“Come on, please,” I whisper. “Isn’t there a call button? Like, a way to get the elevator people here?”
“The elevator people?” There’s that tone of voice again. The one that’s equal parts judgment, annoyance, and disbelief.
“You know. The emergency line.”
He swings his light one way, then the other. “No. Nothing.”
I’m shivering. From cold, from panic. I don’t know. But the feeling’s pretty close to hysteria. And I’ve known hysteria before. The bad, bad kind. The kind that keeps you from making sense and makes you hurt, inside and out. The kind that squeezes your lungs until you can’t breathe and messes so badly with your brain it’s never the same again.
“You’ve got to fix this, dude. Please. Please, just…”
“It’s dude now, is it?” he asks in that low, sarcastic voice. As if we’re not stuck here, just the two of us, in what’sclearlyan empty building on the quietest day of the year. “Not Jerk? Or Grumparino? Not Wankersaurus?”
“That’s not what I called you.” I manage to sound calm, but that inner voice is working its way up to a shriek.
“Close enough.” His light goes out, which sets my pulse racing even harder. “I’ll just call the pompiers round. Hold on.”
“Oh, yes. Right. The firemen. Good.” In Paris, if you need something done, you don’t call the police or an ambulance, you call the pompiers. They resuscitate, scale buildings, put out fires. Everything, really. They’ll get us out of here. They’ll save us. The shrieking subsides.
In the dim light from the phone, his face is an eerie blue, but it’s enough. Better than the pure dark from earlier. Something to stare at. Something to hold on to, along with the hope that we’ll get out of here soon. I watch closely as he pokes at the screen.
“You all right?”
I look up from his mobile’s cool glow to find him watching me. “What?”
“You’re shivering.”
“I’m…I’m…fine.”
“Your teeth are chattering,” he insists, as if I’m doing it specifically to annoy him.
“It’s not from the cold.” Now why did I tell him that? What good could it possibly do to admit to this man that I’m scared out of my wits right now?
“No?” Even in the minimal blue wash of light, I see the way his gaze flicks down to my feet before returning to my face. “That’s a shocker.”
“Just… Why aren’t you calling?”
He sighs. “No service. As usual.” The hand holding his phone drops to his side. “Fucking stone building.”
“What about the emergency call thing? Try that?”
“I’ve tried. Nothing’s going through.”
“Give me that.” With surprisingly little resistance, he hands me the phone and… Crap. No bars. Not one. To top it off, the battery’s in the red. “You’re at 3 percent?” What kind of monster lets their phone get that low?
“Jesus, woman. I didn’t know I’d be stuck in a lift with a half-naked yank harpy, did I? I was heading up to mine after a painfully slow night at the pub, when you—”
“Oh, no you don’t. No way do you blame me for getting us stuck in here. You’re the one who opened the door prematurely. That’s all on you, buddy. I’m just here, minding my own business.”
“Half naked.”
“Like I said,minding my own business, when you—”
“Whyareyou dressed like that, by the way?”
“Smelly cheese.”
He snorts. “You went to the shop to buy cheese, when—”
