“No, I’m not.”
“You are.” She folds her arms over her chest, pushing them up and, from my position above and behind her, giving me a perfect view of soft-looking cleavage.
I tear my gaze away.
Through the cracks in the elevator’s seams, I watch the first floor go by at a snail’s pace.
“You imagined it.”
She snorts. “Yeah. Like you imagined me laughing this morning.”
“Oh, you laughed.”
“Whatever, Ebenezer. Just quit muttering behind my back.”
My breathing’s gone fast and hard and my lungs feel tight. I’ve got the urge to tug her shoulder and turn her round, make her look at me and confront me to my face.
Which is ridiculous. I know this. I’m being absurd. And yet, Iwantit. And that feeling—of really craving something—is so foreign I’ve got no idea how to react. Maybe it’s the whisky I started in on while locking up the pub, or the season or some other incomprehensible thing, but something pushes me to open my mouth. “You’re being rude.”
After a handful of silent seconds that feel like the calm before the storm, she swings halfway back to glare at me. Then she laughs. “Oh my God. What is wrong with you? You’re like…” Her mouth snaps shut before she turns to the front again, shaking her head. “No. Nope. Not doing this. Not even a little bit. It’s Christmas and I’m…” She inhales deeply, lifts her hands into the air and circles them with a graceful, almost dance-like movement. They’re tiny hands. Short-fingered and plump, with neat, clean, unpainted nails. “Embodying the Christmas spirit. Even with Le Jerk.”
“Lewhat?”
“Le Jerk. It’s one of my many names for you.”
“Many?” My brow wrinkles. “Such as?”
There’s a moment of silence as the elevator hitches, as usual, at the third floor then, after a shuddering pause, carries onward and upward.
“Oh, you know, like Grumpopotomus. Grumposaurus Rex, Grumpy McJerkyson, or—”
“I’m not a jerk, I’m just—”
She turns. “You’re what? Kindness itself? Sweetness and light? No. No, sir, you’re mean and you’re a creep, who has always, from day one, treated me like—”
“A creep? Does that mean the same thing in your language? Because I’ve never—”
“Mylanguage?” One tiny index finger rises. I watch with fascination as it prods at my chest. “I speakEnglishyou jackwagon.”
“No, you don’t. You’re American, which is—”
“Some say closer to the original old English than—”
“What?That’s absurd. You talk like—”
The lift chooses that moment to start its slow, agonizing final grind to the fifth floor, for some strange reason, always slower and more laborious than the lower floors. “Never mind. We’re here.” Thank God. One, two. Another half-second and we’ve arrived. Impatient, I lean forward, work one arm around her and pull hard at the door.
The lift’s lights go out.
“What the hell just happened?” she asks.
No. No, God no.Please.
I peer out through the crack behind her and see that we’re probably thirty centimeters below the fifth floor landing. Why? How? I felt it arrive. I felt the easing, the final slowing, the bump and shift. No. No, this cannot be happening.
I push the fifth floor button. Nothing happens. No slow, ancient motor revving to life, no lights blinking back on. Nothing.
We’re in a tiny metal cage hanging five stories in the air.
