37
Lucy’s first instinct, when the elevator jolted to a stop, was to laugh.
Even before the floor had quit vibrating beneath their feet, hovering midway between the third and fourth floors of the Liberty department store, her three fellow travelers—an old man in a sweater vest and a young mother with her son, who couldn’t have been older than three—were giving her strange looks, as if she’d already cracked under the pressure of the situation, just four seconds in.
“The lift is stuck,” the little boy pointed out, tilting his head back to take in the ornate wooden carvings along the ceiling. The lights were still on, and when the woman hit the red button, a crackling voice was quick to come over the speaker.
“Are you in need of assistance?” someone asked in a clipped English accent.
“It’s stuck,” the boy said with more force this time. He accompanied this with a little stamp of his foot.
“We seem to have stopped,” his mother said, her mouth close to the speaker.
“Right,” said the voice. “We’re looking into it. Be back with you straightaway.”
Lucy was still shaking her head, unable to get rid of the smile on her face. The woman gave her a look as if to suggest she wasn’t taking this quite seriously enough, but she was quickly distracted by her son, who had started to cry, great heaving sobs that made his shoulders rise and fall. It built to such a pitch in the small space that the old man actually clapped his hands over his ears.
“Would anyone like a mint?” Lucy asked, digging through her bag, and the man glanced over at her, lowering his hands again.
“You’re prepared,” he said, and she smiled.
“Not my first rodeo,” she told him, still amused by the unlikeliness of the situation. Only a few minutes ago, she’d been trailing her mother through the fourth floor of the airy store, running her fingers absently over the endless bolts of brightly colored fabrics. But she’d soon grown bored, and when she spotted a directory that advertised a haberdashery on the third floor, she decided she had to see it. She knew there would only be hats, and she’d probably be far more interested in the travel accessories and notebooks found farther down, but how often did you get to visit a haberdashery? There were stairs across the store, but the elevator was right there, and she’d stepped in without thinking about it.
And now here she was—stuck once again.
Only this time, it all seemed sort of funny. The old man was tapping his fingers against the wooden panels, and the woman was fanning herself with her hand, though it wasn’t particularly hot—was, in fact, practically cold compared to the last elevator Lucy had been stuck inside—and the little boy was hiccupping now, fat tears still rolling down his rosy cheeks. It was all just so unlikely, that she should find herself in this situation twice in such a short amount of time, and the only person she wanted to tell—the only person who would really appreciate it—was Owen.
It had been two weeks since she’d sent the postcard, and she hadn’t heard back. Not that she’d expected to; even if he wasn’t still angry after their argument in San Francisco, and even if he wasn’t still with Paisley, it had been sent off to a place where he hadn’t lived in several months. And it struck her now—with a kind of jarring obviousness—that a postcard was just about the stupidest possible form of communication. There were so many things that could go wrong, so many ways it could have gotten lost, so many opportunities for it to go astray. It was almost as if she hadn’t wanted it to reach him. Suddenly, dropping that postcard in the mail seemed about as useful as throwing a paper airplane out of a window. It was a coward’s move, a way of doing something without really doing much of anything.
Beside her, the old man raised his wiry eyebrows to the ceiling and then thumped a hand to his chest, a hollow sound that seemed to vibrate in the crowded space.
Lucy looked at him with alarm. “Are you okay?”
“Heart problems,” he muttered.
“Maybe you should sit down,” Lucy suggested, trying not to sound panicky, but he shook his head.
“Not mine,” he said. “My wife’s.”
Lucy exchanged a look with the other woman, who only shrugged.
“I snuck off to buy her some perfume,” he explained, his eyes swimming. “She’s downstairs looking at fabrics. She’ll be worried when she can’t find me, and her heart…”
Lucy put a hand on his shoulder. “She’ll be fine,” she said, surprised by the emotion in her voice. “I’m sure they’ll have us out soon.”
There was a lump in her throat as she watched him fidget with the buttons on his vest, and it struck her as the truest form of kindness, the most basic sort of love: to be worried about the one who was worrying about you.
Only seven minutes had passed, but they were slow minutes, long and unhurried. She thought of Owen again, and how quickly he’d made the time pass when they’d been stuck. Without him, it felt like something was missing.
She should have been braver. She should have e-mailed him. It wouldn’t have mattered if he didn’t write back; that wasn’t the point. The old man worrying about his wife didn’t know if she was worried about him, too. He wasn’t thinking about himself at all. He was too busy loving her simply because she was out there somewhere.
The little boy banged a fist against the wall, and they all paused to listen for a moment, but there was no response.
“Come on,” Lucy muttered, glaring at the speaker. She shifted from one foot to the other, jangly and on edge, then sighed and squeezed her eyes shut. The minute she stepped out of this elevator, she knew that any sense of urgency would drain away. But right now, in a wood-paneled box with three strangers who were not Owen, she wanted nothing more than to reach him somehow.
The last time, when they’d been in this together, the opening of the doors had felt like the breaking of some spell. But this time, as the elevator cranked to life again, moving downward in a motion that felt sudden after eight long minutes of being suspended, there was only relief. Lucy’s eyes flickered open and she blinked a few times, meeting the gaze of the old man, which was suddenly peaceful: He was on his way home.
She envied him that.
On the ground floor, the doors opened with two short dings, and there was a small knot of people waiting for them: the store manager with his patterned tie, a maintenance man in a khaki shirt, an elderly woman with a halo of white hair, who rushed to embrace the old man, and finally Lucy’s mother, who shook her head from side to side with a slow smile.