“What are you doing?”
“Stopping the elevator, obviously.”
“Can you do that?” I ask.
“Yeah.” Reb points to the red button on the control panel. “It’s right there on the button. Stop Elevator.”
“Isn’t that for emergencies?”
She shrugs. “You just said you never cry. So if you’re crying, clearly it’s an emergency.”
Before I can respond, a voice comes through the elevator’s intercom. “Reb, is that you again?” a male voice asks.
Reb looks up at the corner and waves. “Hi, Steve.” She waves, then she points in my direction. “It’s an emergency.”
I follow her gaze up to what I assume is the security camera. The bizarro-world-ness of this whole scene stems my tears. I raise my hand to wave at Steve on the other side of the camera, because it seems rude not to.
“You can’t keep doing this, Reb,” he says.
“You do this often?” I ask her.
She doesn’t answer, but the disembodied voice of Steve does. “About once a week. She likes to brainstorm in the elevator.”
“But this isn’t brainstorming.” Reb holds up a single finger to emphasize her point. “This is an emergency.”
“An actual emergency would be someone having a heart attack, or going into labor, or the elevator stalling on its own. Whatever this is, it is not an emergency.”
“Yes it is,” Reb says. “She’s crying. And Meg never cries.” She waggles her hand in a back-me-up-on-this gesture. “Right?”
I shake my head and croak, “I never cry.”
“That’s still not an emergency,” Steve says. “I’m starting the elevator, Reb.”
“You are a party pooper,” Reb says to the security camera while flashing him the finger with both hands.
The elevator moves again and I ask, “I thought you said you were trying to cuss less?”
Reb looks at me and blinks. “Shooting someone the bird isn’t cussing.”
“I’m pretty sure it is.”
She waves a hand dismissively. “So, do you want to tell me what happened? Now that you’re not crying anymore.”
I raise a hand to my cheek, surprised to find that I am indeed not crying anymore. Somehow the sheer absurdity of the situation—being trapped in the elevator with Reb and the conversation with Steve—seems to have shocked me out of my despair.
“I don’t know that I can talk about it without bursting into tears again,” I admit. “And I hate crying in front of other people.”
“Everybody hates crying in front of other people.”
I glare at her, because, yes, everyone hates crying in public, but she clearly doesn’t understand. “No. I really, really hate it. And now I’m crying in front of you. And Steve, apparently. In a minute, we’re gonna be in the lobby, and then I’ll just be crying in the lobby of my building, like a fool, where anyone can see me.”
“It’s Sunday. No one is going to be here.”
“We’re both here,” I point out. Reid was here, just a few minutes ago, but I can’t tell her that without opening that whole can of worms, so I add, “Steve is here.”
As if the elevator seconds my argument, the doors open and there are, indeed, other people in the lobby.
Reb hits the button to close the doors, and then the button for the 26th floor. “Problem solved,” she says cheerfully.
