The Voice

I wasn't thinking of anything except his voice; not even the words, or his eyes, or the trembling, soft, girly hand holding a grey box (yuck, why'd he have to be so boring about it?) His voice didn't match the one I'd always heard in my head, the fantasy man asking me to marry him. Troy had the wrong voice.

Which wasn't his fault.

Troy was born with the voice he was given, even his mother wasn't to blame, unless she had poured hot oil down his throat as a boy, permanently scarring his vocal chords.

Or was there such a thing as vocal plastic surgery? If so, why this voice? If it was unimpressive now, what had it been like before? Dirty-tan sloth?

If the right voice had been a color, it would have been maroon. If it had been an animal, wolf.

I'd said "no" of course.

"Troy. I'm sorry. I didn't realize you thought we were, I mean...?" How embarrassing for both of us, but especially Troy with his green tree frog voice and the old-fashioned diamond ring in a satin-lined box like he'd watched a Youtube video entitled "How to Propose to your Girlfriend (after only 4 months!) Five Easy, No-Fail Steps!"

I hope he gets his money back. On the ring, the video subscription. The vocal surgery.

"Hey," a man spoke loudly from a corner of the elevator as though for the fourth time, his hand waving near my face, "did you realize we've stopped moving? We haven't moved for about 30 seconds."

"Huh?" I hadn't noticed him when I got on at the 7th floor. The elevator was dark now. Had I drifted off to sleep standing up and woken up all of a sudden after going up and down on the elevator over and over? I'd heard such things could happen. That a woman in a line-up at Walmart had once inadvertently started a riot when she wouldn't move forward at the self check-out. Due to social distancing, there wasn't a single person willing, not even behind the protection of their masks, to get close enough to look her in the eye where it would have become clear she wasn't really present. Poor woman. Woke up to find cuts and bruises all over her arms and face where customers had thrown objects at her from a distance including a pack of XL underwear (bikini), granola bars (with protein), and a large zucchini. She had continued to stand (thank heavens!) or else they would have stepped on her too. Social distancing didn't apply to stomping on someone's face.

I pulled out my cell phone, an action which reliably filled the gap when I didn't understand what was going on. "What time is it?" I muttered, answering myself. "12:07." I thought about the awkward stuttering. Troy's furious blushing.

"Um, really? I mean, it's a real diamond?"

"Power outage," my elevator companion replied redundantly. Hmm, you don't say? Are you sure it's not a horde of aliens who, having landed on the city, stopped the elevators with a power surge using their advanced technology, hoping to lure a team of superheroes from their nest in the home of a genius trillionaire, and keep them busy while the really smart aliens headed for the White House? If so, they need to offer map-reading at Alien College: The White House isn't in Napa, California.

Had Troy and I really only been standing in the hallway outside our office, on the way to lunch two minutes ago? He hadn't even taken me somewhere with a bit of privacy! Arrogant avocado-voiced jerk! Amphibian-throated child! He must have assumed every onlooker in the hall was about to witness a moment of romantic triumph, a break in the doldrums of a tragically boring job. So much filing.

He could have hidden the ring, then sent me on a scavenger hunt, clues buried in the papers I was about to organize alphabetically. Troy was, after all, my manager. He had the power.

We live in Napa - why not propose in a vineyard? When our kids (if we had married and produced children) asked how daddy had proposed to mommy (their young warblings would put me in mind of iridescent swallows), I would have had to say "We don't talk about that."

Now I'd have to get a new job. Oh, he couldn't openly discriminate. He would mope, and I'd feel bad. My co-workers wouldn't be legally permitted to harass me, but what were we all supposed to do? Join the Office Lotto together like nothing had happened? Laugh and joke over our chia pudding and keto crackers as though our boss wasn't sobbing in his office? What if he didn't join the Lotto and I did? And then the we won twenty million dollars, but he didn't, and he'd be stuck in his beige office behind his Costco desk forever while five of us split the cash? I'd feel like trash! How could I stand it? I'd be the office pariah. Except I'd buy a vineyard and ditch that place like dirty swamp water.

