Dangerously - Julie Farrar

They stepped on the hotel elevator in the lobby. Both about fifteen years younger than I was, one was tall with dark hair, the other much shorter with streaks of blond in his close-cropped brown hair. I had just ridden the elevator first up to the rooftop bar, then to floor 9, now down to the lobby again where I heard the body-thumping loud music that filled all the public spaces this Friday night at the über trendy Atlanta lodgings my husband had booked. Wait until he arrived tomorrow and got a load of this place. For the moment, though, I seemed incapable of getting this darn box to stop on my floor. It was late and I was tired.

“What floor do you want?” I asked helpfully.

“Four, please,” they answered in even more über trendy East London accents. I guess that accent explained the tailored, open-collared shirt with red and baby blue and black stripes that Mr. Short One wore, three buttons undone.

I punched first floor 4, then 3 but nothing happened after that. Mr. Tall pointed out that I needed to put my room key in the slot to get to the room floors. Only the rooftop bar and lobby were accessible without the key. “Last time I was in it I didn’t use the key and it stopped on my floor.” The two accents insisted this was what worked, so I dropped my key in the slot and pressed 4 then 3 again. Nothing.

“No, no,” Mr. Tall corrected me. “You have to remove it to make it work.”

“Yes,” his striped friend agreed. “You put it in and remove it, then press.”

“Oh,” I responded. “Earlier I put it in and left it there while I pushed. That seemed to work, too.”

“No,” they both insisted. “It only works if you put it in and take it out quickly before you push. You don’t want to leave it in too long. In, then out, then push.”

In an instant we all realized where the conversation was going. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Mr. Short looking down at his pointy-toed shoes, trying not to smile too big or laugh. And me, I was dangerously close to being a woman, not an exhausted wife, mother, dutiful daughter-in-law here to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday. I had a spot of strawberry rhubarb pie on my white tank top and my back pain was returning after a day of driving for this trip from St. Louis to Atlanta. However, I was so tempted to add one more line to this dialogue to take it all the way.

Before I could say a thing, though, Mr. Tall said, “Here, let me do it,” as he reached around me and expertly put it in and took it out quickly then pushed all the right buttons so that in no time at all I got off on my floor, refreshed from this anonymous elevator encounter, with a “thank you” and “goodnight.”