A Bus Driver, A Housewife, an Elevator

It’s a nice elevator, the kind with mirrors and dark wood paneling to give the illusion of space and elegance. It didn’t fool Robert, though. He knew he was in a tiny metal box hurtling hundreds of feet above the city streets and, wiping the thin sheen of sweat off his forehead, took a deep and steadying breath. His stomach lurches violently and he squeezes his eyes shut. He was a big guy and hated small spaces on principle. Normally his claustrophobia was manageable. He could usually grin and bear it, but tonight he was already feeling constrained by his uniform’s jacket. Despite it being the largest size available, it still pulls tight across his chest, the buttons bulging and straining against his stomach. Normally he would not bother with it, opting to carry it over his shoulder before draping it across the back of the seat on his articulated bus, but tonight was unusual. He’d hopes that the uniform will give him some sense of authority, like a badge that will separate him from the hoodlums that wander the streets at night, and decrease his chance of getting shot as he escorts this drunk white lady home.

People had been shot over far less, and every step until they’d climbed into the elevator had him trembling with fear.

The woman, who has been leaning heavily against him, garbled something unintelligible before grasping lamely at his lapels. Her hands do not have the strength to form fists, and they bounce off of him as she loses her balance. Robert catches her, and not for the first time, marvels at just how thin she is. It’s not a healthy thin, more gaunt and undernourished than attractive. Sickly, if he has to put a word for it. He suspects it's like meeting a supermodel in real life; without that airbrushed health, all that was left was a haunting gauntness. He’s afraid that if he holds on to her too tightly she’ll break. It was the same feeling he’d gotten when his wife passed him his baby daughter for the first time. He’d held her tiny body in his big hands and, scared out of his wits, entertained thoughts of dropping her. How easy it was to accidentally hurt her, or kill her, and he was responsible for her. Robert had been shaking by the time he’d handed Aaliyah back to her mom.

The woman he was with had been the last one on his bus, and he hadn’t noticed her until he’d parked at the terminal and began sweeping up trash. She’d been slumped down in her seat, staring listlessly at a piece of gum that was stuck to the floor, and drooling. At first he’d thought she was dead. Although it had never happened to him personally, it wasn’t entirely unheard of for druggies to overdose on the way to their next fix, leaving the hapless bus drivers to deal with the remains. He’d figured that being five years in the business he was long overdue for something strange like that to happen, and with his heart pounding wildly in his chest he crouched down beside the woman and gently shook her shoulder. Her eyes focused on him and her hand made to grab him but fell short. She reeked of alcohol. She said something, but the words were too slurred to understand. It sounded like she wanted to go home, or at least that’s what he’d imagined as he straightened himself.

“Ah, shit,” he said. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

The woman tried to sit up, shaking her head violently. “N’ospital!” she’d shrieked. “Noooooo mmuublance.” She gagged on her sob and her body convulsed as she dry heaved. Robert hoped that she wouldn’t throw up. He hated cleaning up vomit.

She waved her hand once at her purse on the seat beside her. “Cab.”

Cursing, but with little else to do, he began to pick carefully through the woman’s purse. He felt uneasy. His wife would have killed him if she even suspected that he’d gone through her belongings, nevermind if he’d riffled through a stranger’s. A woman’s purse, he’d learned, was a sacred place. More importantly, what if someone were to have seen him? They’d think he was trying to rob some woman at her lowest point. A prickle of paranoia danced down his spine as his trembling fingers groped blindly for her wallet and his eyes surveyed the dark terminal through the bus’s tinted windows. Once he found it, he looked in every nook and cranny and pocket, yet could find no money for a cab. He sighed deeply.

“Look, you ain’t go no money,” he said. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“No!” Her voice was clear and shrill. “No ambula...aaa…” her head hit her chest and her eyes rolled. “No hospital!”

“Bitc, you gonna die if you don’t get some help!” He scolded her. Her eyes welled up with tears and she’d begun to cry loudly. “Fuck, okay, okay, look here. Hey, hey,” but she wouldn’t look at him, even when he’d snapped his fingers in front of her face. He fumbled with her wallet and found her driver’s license. Natalie Quinn, lived in a high rise on eighth street. “Natalie, tha’s you, right?” She looked up at him with large, wet eyes. “Okay, Natalie. Okay. We gonna get you home, okay? I just gotta get something first.” She’d slumped against the window and shut her eyes as Robert squeezed his way past the seats and grabbed his jacket off the back of the seat. He fished around his pocket until he found his phone and called his wife.

“Sorry, baby, but I’m gonna be late tonight.”

“Hey,” Natalie says, careening towards the mirror. Robert catches her before she hits the glass. “Tha’s me!”

“Yeah, that you,” Robert sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Look, what floor you on?”