"I'll press the button for emergency. They'll get us going." But the button wasn't working.

"Funny," I quipped, "how electric buttons don't work during a power outage." I think he blushed, but it was dark. I scanned his outfit: tight-legged suit pants in a dark color, a matching coat and soft-shade of dress shirt softly filled around the belly area with a normal stomach, and in the chest area with an average amount of manly muscle. He wore frameless glasses (not thick black ones) and shiny, round-tipped shoes (not the pointy types.) Half-way trendy, but uncommitted. Maybe a repentant rebel, perhaps a conformist trying to fit in. I guessed his height to be around 5 feet 11 inches, just shy of fully "tall."

"Good point," he smiled humbly, "I'll work on those observation skills. After all, I'm an editor. It should be my specialty."

"An editor?" I mused, pulling at the tight cuff of a sleeve the color of cream. I was a little bit impressed - editor? Troy managed a small-time insurance office and five young clerks.

"Yeah, for Harding and Harding, taking a lunch break and - well, probably same for you?" Harding and Harding was big time. But I didn't really care if Troy managed a little insurance office and this guy was an editor for a huge publishing company.

Troy's job wasn't the issue. I didn't care about money. He was boring as hell!

What was I was getting from elevator-guy's voice? I had to keep him talking so I could figure it out, like a wine-lover trying to pinpoint the flavor in a glass of Chardonnay.

Is that butter? And citrus? Except I would taste the color of cream, and imagine the rumbling moo of a dairy cow.

I nodded. "Yup, lunch break, elevator, power outage."

"But," he continued, "you were deep in thought about something. Wanna talk about it? I mean, we have to pass the time somehow?"

Warm and concerned, rare.

"Oh," I rocked on my black flats, arms crossed over my buttoned-up blouse (no cleavage showing), eyebrows in my scalp, "you mean about my boyfriend's proposal? And how I turned him down?" I wasn't upset, but still reeling a little. After all, only a few minutes had passed since the disappointing and unfortunate hallway episode. But the man's face dropped in sadness, as though I had just told him my puppy had died.

"I'm so sorry," we were as far apart as two people could be during a pandemic without wearing hazmat suits, but he leaned his face towards me a smidgen. "That was a brave thing to do."

I shrugged. "No, not brave. There was no other choice, not after just 4 months of dating. I hadn't even met his parents. He hadn't shared his Spotify playlist with me," elevator-guy laughed, "I wasn't banking on a 'forever thing' (I air-quoted) just yet. I only hope he'll get over it."

"I'm Rog by the way. And, yeah, that's a bit quick. Sounds like the clingy sort, and he won't take it well."

"June. Nice to meet you. Well, thanks for that. Should he be on suicide watch?" They both cringed, and she made a clucking noise. "I'll call him when I get home and see how he's doing."

"Give him a day, tell one of his friends to keep an eye on him. Maybe email him. That's what I'd want if I was him."

I paused, serious now. "Has this happened to you then?"

He closed his eyes and smiled painfully. "No. To my brother. He's the clingy sort too. Proposed to his girlfriend after a week. 'You're the one, really, I just know it.'" Rog put on a fake, deep voice. His own was....soft, warm, dark, maybe even -

"Maroon," I muttered softly in the darkness.

"What?"

With a hint of fox or, was it - wolf?

"Nothing."

"Anyway, I supposed we had better text someone, let them know -"

"I highly recommend you text your office, Rog." there was a good chance Troy would be sulking somewhere, and any co-worker would ignore my number. I was probably de-programmed from a dozen phones already. "Should I call 911?"

"Let me see what my boss says, June. Anyway, tell me more about yourself?" I gave him the short version, asking for more of his story. The power could come back on any moment, and I wanted to hear him talk.

In fact, I thought I might have fallen in love.