Линвуд Баркли - Elevator Pitch

It seemed like a plan.

Briefly.

The elevator car maintained its slow descent.

It did not stop at the lobby level.

It continued, slowly, on its inexorable downward path.

The injured man, no longer visible, could be heard shouting, “Make it stop! Stop the fucking thing!”

Frantically, the security guard, unable to think of anything else to do, kept jabbing at the button. “Come on! Stop, you son of a bitch!”

The top of the elevator car now dropped below the level of the lobby floor.

The screams from the man in the pit grew more intense, and were joined by the woman. A bone-chilling, two-person chorus of death.

The elevator car, like some cunning animal moving in on its injured prey, maintained its slow descent until it finally came to a stop.

The screaming ceased.

Eugene Clement was reading a print edition of the New York Times while, across the table from him in the hotel restaurant, his wife was looking at stories on a tablet. On the plate before her was her unfinished breakfast. Some scraps of scrambled eggs, one and a half slices of toast, a rasher of bacon.

They’d exchanged only a few words since the night before, when Estelle had started asking him about that man he’d been talking to, then tried to move on to the subject of their sex life, which he had no interest in discussing. He’d been partly honest with her when he’d used stress as an excuse. He had been under a considerable mental strain lately. But the real truth was, he had lost interest. Not in sex. Just in sex with Estelle.

He’d found ways, back in their hometown, and when he traveled the country, without her, on business, to meet his needs.

Discreetly.

What worried him as he sat here at breakfast had nothing to do with coming up with excuses for why Estelle didn’t get his motor running the way she once did. What had him worried was her suspicion that their trip to New York had nothing to do with their anniversary.

Which was, of course, correct.

He’d been having to enjoy the Flyovers’ activities from afar. It just wasn’t very satisfying, watching a bombing in Seattle when you were several hundred miles away. But he wanted to have a front row seat to see how the New York coastal elites reacted when the rubes struck back. Clement believed he had been successful, up to now, in keeping his wife from thinking that the Flyovers would ever resort to violence. She appeared persuaded that the criticisms of the Flyovers were unfounded.

But then she started asking about the man he’d spoken to briefly. Said she had seen him on more than one occasion.

Clearly, Clement and Bucky had to be more careful moving forward.

Eugene looked over his newspaper to find his coffee, noticed the food still on his wife’s plate, and asked, “You didn’t like your breakfast?”

“It was fine,” Estelle said, not looking away from the tablet.

“I liked mine,” he said. “Not that you asked.”

She looked up from the tablet. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said.

Estelle said, “Maybe you need to let someone else lead the charge.”

Clement blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You say you’re stressed out,” she said. “So let someone else do it. Let someone else speak for the Flyovers.”

“The work’s not done,” he said. “I have much to do.”

“And when will it be done?” she asked. “Tell me. What is it, exactly, that you’re hoping to achieve? What is it you want?”

This was not like her. Challenging him on his mission.

“Awareness, Estelle,” he said. “I want to raise awareness.”

She sighed. “Like with that godforsaken occupation?” she asked, loudly enough to be heard beyond their table.

Clement glanced around quickly to see whether any of their fellow diners had noticed, then leaned over the table and glared at her. “For God’s sake, keep your voice down,” he whispered. “And we achieved a lot with that.”

Estelle shook her head sadly. “A bunch of grown men having a sit-in in a national park, looking like fools. Ten days you were there. It was ridiculous. God knows how long it would have gone on if one of your brilliant partners in crime hadn’t tried to sneak out to get Kentucky Fried Chicken and got himself nabbed by the FBI.”

Clement leaned back in his chair. “What’s gotten into you lately?”

“Certainly not you,” she said icily.

He felt his cheeks go hot. “You don’t win a war with a single battle,” he told her. “What we achieved with the occupation may not be evident for some time. These things are cumulative.”

She kept her voice to a whisper this time, but her anger was evident. “Who are you at war with, Eugene? Tell me? The other people in this restaurant? Our waiter? The people at the front desk? Are you at war with them?”

Eugene breathed in slowly. Estelle had never been able to see the big picture.

“A revolution takes time,” he said.

“A revolution,” she said dismissively. “You’re Paul Revere, is that it?”

“Don’t mock me.”

“And all these people who follow you, your acolytes. Half of them are out of their minds, you know. They’re lunatics. Blowing up coffee shops. The things you write, the things you say, they get people riled up.” She paused. “I know you’d never want them to do those things, but you have to know you have an influence.”

Clement took a moment to compose himself. Slowly, he said, “I am here, right now, in this city, to celebrate our anniversary. I do not want to talk about my work. I do not want to talk about... us . So get out your goddamn guidebook and pick some goddamn thing for us to do today while I go take a goddamn piss.”

Estelle’s jaw dropped.

He threw his napkin onto the table and pushed back his chair. As he walked away, he took out his phone, opened an app, and scanned the latest headlines. There were two breaking stories. Details were sketchy, but there had been another elevator accident. Two people were believed dead. And on West Forty-Ninth Street, a taxi had exploded, killing two on the street, and the driver.

Clement slipped the phone back into his jacket and continued to the men’s washroom, which was down a short hallway off the lobby. He pushed open the door and walked in slowly.

The room appeared, at first, to be empty. He stood, briefly, in front of the mirror, ostensibly checking his appearance, running his hand over his thinning gray hair. He turned and took a step toward a row of urinals, glancing over his shoulder at the three stalls. Two of the doors hung open, but the third was closed. In the gap at the bottom could be seen two shoes.

Eugene chose the middle urinal and unzipped. While he stood there, he cleared his throat. Not once, but three distinctive times.

From behind the closed stall, a voice Clement recognized as Bucky’s said, “You up to speed?”

“Yes,” Clement said. “It’s been quite a morning for the good folks of New York.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said from inside the stall.

“Any problems?”

“No.” Bucky paused, then said, “The cab was a Prius.”

“Nice touch,” Clement said, giving his dick a shake.

“I set it to go off sixty seconds after I got out. Any longer than that and another passenger might have noticed it in the back.”

“Where exactly did it go off?”

“Out front of the Klaxton Hotel.”

“Nice that it wasn’t this one,” Clement said. Sarcastically, he added, “I would hate for anything to put a damper on our anniversary weekend.” He paused, then said, “Speaking of which, you need to be more careful. My wife’s noticed you.”

“Shit. What’d you say?”