She frowned, concentrating on the elevator’s glowing panel. They’d been through this three or four times now. He’d ask her what floor she was on, she’d hit a bunch of buttons, then refuse to leave the elevator. The walk her sobered her somewhat, at least enough to stand on her own, but not enough to remember where her apartment was, apparently. She jammed her hand onto the panel and three buttons lit up. The elevator whooshed up.

He thought that he might go back down to the lobby and interrogate the bellboy, but had a feeling in his gut that the kid wouldn’t be of much help. When he’d dragged her in, the teenager had simply glanced up from his phone and smirked at him. It wasn’t the kind that implied Robert was going to get up to something with Natalie, but more of a, “Better you than me,” kind of look, and it had pissed Robert off. If he wasn’t escorting Natalie home, and wasn’t surrounded by rich white things, he’d have given the kid a piece of his mind. As it were, he’d let is slide. The elevator dings and the doors slide open. Robert wedges his foot on the edge of the grooves.

“This you?” Robert asks as the elevator door bumps helplessly against his foot.

“Tha’s me!” She points towards her reflection.

Robert groans. “Is this your floor?” He articulates carefully and points down the hallway. She squints after his finger and ventures a few wobbly steps out of the elevator. She turns her head this way and that before retreating back, eyes wide, and smacks into Robert’s chest. He sighs and removes his foot. The doors slide shut and the elevator is moving again. Robert wipes the sweat off his brow.

He is grateful that she is a childish drunk and not a horny one. His wife had laughed at him when he told her what he’d been up to , and with her voice brimming with unspoken pride, wished him the best of luck. Even though it had been late, she’d been up witht eh baby. She was a warhorse, he thinks fondly. A hell of a woman. It distracts him from the elevator, from the drunk woman who kept leaning heavily against his shoulder, and the suit jacket that squeezes the breath out of him. He glances at Natalie and her tangle of blond hair. He wonders if she was married. He doesn’t see a ring.

“Hey, you married?” the questions leaves his mouth before he can stop himself.

Natalie thinks for a minute and nods. Robert feels his stomach drop.

“Shit,’ he says, “he ain’t gonna shoot me or nothing?”

She blinks at him. “S’not home.” She makes a fierce face. “Work.”

He sighs in relief. “What your man do?”

Natalie doesn’t answer, but continues to scowl. “Work, work,” she leans against the wall, clasping her hands in front of her. “All the time, work, work, work.”

“Your old man one of them workaholics?”

“He saves people,” she laughs. “No time for...family.”

Robert shifts uncomfortably. “Hey now, I’m sure he’s got his reasons.”

They fall silent as the elevator stops and the door slides open. Not her floor. She hits more buttons. The elevator goes down.

“Do you have any kids?” It’s the first lucid thing she’s said all night, and Robert grasps for it.

“Just had a baby girl,” he says.

“Name?”

“Aaliyah.”

“Aaliyah,” she says thoughtfully, as if testing how the name sounds on her tongue. She weaves on her legs, feet quick stepping to keep herself from falling. Natalie was able to steady herself. “If I had a little girl, I’d name her Chloe.” She stares down at her shoes while she walks. “Chloe Marie. If it were a boy, I’d name him Adam Wayne.”

“Uh huh,” says Robert.

“But we can’t,” she laughs and shakes her head. “Too much could go wrong.” And though her voice was still slurring, her next words were clear. “Ectopic pregnancy, fetal arrhythmia, toxoplasmosis, placenta accreta, good ol’ fashioned miscarriage…now Zika Virus. I’ve never even been to Aruba.”

Robert isn’t sure what any of those words mean, or what Aruba has to do with any of it. He wonders if his wife knew, or even worried about those things when she was pregnant. It’d been easy for them. Just one night they’d decided that they’d wanted a kid and nine months later there was Aaliyah. He knew it wasn’t that easy for everyone, that he’d been lucky, but something told him that lack of trying wasn’t the case for Natalie. There was something else wrong, something going on between Natalie and her old man, and even if he was incredibly curious, it wasn’ this business. She was a stranger and he was just a good samaritan that somehow got drawn into her life for a night. He’d just drop her off at her place and be done with all of this.

The elevator comes to a stop and the doors open. She doesn’t need him to help her this time. She stumbles off, crashing into the wall. She holds onto it to steady herself, and takes a few deep breaths before wobbling down the hall. Robert had intended on making sure that she made it to her door, but he’d forgotten to wedge his foot by the door, and as he realized his mistake the shiny metal obscures his vision, blotting Natalie out from his life. The elevator makes two more stops at empty floors before Robert’s back in the lobby. He has a lot on his mind now, but his thoughts keep retreating to his bus. He’d get a strike tomorrow for not cleaning it out for the morning crew, but whatever. His record was spotless. All he wanted to do now was go home and curl up beside his wife and listen to Aaliyahs’ coos over the baby monitor. He was exhausted. The elevator comes to a stop at the lobby and he passes by a beleaguered looking doctor on his way out.