Линвуд Баркли - Elevator Pitch

“Remembering homework is your responsibility,” Fanya said sternly. “If you forget, you forget. The teacher gives you a zero. Next time, you remember.”

The boy just looked at her. But suddenly his eyes went wide. He said to Fanya, “Can you hold the button?”

“What?”

“Just hold it!”

She stepped forward and replaced his finger with hers on the button. The boy slipped off his backpack, dropped it to the floor, and knelt down to undo the zipper. He rifled through some papers inside and said, “Here it is.”

Yet another sigh from Fanya.

The boy got up and stood in the open doorway. “Dad!” he shouted down the hall. “I found it!”

No response.

This time, he screamed, “ Daaad! ”

The father’s head poked out the doorway. “What?”

“I found it!”

The dad stepped out into the hall.

Fanya, somehow thinking they were finally all on their way, let her finger slide off the button.

The doors began to close.

“Hey!” the kid said.

But he was less courageous than his father and did not insert his arm into the opening to stop the doors’ progress. And Fanya wasn’t about to do it.

She’d had enough.

The father shouted, “Hey! Hang on! Hold the—”

The doors closed. The elevator began to move. The boy looked accusingly at Fanya and said, “You were supposed to hold it.”

She shrugged. “My finger slipped. It is okay. You wait for your dad in the lobby.”

The kid slipped his backpack onto his shoulder and retreated to the corner, which was as far away as he could get from the woman in the tight space.

They traveled three or four floors when the elevator stopped.

This was just not Fanya’s day.

But the doors did not open. The elevator sat there. The readout said they were at the seventeenth floor.

“What is happening?” Fanya asked. She looked accusingly at the boy. “Did your dad stop the elevator?”

The kid shrugged. “How would he do that?”

After fifteen seconds of not moving, Fanya began to pace in the confined area.

It’s them. They know. I’m trapped.

“I have to get to work,” she said. “I have to get out of here. I am giving a lecture. I cannot be late.”

The boy dropped his backpack to the floor again, reached in and pulled out a cell phone and began to tap away.

“What are you doing?” Fanya asked, stopping her pacing.

“Texting my dad.”

“Ask him if he stopped the ele—”

“I’m telling him we’re stuck .” He looked at the phone for several more seconds, then said, “He’s going for help.”

“Oh,” Fanya said. She wanted to ask the boy to ask his father if there were any strange men around. Men who looked out of place. Men with Russian accents. But she decided against it. “Why do you think we are stuck?” she asked the boy.

The kid shrugged.

“Why won’t the doors open?”

“We’re probably between floors,” the boy said.

Fanya looked at him and, for the first time, felt some kinship. They were, after all, in this together. “What is your name?”

“Colin,” he said.

“Hello, Colin. My name is Fanya.”

“Hi.”

Keep talking to the boy, she told herself. It would help control her paranoia.

“What was your homework on?”

“Fractions,” he said.

“Ah,” she said. “I liked taking fractions when I was a little girl.”

“I hate them.”

Fanya managed an anxious smile. “I think we need to do something to get out of here. We cannot stay in here. It is not good.”

“My dad’ll get somebody.”

“That could take a long time. We need to do something now. Don’t you have to get to school so you can see how well you did on your fractions homework?”

Colin nodded.

“And I have to get to work. So let’s figure this out.” Fanya studied where the doors met, worked a finger into the rubber lining. “I bet we could get these apart.”

“Uh, I don’t think you’re supposed to do that.”

“Maybe we are not between floors,” she said. “Maybe the hallway is right there and all we have to do is step off.”

“Maybe,” Colin said uncertainly.

She dug her fingers in and started to pull the door on the right side into the open position. The doors did not move.

Fanya said, “You look like a strong boy, even though you are little. You pull from the other side.”

Colin said nothing, but did as he was asked. He got his fingers into the now-larger gap and pulled hard on the left door. Even with both of them pulling, the doors parted only about half an inch.

“Okay, okay, stop,” Fanya said. They both released their grips on the doors and took a step back. “I do not think this is going to work.”

And then, as if by magic, the doors parted. Fanya and the boy stepped back, startled.

“Well,” Fanya said.

The woman and the boy were faced with a concrete block wall, and an opening.

From the floor of the car, and going nearly three feet up, was the gray cement wall of the elevator shaft. Above that, open space. Fanya and Colin were able to stare straight down the seventeenth-floor corridor.

“Success!” she shouted.

Fanya felt relieved not only that the doors had opened, but that there were not any men in black suits standing there in the hallway, waiting for her.

“I’m not going through there,” Colin said nervously, backing away farther.

Fanya smiled. “We just have to be quick.”

“No way,” he said.

She smiled sympathetically. “Think of it as a fraction. The doors are how far open?”

The boy looked at her. “Half?”

“Very good. So it is half-open, and half-closed. Half-open is good enough for us to get out. But I will try it first.” She grinned. “I just have to be fast.”

She set her purse on the elevator floor. “I used to be a gymnast in Russia,” she said. “When I was a girl.” She grimaced. “It was a long time ago. But some things you don’t forget. Climbing up three feet should not be so hard.”

Fanya put both hands on the grooved metal strip on the hallway level, hoisted herself up enough to get her knee onto it, then moved her entire body through the opening. She was on her knees in the hallway, her feet hanging over the edge inside the car before she stood triumphantly.

“What are you going to do now?” Colin asked, looking up at her. “Are you going to leave me here?”

Shit . She really couldn’t do that. She’d freed herself, could head to the university, but how would it look? “Visiting Professor Abandons Child in Stuck Elevator.” Would a callous act like that prompt the State Department to reject her request for asylum?

“No,” she said. “I will not do that. I will not leave you here.” She glanced down at the elevator floor. How stupid of her. She’d dropped her purse there. It would have made more sense to have tossed it out onto the hallway floor before making her escape.

“Colin,” she said, pointing. “Toss me my purse. Then we’ll see about getting you out, too.”

As Colin reached down to get it, Fanya dropped back down to her hands and knees to reach in to take it from him.

She leaned forward into the car. Colin picked up the purse and held it out for her. Fanya shifted slightly forward on her knees.

The elevator suddenly moved.

Down.

The roof of the car dropped toward Fanya’s neck. She didn’t have to glance upward to see what was coming. She saw the elevator floor dropping away from her. While physics had never been her area of expertise, she could figure this much out. If the car’s floor was heading down, the car’s ceiling would surely follow.

Without having to think about it, she began to withdraw her head from the elevator. She needed to get her entire body back into the hallway.