The Cloud

“The Cloud”

I’d pressed the big, red emergency alarm button twice before I saw what looked to be a temporary label above it. It read “EMERGENCY SIGNAL IS RECEIVED BY SOUTHWEST ELEVATOR INC.AND NOT BY EMERGENCY RESPONDERS.”. The only light in the darkened cab was from a small emergency light glowing in the middle of the ceiling. The panel that showed floor levels said we’d gotten stuck on the ninth floor, three floors and fifteen minutes short of my appointment. It was my final interview with Bates Capital for what I considered to be my dream job. It would be my last chance to convince them that I would be a better choice than the other candidate. I had to be at my best.

“Damn,” I muttered. Just for the hell of it I pressed the alarm again then started pounding on the doors. I knew it wouldn’t change anything, but I was angry and frustrated.

I heard a voice behind me from a fellow passenger, “Don’t bother, nobody’s gonna hear you.”

I turned and asked the man, “Why not?”

The young man, in a stylish gray suit answered, “We’re stuck on the ninth floor. It’s being totally renovated. No tenants, nobody around to hear you.”

The only other passenger, a well dressed, middle age woman, was standing in a back corner busily tapping her cellphone. “Can you get a signal in here?” I asked her. She shook her head without looking at me and kept tapping her screen. She looked very frightened.

The man looked at her and said. “I work up on eleven. I ride this thing every day. I’ll tell you, try all you want but you won’t get any kind of signal in here. People drop their calls every day. I gave up even trying.”

The woman threw him an icy glance, said nothing and went back to nervously struggling to get a connection.

We’d only been stopped for a few minutes and it was already getting warm and stuffy. I took out my phone and scrolled to a local news app to see if I could find any information on what might be going on. If there was a wide scale power blackout it would be a big story. If not, we were just stuck in a dead elevator.

The young man looked at me and again shared the news. “No Wi-Fi either.” He stepped into the opposite back corner and said, “This is probably gonna take a while.” He laid his laptop bag on the floor, then sat down beside it.

The side walls of the elevator were mirrored panels intended to make the cab look bigger and less claustrophobic. They didn’t seem to work for the woman, whose frightened expression had slowly grown to wide-eyed panic. To me, the mirrors just said, “Hey, man, in case you forgot, you’re stuck in an elevator.” If the young man was feeling anything at all it didn’t show as he sat on the floor, smiling slightly as he opened his laptop.

I’d never felt so helpless. I wasn’t afraid, because a lot of people had been trapped in elevators and, as far as I could recall, they’d always been okay in the end. It was the being stuck and not knowing who, if anyone, knew about us that bothered me most. Did the alarm signal go through and did anyone see it? If it was a power outage how much of the city had been affected? How many other people were in other elevators wondering the same thing? And most of all, it was the total inability to use my phone, my little electronic umbilical to the world, that elevated my stress level. Knowing that it might be a long time before help arrived, I wondered if I should sit down like the man had. I looked at him and saw he was still smiling.

He seemed to have the right idea. I took off my suit jacket and loosened my tie. As I sat down under the control panel I said to him, “You don’t look like you’re too bothered by all of this.”

It took him a moment to finish typing on his laptop before he answered, “No worries, man, everything’s cool. It just means a longer lunch hour for me.”

I envied his ability to make the best of a bad situation. It seemed appropriate to introduce myself. “Well, since it looks like we could be here awhile, I’m Owen.”

“Arthur, call me Artie,” he answered.

The woman was still standing. I looked at her and asked, “And you are?”

She let out a deep breath and continued staring at her phone. “Cynthia”. She still seemed reluctant to make eye contact.

I could tell from her face that she was genuinely frightened. She looked up at the at the ceiling and at the mirrored walls. She was clutching her phone so tightly her hand was turning white. I tried to be understanding. “You might feel more relaxed if you sat down.”

Artie looked up at her, smiling. “Yeah, try it. The carpet feels okay if you sit just right.”

