Not to mention that you are not following proper protocol, suggesting such outlandish things in front of the tenants, who might be emboldened to do similar things themselves.”

I had to run to Ms. Stetson’s bathroom so fast. It was so pleasant-smelling. Too bad she won’t be using it much longer. I heard she snapped at work, as she had told the officer she would.

Which was really too bad. I liked her; getting to know her would have been great if we had the time. But then, we’re all too busy for that, aren’t we?