Short Stories

The elevator jerked to a sudden stop. The number 83 was flashing on the panel. Eighty-three floors above the street. That’s about 996 feet I quickly calculated, remembering that someone had once told me each floor in a skyscraper was about twelve feet high. I was on an express elevator – supposedly a straight shot to the ground after picking up its last passengers on the 90^th floor.

The silence was eerie. I was careful not to laugh, my typical reaction when a situation was going sideways. I was in my usual spot in the back, left corner, claimed as my space where no one could bump up against me, cough on the back of my head, or share their garlic breath.

“Memorial Hospital,” I told the driver. He nodded and pulled away from the curb.

The taxi smelled vaguely of bleach and vomit which didn’t bother me. Bleach was just one of the tools of my trade and vomit was one of the reasons I had a trade. I worked as a janitor in the emergency department at the Memorial Hospital. Cleaning up after sick people was my job.

The emergency department was one of the newest areas of the hospital and was outfitted with new equipment and machines and beds. But it didn’t take long before it smelled and felt just like the old emergency department. Sickness has a certain smell to it and that smell permeated my uniform and my skin. Some days it was in my hair and the odour wafted around me. But I wore that scent like a badge of honour because I was proud of my job.

Several things happened in the span of a few moments that Jane later looked back on as the reason her life was changed for the better.

This was the fourth Sunday in a row that Jane had been scouring the countryside, visiting breeders of purebred dogs, on a quest to find her life-long companion. At 42 years of age, Jane saw this as her last chance for happiness. Her last chance to have something alive to share her life with.  She always added that caveat ‘alive’ when formulating her plan because she had concluded that oversized pillows, soft blankets, occasional bottles of red wine, and talks with Siri did not meet her needs as they were all inanimate objects and incapable of reciprocating the amount of affection she craved.

Elle often wondered if the song they picked for their wedding dance – “At Last” by Etta James – was simply titled wrong.  When she pondered the chronology of curious events leading to that dance, she ended with the sad realization that their wedding song should have been titled “Last Dance.”

Her memories leading up to their wedding, like the credit roll at the end of a movie, got a bit more detailed every time she ran it through her mind. She would add small snippets, fitting them in to the logical place in the linear view of their time together. 

I looked out the window at a new world. A new life. Getting here hadn’t been that hard. I’d been good and scared but I got here. Fear brings out the best in people. At least that’s what mama used to tell me. 

“Bein’ ‘fraid, makes you stronger,” she’d tell me in her drunken southern drawl. Mama with her eye shadow put on real thick to hide another black eye. Mama who put Maybelline foundation she stole from Walmart on her arms to cover up the bruises. The bruises were from the needles and any man who paid her $20 for a quick fuck, $10 for a hand job. The social worker didn’t like it when I said fuck, but mama said it every time she opened the door to another man. How was I to know it was a bad word? Mama said her black eyes and the bruises on her arms that looked like leopard spots were a bonus, no extra charge. She’d let them beat her. She was a human punching bag.

My father schooled me in the game of baseball. The lessons started when I was four. While the action happened before my eyes, he became my personal play-by-play announcer, colour commentator, umpire, scorekeeper, statistician, and rules-master, all rolled into one. Summer evenings at a city-owned baseball diamond, we’d lie in the grass, out of the way along the third base line – ‘best place to watch the game’ – and watch men’s fastball. He’d nudge me, nod silently and I’d follow his gaze to the left fielder. Dad would whisper “watch his feet” and eventually I knew that meant the left fielder was anticipating where the batter would hit, and the placement of his feet was a ‘tell’ on which direction he would run to field the ball.

Dad (on the game): Baseball is a game of nuance, subtlety, and precision. It’s not fast-paced; but it’s magical. It’s more than balls being batted over the outfield wall.

Aggie looked it up – the odds of falling in love at her age were one in 57,000.  But – it was love at first sight. So that set her to wondering about those odds – falling in love at her age and it being love at first sight. After a while she decided that rather than task her brain figuring it out, she would be content knowing that it was a very huge improbability. Yes, hugely improbable. In her mind, Aggie decided the odds of it happening must be one million to one.

            Something white floated past the window and moments later it flew by again on a return trip. It danced a little on its second pass, caught on an upward draft. Lily did a double-take, blinking, staring, concentrating, willing the strange apparition to return a third time. The sunlight coming through the window strained her eyes, and she finally closed them.