She hesitated a moment, took a deep breath and half sat, half collapsed to the floor. The overhead light blinked off for a moment then came back on and it startled her. I could hear her moaning softly as she leaned against the side wall and closed her eyes. I’d guessed that it was her way of mentally escaping the tight space she was confined in. I watched her for a moment until Artie said, “Relax, folks, everything will be just fine.”

Without opening her eyes Cynthia just shrugged and replied, “I don’t think I can handle this.”

When I looked at my phone I saw that I was already five minutes late for my appointment. If the power outage wasn’t just to the elevator, the Bates office would also be shut down and my absence wouldn’t even be noticed in the chaos. But since I’d been told that the interview date couldn’t be changed missing the appointment wasn’t an option. I reached over and slapped the bottom of the doors. I wanted to swear at the top of my lungs but Cynthia’s presence kept it to a simple “Dammit!”

She was still slumped in the corner, eyes closed and her face frozen in a look of pain. I looked over at Artie. He didn’t show the slightest sign of being upset. It seemed that we were all ready to just settle in and wait for our situation to play out. Even knowing it probably wouldn’t go through I texted the Bates office to tell them what was going on. A few seconds later a COULD NOT SEND MESSAGE popped up on the screen. It looked like it would be a long, quiet stay in the box. Artie ended that idea.

“Hey, man, can I ask you a question?” He had pulled a small, flat booklet from his backpack and was thumbing through it. He held it up and pointed to the first page. “I’m shopping for a tattoo for my right arm but I can’t make up my mind. What do you think of this one?” He leaned toward me and I took the book from his hand. “This is the one I like the best. What do you think?”

I was surprised at his request because he didn’t look like the kind of guy who was into ink and body art. The overhead light blinked off again and this time it stayed off for about ten seconds before it came back on. In the dim light I looked at the tattoo design; a green snake with fangs out and wrapped around a clenched fist drawn in black. Since I wasn’t a tattoo kind of guy I thought the damned thing looked absolutely ridiculous. I looked at Artie then back at the tattoo. “Look, Artie, I really don’t know you so I can’t say which one you should go with. That’s really a personal decision.”

He looked disappointed. He turned to Cynthia who had joined us sitting on the floor. She’d opened her eyes when she heard the conversation. “How about you, Cynthia, do you like this one?”

Without changing her frightened expression or moving a muscle she answered, “I don’t like tattoos.” It was pretty clear that she wasn’t going to be part of any further elevator conversations, especially ones that involved body ink. I hoped I wouldn’t be either. I just said, “I’m sure that someone knows we’re stuck in this thing. This is a high-end building and someone will be here soon to help us.” I tried hard to believe my own words.

The air in the elevator was still stuffy and seemed warmer than before. Silence had settled in. Artie had laid his laptop bag in the corner and was lying down to use it as a pillow. His total lack of concern with our situation was astonishing. He looked at Cynthia then me and said, “Man, this is sweet. It’s like a free afternoon vacation.”

My own attitude was very different. The day felt nothing like a vacation or anything close to it. When I looked at my phone I saw that I was already half an hour late for my interview. If the power had gone out in the entire building I’d probably be given a second chance. If it was just a dead elevator, I couldn’t be sure of getting another shot at it. I leaned back into the corner, closed my eyes and tried to think about something, anything to take my mind off the situation.

It was about ten minutes later when I noticed a smell. It was an unmistakable odor. Someone had passed gas. I knew it wasn’t me and my first guess was that it had come from Artie. It must have been him. I knew it wasn’t me and Cynthia was a classy woman. Classy women don’t fart, at least not in public. Without a working fan in the ceiling that fart just hung in the air like a noxious cloud. I looked at my fellow passengers and it was clear that they’d noticed the smell too. Cynthia squirmed and put her hand over her nose. Artie did the same. One of them knew who was responsible and the other one was trying to guess who it came from. It was a strange situation to say the least.

I remembered an old saying from my fraternity days, “He who dealt it smelt it.” Since I knew that it wasn’t me who’d dealt it I had to guess who did, but that was the same predicament for the other two. And for one of them I was a suspect. We weren’t in a fraternity house, we were in an elevator of a very plush office building. Things like farting in an elevator simply didn’t happen here, yet it had, and the responsible party was a mystery. A younger me would have been laughing out loud but the mature me was struggling to act as though nothing had happened.

A few minutes passed while the three of us pretended that everything was normal. There was no eye contact and no conversation. We sat there covering our noses and staring at the floor. Just as it seemed the cloud had faded away another one silently came along and took its place. I looked back and forth at my fellow passengers but still couldn’t find a clue to identify the guilty party. They were both looking around and for a moment we all caught each other’s eyes.

Artie returned to flipping through the tattoo booklet and didn’t say anything more. Cynthia’s fearful expression was still frozen on her face, at least the part that wasn’t covered by her hand. I held my phone and looked through some photos I’d taken over the weekend. We had all returned to pretending that everything was normal.

Another half an hour went by. Artie was now lying on the floor, his laptop case acting as a pillow. He seemed to be asleep. Cynthia hadn’t moved or talked since the olfactory unpleasantness had begun. I was having my own flirtation with sleep, staying right on the edge but trying hard to make sure I didn’t go completely under. The odorous cloud persisted. “Why,” I thought, “does the emergency power work for the light but not the fan?” I began to wonder if the smell would cling to my clothes.

A few minutes later the overhead light flickered, turned off and then came back on. There was a thumping sound and the cab shook slightly, then I could feel that we were in motion. I stood up and looked at the control panel. We were moving again, back down to the lobby.

I looked at Cynthia. The surprise on her face gave way to relief. She stood up and tried to straighten her hair and smooth the wrinkles in her skirt. Artie was sound asleep. I took a few steps toward him and gently nudged him with my foot until his eyes opened. “We’re moving again,” I said. “Better get your stuff together.”

When the elevator finally touched down and the doors opened to the lobby, the wash of fresh air into the cab was like a gift. A man in an EMT uniform appeared in the doorway. “Is everyone okay here?” he asked, glancing a moment at each of us. His nose seemed to twitch as the aroma of the elevator wafted out to the lobby.

“Yeah,” I answered, “ I think we’re all fine, just a little scared and pissed off is all.”

“I totally understand,” he answered. I stepped back so he could help Cynthia make her exit. She still looked shaken but managed a slight smile for the EMT. When she stepped into the lobby she turned and looked at both Artie and me. Her expression was hard to read; a mix of relief and something else.

Artie gathered up his laptop bag and made his exit. I picked up my suit jacket and stepped out into the lobby. A fairly large crowd of people had gathered to gawk at the rescue scene. I overheard two women talking and from their conversation I found out that there had been no power outage in the building, only to the elevator. I was hoping that word of my adventure had made it to the twelfth floor so Bates Capital would guess the reason I’d been a no-show. I saw Artie heading to the men’s room and Cynthia talking on her phone. I stood near her until she finished. It seemed like one of those situations that demanded some type of goodbye. When she put her phone back into her purse I said, “Well, that was an afternoon to remember.”

I couldn’t read her expression as she looked at me and said, “Yes, but to be honest, I’d rather forget it.”

“I know what you mean. It was bad enough being trapped like that.” I paused then clumsily added, “Especially under those conditions.” She looked down at the floor, shaking her head.. I thought I should change the subject. “And I got even more stressed because I have a job interview to get to.”

“Up on twelve?” she asked.

“Yeah, with Bates Capital. I’m in line for a Senior Broker position with them. That is, if they held my appointment time open. How about you, where are you headed?”

She paused, looking a little uncomfortable. “Well, I’m headed up to Bates too. I’ll be the one interviewing you.”